London calling.
London Walks connecting.
This… is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets ahead.
Story time. History time.
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And, from London a very good evening to you, wherever you are. It’s August 23rd, 2024.
Today’s pin…If you were in London today chances are you rode the Tube. You and more than 3 million other people today. In a year the London Underground will roll them doggies over 83 million kilometres. That’s about 52 million miles. You go 52 million miles in a straight line you’re going to go round the world twice and still have a couple million miles left over. You can use up most of those couple million miles by making four round trips to the moon. When you get back from the moon at the end of your fourth round trip you’ll still have 920,000 miles to account for. You can cover those 920,000 miles by making 15 round trips back and forth across the continental United States. So let’s stack ‘em all up. All the mileage the London Underground racks up in a year, that distance would take you round the world twice, and then for good measure take you to the moon and back four times and then finally, the home stretch would be 15 round trips back and forth across the Continental United States. That’s a lot of miles. A lot of passengers. And now we cut to the chase, more or less every one of those passengers gets a helping hand from something a chap named Harry Beck invented back in 1933. Yes, I’m talking about the Tube Map. Pretty nifty piece of design it was. That’s understating it. The Tube map that we all know and use was voted the second best British design of the 20th century. It was beaten only by Concorde. And did it make Harry Beck a fortune? He should have been so lucky. He was £5 and 5 shillings for his world-beating design. That’s about £300 in today’s money. And this old news is new news. Because the London Transport Museum in Covent Garden has a new theatre space. It’s called the Cubic Room. And coming to the Cubic Room – in just a couple of weeks – is a new play. A new play called The Truth About Harry Beck.
It’ll tell the story of Harry and his tussles with London Transport. London theatre doesn’t get more London than that. I expect I’ll see some of you there.
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Moving on, today’s Random – this past week I’ve been chilling myself to the marrow and beyond with Annie Jacobsen’s new book: Nuclear War: A Scenario. I’m learning a few things. Learning about the U.S. Missile Defence Agency, for example. It’s the government organisation responsible for shooting down incoming missiles in mid-flight. Good luck with that. An incoming warhead is travelling at speeds of around 14,000 miles an hour. The interceptor’s kill vehicle is travelling at speeds of around 20,000 miles per hour. The Missile Defense Agency’s spokesperson says it’s akin to shooting a bullet with a bullet.
It’s a good read. I’d recommend it. But it’ll scare the bejesus out of you. We’ve got ourselves into a mess folks, a mess of Armageddon and worse proportions. It’s off-the-charts scary. As J. Robert Oppenheimer put it all those years ago – quoting from the Bhagavad Gita – “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”
Well, if I can bear to I might stop back here one day, explain how I’ve made my peace with the incomprehensible.
And on that cheery note, today’s today’s Ongoing. How’s a new series sound to you?
I thought I might do a series on where some of our walks meet. A pull focus series. Pull focus as in pull back from the close-up shot of the exact meeting point for any given walk…pull back to a wide-angle shot. Take the meeting point of any given walk – most of them of course are Tube Stops – and explore what’s there in that area, what it has to offer. It appeals to me not least because it’s practical. There are two practical considerations. The first one is that if you’re going to go on a London Walk you need to be there before the walk starts. A museum, a gallery, they’re a different story. If you’re late to a museum or gallery rendezvous, well, the museum’s staying put. It’s going to be there, you’re just a bit late getting there. Walking tours are a different story. Once we move off, chances are if you’re late you’ve missed the boat. We do our best to get latecomers caught up – we call it making an instrument landing – but it’s not always possible. You want to make sure you catch a walk it’s best to be there on time. And that consideration – that important consideration – is a fit with this new series. The other practical matter is that hanging about, waiting for a walking tour to start, that can be a little bit like airport lounge time. It’s empty calories time. Ok, it’s not getting to the airport two hours before your flight and getting your bags checked in and then having to wait for ninety minutes or more before the boarding announcement finally pitches up. With a walking tour is usually just a five or ten-minute wait before it starts – that’s assuming that you do get there early – but it still is empty calories time. And it needn’t be. So the idea is to turn that empty calories time into good calories time. It’s not time that’s effectively wasted. Instead, it’s put to good use. And you just can’t gainsay the importance of that, not given that time is our most precious resource. A precious resource that’s non-replenishable. Making good use of your time…you can’t argue with that. What are you going to say, I’d prefer to waste my time, make bad use of my time.
