London calling.
London Walks connecting.
This… is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets ahead.
Story time. History time.
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Top of the morning to you, London Walkers, one and all. It’s March 4th, 2025. You want a London anniversary, on this day, 350 years ago – March 4th, 1675 – King Charles II appointed John Flamstead the first Astronomer Royal. Fitting that, for our purposes today, because this podcast is by the Astronomer Royal of Jack the Ripper Walks, Richard Walker. And putting it that way is not much in the way of an exaggeration. The London Walks sky is bespangled with thousands of celestial objects. We call them reviews. Today in particular we’re all looking at one another with a wild surmise. Because a new planet has just swum into our ken. It’s a review of Richard Walker’s VIP, Small Group Guaranteed Jack the Ripper Walk. Written by a Jack the Ripper Walk connoisseur. The general consensus is it’s the finest review in the London Walks firmament. That said, Richard’s podcast today isn’t about Jack the Ripper. It’s about institutions that – to quote Richard –“create poverty and wage war on nature.”
It’s a fascinating listen. It’s what a history lesson should be. And I hasten to add, another reminder of why London Walks has a following, why people who know go with London Walks.
It’s because of the guides. Guides like Richard Walker. These are people of real substance. Where else but at London Walks are you going to meet a Jack the Ripper Walk guide who can explain the 17th-century Dutch financial system to you and why it was important. And still matters. A Jack the Ripper Walk guide who invites you to meet the great Victorian prime minister Benjamin Disraeli and hear him out about how the Dutch financial system led to the degradation of a foetid and burdened multitude. Indeed, led to our world. Henry Ford once foolishly said, “history is bunk.” He couldn’t have been more wrong about that. History is hugely important. The past shaped the present. You can’t understand the present unless you know something about the past. Which you’re about to.
Here’s Richard.
[Richard Walker’s commentary on ‘the Dutch financial system’follows]
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.