London calling.
London Walks connecting.
This… is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets ahead.
Story time. History time.
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A very good evening to you, London Walkers. Far and wide and near and close.
It’s Thursday, June 26th, 2025.
Another grab-bag for you today. Just a couple of odds and ends.
But fun odds and ends. And not just fun. Revelatory, really. In a modest way.
Starting with, of all things, estate agents’ signs.
In the old days – not so very long ago – the first sign to go up would read For Sale. Accompanied of course by the name and contact details of the estate agent in question. And then when the property was sold, the For Sale sign would come down, to be replaced by one that just said SOLD. Accompanied by, of course, the estate agent’s particulars. That second sign was, needless to say, purely for the benefit of the estate agent. The seller had sold. The buyer had bought. It was a done deal. With regard to that London house or flat there was nothing in it for any of the other parties – vendor, buyer, prospective buyers – to have a Sold sign in front of the property. It was just a couple of weeks pretty good advertising for the estate agent in question. It got their name out there and said, loud and clear, we got the job done.
Anyway, to cut to the chase, Sold signs in London are now so antediluvian, so passé.
They’ve been replaced by signs that read, “I’m taken.”
And hats off to the advertising whiz kid who came up with that slogan.
It’s so good – so clever – you can do a bit of lit crit with it.
Analyse it like a felicitous line of poetry.
Let’s lit crit it. Let’s go there.
First of all, what’s wrong with Sold? It does tell it like it is.
But it’s wham bam thank you ma’am. There’s no foreplay, no style. It’s not a class act. It’s charmless. Plain to the point of being crass. It thuds. It’s like having a door slammed in your face. It’s dull and stale. There’s no allowance for anything else. It’s alpha and omega is that most prosing of words: commercial.
Whereas “I’m taken”…
Makes the running, doesn’t it. To use that fancy word, it anthropomorphises the property. Turns it into a person. Gives it a personality. And a back story. It’s a little bit flirty, a little bit shy, maybe slightly demure. And pretty pleased with itself. And the sign I saw was all dolled up. It was a rosy, blushing pink.
“I’m taken.” That’s got a voice. And it’s an engaging voice. It’s soft-spoken. And I’d say it’s a bit of a tease, a little bit seductive. Instead of an arid slamming shut, closing down…”I’m taken” opens up. It’s breathy, slightly perfumed, knowing, it says, amongst other things, “I’m desirable…somebody came over, got to know me, liked what they found and, well, one thing led to another. So, yes, you can look and wonder. But you can’t touch. Better luck next time.
What else?
Well, how about this day itself. June 26th. In the church it’s John and Paul’s Day. John and Paul were Roman martyrs. Well, Roman martyrs, they were a dime a dozen. What sets John and Paul’s Day apart is what happened on their day in 1284 in the north German town of Hamlyn. Or Hameln, take your Pick. In short, today, June 26th, is Pied Piper Day. The story’s deservedly well known. Hamlyn had a problem with rats. A youth clad in all manner of colours and with with a silver pipe of strange shape pitched up and told the townspeople I can take care of that for you. But it’ll cost you a 1,000 guilders. The good burghers of Hamlyn said, you got a deal. The Pied Piper kept his end of the bargain. Piped the rats out of town and into the river, where they drowned. The good burghers of Hamlyn didn’t keep their end. They reneged on their promise to pay the youth for his rat catching services. Big mistake. Not best pleased, the pied piper paid a return visit to Hamlyn. As the legend goes, he entered by the bridge and the Weser gate with that silver pipe of strange shape. He began to play his pipe throughout the town and all the children who heard that pipe, some 130 in number, followed him out of the East Gate, and vanished and departed…and they were never seen again.
All right, so now how about London. It’s right about this time in 1842. And one of our greatest poets, Robert Browning, is playing his own pipe. His poetry pipe. He’s bringing out his book of verse Dramatic Lyrics. In it, maybe his greatest poem of all My Last Duchess. And keeping My Last Duchess company, Browning’s version of the The Pied Piper of Hamelin.
Let’s just do a bit of it. Maybe one day I’ll do all 300 lines. But for today, let’s just do the the Rats bit.
Hamelin Town’s in Brunswick,
By famous Hanover city;
The river Weser, deep and wide,
Washes its wall on the southern side;
A pleasanter spot you never spied;
But, when begins my ditty,
Almost five hundred years ago,
To see the townsfolk suffer so
From vermin, was a pity.
Rats!
They fought the dogs, and killed the cats,
And bit the babies in the cradles,
And eat the cheeses out of the vats,
And licked the soup from the cooks’ own ladles,
Split open the kegs of salted sprats,
Made nests inside men’s Sunday hats,
And even spoiled the women’s chats
By drowning their speaking
With shrieking and squeaking
In fifty different sharps and flats.
Well, you get the idea.
And some London context for you. What was going on in London on June 26th, 1842, Pied Piper Day, and Robert Browning Day.
Here’s what London was serving up for Robert Browning and other Londoners on Pied Piper Day in 1842.
First item couldn’t be more appropriate.
Say Hello to the Climbing Boys Act. A brand new law which prohibited any young child climbing chimneys. Henceforth no child under the age of 16 years was to be apprenticed to a chimney-sweeper.
And there would have been a lot of excitement – and I dare say a lot of spectators – at the wharf in Abingdon Street in Westminster. Because the immense block of Granton stone for the column of statue of the immortal Nelson had landed at that wharf in Abingdon Street. 22 horses conveyed all 30 tonnes of it through Parliament Street and Whitehall to Trafalgar Square.
That was London heft. All in day’s work. And that evening, to balance things out, some London loft. The most famous aeronaut of the 19th century, Charles Green, ascended in his balloon, the Albion, from the gardens of the Royal Standard Tavern Albert Saloon, at Hoxton. It was Charles Green’s 200th ascent. Something to whet the appetite for what the aeronaut was promising to do the next time he took to the skies: cross the Atlantic Ocean. Drop in on America. For the record, it didn’t happen. Also for the record, I’m thinking I might do a piece on Charles Green. He was one interesting Londoner. The greatest aeronaut of the 19th century. Aeronaut. Words. You know, in The Wind in the Willows Ratty says “there is nothing – absolutely nothing – half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.” I feel about words the way Ratty feels about boats. There is nothing – absolutely nothing – half so much worth doing as simply messing about with words.
So, yes, I wanted to find out when the word aeronaut first pitched up. Turns out it was 1784. And it’s a hybrid word. aero for air and naut from the Latin nautique meaning “of ships”. Aeronaut meant balloonist. The word literally meant sailing a ship in the air. Not bad but not quite as wonderful as astronaut. Astronaut, the word, has been around now for coming up to 150 years. And the derivation is obvious. And wonderful. Astro for star and naut for ship. An astronaut is a star sailer.
Is it too much of a stretch to say we’ve done some star sailing today. From estate agent signs in West Hampstead on this day, June 26th, 2025 to 4th-century Roman martyrs whose 4th-century martyrdom got them a day – this day – and got them sainted to the Pied Piper in 1284 to Robert Browning and chimney sweeps and Nelson’s column and an aeronaut on June 26th, 1842.
How does Puck put it in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, “I’ll put a girdle round about the earth in 40 minutes. We’ve done it in about 15 minutes. That’s some pretty good star sailing. And credit where credit’s due. It’s London that made it happen.
See you tomorrow.
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.
And that’s by way of saying, Good walking and Good Londoning one and all. See ya next time.