So that’s the given, that’s the starting premise. And what follows from it is to turn those empty calories into good calories you need to get there well before the start of the walk. Maybe half an hour or 45 minutes before it starts. And of course you need to know what’s there, the use – the good use – you can make of that extra time there at the meeting point for the walk. Or, to be more precise, in the immediate neighbourhood of the meeting point. And I thought we’d get this show on the road by doing a short series on Tottenham Court Road Tube Stop. We’ve got several walks that go from there. Notably Adam’s Rock ’n’ Roll London. And Richard’s Beatles Magical Mystery Tour.
So what’s there, what are the possibilities if you pitch up nice and early for either of those two walks. You get there an hour or 45 minutes early, can you make good use of that time? Can you turn that empty calorie time into something pleasing and rewarding? I think so, first of all there’s the history. This corner of London has been a significant spot for 900 years. And that history’s going to be a podcast in its own right. But let’s get this show on the road with the modern building complex called Outernet London. The three buildings that make up the complex are called Now Building, Now Trending and Now Arcade. They’re across the street – across Charing Cross Road – from the main exit out of Tottenham Court Road Tube Stop. The main exit being the exit where you meet Adam and Richard for their walks. It’s right on the corner of Charing Cross Road and Oxford Street.
But there is also an exit out of Tottenham Court Road Tube Stop that deposits you right on the threshold of Outnet London. The escalator debouches you right in front of the Now Building. And it’s an impressive sight. It’s gold. It’s four storeys high. It’s, needless to say, modern. It’s really more Los Angeles or Manhattan than London. You come up the escalator and right there in front of you is a huge, interactive, wrap-around screen. A wrap-around-screen in front of you, above you and flanking you. And what’s going on there, all day, is entertainment, free entertainment, educational entertainment, gob-smackingly beautiful entertainment. Music, digital art, you name it.
For the record, it’s a multi-use building. Up above is a hotel, a restaurant, an events space, a live music venue, two cocktail bars, offices, etc.
But back to the huge wrap-around screen, what’s currently showing are three exhibitions by American artist Maggie West. One of them is called Terra. Here’s the programme note. Terra takes you on a journey through a single night across our planet’s many diverse climates. From rocky desert terrain, to lush depths of a tropical rainforest, to a flowering meadow these surreal digital landscapes celebrate Earth’s extraordinary biodiversity. To create each scene, the artist combined time-lapse photography with colored light. Through West’s colorful lens, she captures real plants as they bloom and grow in each of the three scenes. The second section of the exhibition is Pools. It goes from exploring giant landscapes to finding inspiration in nature’s smallest pieces: grains of sand. Each video piece shows the process in which water is absorbed into sand from the beaches of Malibu, California. While watching water absorb into sand may sound underwhelming, the artist’s innovative use of coloured lighting and time-lapse photography enlivens the experience and takes the viewer on a mind-bending, kaleidoscopic journey.” Well, you get the idea. By my lights – if lights is the mot juste, and I think it is – by my lights, that’s worth seeing. That’s worth getting to Tottenham Court Road Tube Stop a bit early for the Beatles and Rock ’n’ Roll London walks. And there’s just one more thing. You’re going to be on your feet for a couple hours on those walks. Well, Outernet London to the rescue, they’ve got eight or nine comfy modern settees where you can sit down, get off your feet, watch the show, get rested up before you head back over to join the walk. What’s not to like about that?
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 Museum of London archaeologist, historians,
university professors (one of them a distinguished Cambridge University paleontologist); it includes
criminal defence lawyers,
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.
And that’s by way of saying, Good walking and Good Londoning
one and all. See ya next time.