London calling.
London Walks connecting.
This… is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets ahead.
Story time. History time.
Top of the morning to you London Walkers. Wherever you are.
It’s Wednesday, August 27th, 2025.
And where we are, here in London, first order of business, as always, is stopping by the London Calling Book Club Corner. Lending an ear to a London Walks guide. Finding out what they’re reading. In the Chair today, Philip. Philip who’s a really fecund guide. By that I means he’s created a lot of unusual walks, a lot of Specials. This past weekend he aired out his Siege of Sidney Street Walk. And come September 21st – the autumn equinox – he’ll be doing Fables, Fashions & Feasts – 200 Years in Two Hours.
Anyway, book-wise, Philip’s mid-stream in You Are Here by David Nicholls. Philip says “it’s a book about two middle-aged people, single for a long time, who meet on a walk across Yorkshire.” He adds, “it’s very well written – amusing and poignant.”
Ah, a walk across Yorkshire. A meet-up with an interesting stranger. What’s not to like?
Ok, moving on. Here’s Dan again. Dan of Spy Walks fame. And the thing is, Dan’s not just a one-trick pony. Dan’s bent is for extreme characters and extreme stories. People who operate way out on the edge and in the shadows. So, that’s spies and their opposite numbers, spycatchers. But it’s also Pirates. Fanfare, drum roll: Dan’s Pirates, Press Gangs & Execution Dock walk. And here he is, here’s a taster from that walk. Skull and crossbones flapping in the wind, Dan’s got us up top, one of best vantage points in London. And we’re hearing about the King of Pirates. Henry Every, the subject of the world’s first international manhunt. One of the few major pirate captains to get away with it. Yes, Henry Every was the four leaf clover of pirates. The rarest of the rare – one of the very few major pirate captains who escaped with his loot without being arrested or killed in battle. And where’s he end up? Well, very possibly right here, in London. And that’s what’s so good about being up here in the crow’s nest with Dan while he tells the story. Just downriver is Execution Dock, which Henry Every dodged. And just upstream, Orange Street, of all places, which might well be a key to where Henry Every went to ground. Oh and in case you’re wondering, his treasure, worth 100 million pounds today, has never been recovered.
Ok, here’s Dan. On a manhunt. On the trail of the King of the Pirates.
[There follows an excerpt from Dan’s Pirates London Walk]
You’ve been listening to This… is London, the London Walks podcast. Emanating from – www.walks.com – home of London Walks,
London’s signature walking tour company.
London’s local, time-honoured, fiercely independent, family-owned, just-the-right-size walking tour company.
And as long as we’re at it, London’s multi-award-winning walking tour company. Indeed, London’s only award-winning walking tour company.
And here’s the secret: London Walks is essentially run as a guides’ cooperative.
That’s the key to everything.
It’s the reason we’re able to attract and keep the best guides in London. You can get schlubbers to do this for £20 a walk. But you cannot get world-class guides – let alone accomplished professionals.
It’s not rocket science: you get what you pay for.
And just as surely, you also get what you don’t pay for.
Back in 1968 when we got started we quickly came to a fork in the road. We had to answer a searching question: Do we want to make the most money? Or do we want to be the best walking tour company in the world?
You want to make the most money you go the schlubbers route. You want to be the best walking tour company in the world you do whatever you have to do to attract and keep the best guides in London – you want them guiding for you, not for somebody else.
Bears repeating:
the way we’re structured – a guides’ cooperative – is the key to the whole thing.
It’s the reason for all those awards, it’s the reason people who know go with London Walks, it’s the reason we’ve got a big following, a lively, loyal, discerning following – quality attracts quality.
It’s the reason we’re able – uniquely – to front our walks with accomplished, in many cases distinguished professionals:
By way of example, Stewart Purvis, the former Editor (and subsequently CEO) of Independent Television News.
And Lisa Honan, who had a distinguished career as a diplomat (Lisa was the Governor of St Helena, the island where Napoleon breathed his last and, some say, had his penis amputated – Napoleon didn’t feel a thing – if thing’s the mot juste – he was dead.)
Stewart and Lisa – both of them CBEs – are just a couple of our headline acts.
Or take our Ripper Walk. It’s the creation of the world’s leading expert on Jack the Ripper, Donald Rumbelow, the author of the definitive book on the subject. Britain’s most distinguished crime historian, Donald is, in the words of The Jack the Ripper A to Z, “internationally recognised as the leading authority on Jack the Ripper.” Donald’s emeritus now but he’s still the guiding light on our Ripper Walk. He curates the walk. He trains up and mentors our Ripper Walk guides. Fields any and all questions they throw at him.
The London Walks Aristocracy of Talent – its All-Star Team of Guides – includes a former London Mayor. It includes the former Chief Music Critic for the Evening Standard. It includes the Chair of the Association of Professional Tour Guides. And the former chair of the Guild of Guides.
It includes barristers, doctors, geologists, museum curators, a former London Museum archaeologist, historians, university professors (one of them a distinguished Cambridge University paleontologist); it includes a criminal defence lawyer, Royal Shakespeare Company and National Theatre actors, a bevy of MVPs, Oscar winners (people who’ve won the big one, the Guide of the Year Award)… well, you get the idea.
As that travel writer famously put it, “if this were a golf tournament, every name on the Leader Board would be a London Walks guide.”
And as we put it: London Walks Guides make the new familiar and the familiar new.
And on that agreeable note… come then, let us go forward together on some great London Walks.