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, wherever you are. It’s January 2nd, 2025. And we’re up and well away now, hitting our New Year stride. Fresh start, new year. No better time to get London squarely into focus. One way to do that is to remind ourselves that every city has a gender. Paris – beautiful, romantic Paris – is of course iridescently feminine. London’s a different cup of tea. London couldn’t be more butch. More masculine. That’s the case every which way you turn. Including the way its citizens are turned out. The word on the street – and in the salons – is that the English – and especially Londoners – are the only people in the world who dress the male of the species better than the female. That’s an observation that has to be handled with infinite care – with no end of tact – if you’re married to an English woman.
Anyway, the epicentre – well, the two epicentres – of all that are Savile Row and Jermyn Street. There are quiet hours of considerable pleasure to be derived from making your way along Jermyn Street, looking in those ineffably masculine shop windows, catching glimpses here and there of that exotic creature, the upper class English male, in full display. Bowlers and fedoras, tailored to perfection pin stripes, eye wateringly expensive umbrellas. To say nothing of ties and shoes that you just know spend a fair bit of their time furnishing the interior of a Rolls Royce.
And there’s one other very good reason for going to Jermyn Street. St. James’s Church. Christopher Wren’s only West End Church. It’s front – and its courtyard – are on Piccadilly. But we don’t need to be a purist about these things. Everything about St James’s Church is to be lost in admiration of. That courtyard, it’s a mini Borough Market. Every kind of ethnic street food is to be had there during the day. And inside, wonderful concerts. Both lunchtime and evening. And it’s Christopher Wren. And Grinling Gibbons, the greatest wood carver this country ever produced. And its colours – by colours I mean its history and the famous names associated with the church – its colours are second to none. And a final, and telling thought – one you almost certainly won’t have had – St. James’s Church is pretty much the only place along Piccadilly where it’s free to sit down.
And that brings us to what this podcast is all about. We need now to head down to St James’s Square. And back to January 2nd, 1684. Do our best to think what Henry Jermyn – who’s taking his last breaths – is thinking. Is thinking. Was thinking. I wheel out both tenses because at times like this I’m always put in mind of the last stanza of Emily Dickinson’s great poem, Because I Could Not Stop for Death.
Goes as follows:
Since then – ’tis Centuries – and yet
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses’ Heads
Were toward Eternity –
Yes, January 2nd, 1684, was the day for Henry Jermyn. The day he surmised the horses’ heads were toward Eternity.
I think about him every January 2nd. It’s a London thing to do. For several very good reasons. But my thoughts aren’t just with Henry Jermyn. Quoting Emily Dickinson again – no other poet can keep up with Emily Dickinson when it comes to writing about “the last Onset – when the King be witnessed in the Room” – quoting Emily Dickinson again,
“The Stillness in the Room
Was like the Stillness in the Air –
Between the Heaves of Storm”
And thinking about that moment there in St James’ Square, I’m also thinking about Henry Jermyn, dying unmarried. No immediate family. Just servants. And what about those servants? What were their thoughts? Here goes my job. Here goes the roof over my head. What will I do? What’s going to happen to me? The small change of history. Isn’t recorded. Doesn’t get noticed. Doesn’t get picked up.
But back to our principal, back to Henry Jermyn. As historical figures go, he is, on the face of it, second tier. But I’m not convinced he should be. Most of you won’t know this – for a long time I didn’t – but one of our greatest historians says Henry Jermyn was the founder of the West End of London. It’s commonly accepted that St James’s Square – where Henry Jermyn, 341 years ago today, is surmising the Horses’ heads are toward Eternity – it’s commonly accepted that St James’s Square is the beginning of the West End.
And there’s more. Henry Jermyn commissioned Christopher Wren to design St James’s Church. And that’s not all. In 1665 Henry Jermyn had greatly furthered Christopher Wren’s career by introducing him to the best builders in Paris.
He was also a key player in the Greenwich story. He supported the restoration and extension of the Queen’s House and the redevelopment of Greenwich Palace. And he brought André le Nôtre over from Paris to design Greenwich Park.
And that’s not forgetting where we started, Jermyn Street. It’s of course named for Henry Jermyn.
So who was this dying man? This man of considerable accomplishments. He was a courtier. And both a Londoner and a Home Counties man. Born in 1605 he was baptised at St Margaret Lothbury, in the City of London. He was to the manor born. His father was a courtier and a politician. Jermyn followed his father into royal service. And no question but he was a mover and shaker. He was a key player in the mission that negotiated – “negotiated”, interesting word, isn’t it, telling word – he helped to negotiate the marriage between Henrietta Maria of France of Charles I. He was very close to the Queen – her great favourite, as one commentator put it – he became her Lord Chamberlain and Treasurer, went into exile with her – broke the news of Charles I’s execution to the Queen. Her son, Charles II, made him the Earl of St Albans. And nobody really had a more illustrious career as a marriage broker: our man, Henry Jermyn, promoted the marriage of Charles II and Catherine of Braganza. Tot that up. That’s not just the marriage of a man and subsequently the marriage of his son. It’s two kings’ marriages. And it, the marriage of Charles II, was all part of a grand international strategy. A strategy Jermyn shared with Henrietta Maria. A marriage, a strategy aimed at bringing England and France into closer union.
So that’s our man, that’s Henry Jermyn. He’s not so second tier, after all, is he. And not in the least yesterday’s man, not in the least, “the guy’s history” in that ignorant American put down. Not when you take into account St James Piccadilly and the West End of London. “Nothing to do with me,” say my American compatriots. Not so, not so fast, Yanks. Turns out Charles II made Henry Jermyn the co-proprietor of the Northern Neck of Virginia. But the real savouring – the shiver up the spine stuff – is Henry Jermyn’s getting the ball rolling that brought us the West End of London. For services rendered, and monies raised for the royal cause – the payback was any number of gifts of land, including land there in St James’s, Westminster. And the game plan for the St James’s district – the centrepiece of which was St James’s Square, where the last onset is taking place for Henry Jermyn on this day – the game plan for the St James’ district was wide streets, including Jermyn Street. Wide streets lined with brick-built houses constructed specifically ‘for the conveniency of the Nobility and Gentry who were to attend upon his Majestie’s Person, and in Parliament.’
So much for the Stillness in the Room…like the Stillness in the Air…Between the Heaves of Storm. Rest in Peace, Henry Jermyn.
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.