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. Whether far and wide. Or near and here.
It’s Monday, September 15th, 2025.
Quite a busy London Walks day here on this far-flung London Walks outpost. On the South China Sea. Just finished the mid-month London Walks Newsletter. It’ll go out in a few hours. Go out to its 20,000 subscribers. We do two newsletters a month. So that’s 24 a year. And it’s a continual source of amazement to me that there’s pretty much always something new in the newsletter. It’s a very good reason for subscribing to it. If you’re interested in London, that is. And who isn’t? And interested in what London Walks and London Walks guides are getting up to in the city they know better than anyone else. The greatest city on earth. It’s always a source of amazement to me that newsletter after newsletter, month after month there’s stuff that’s genuinely new in that little publication. I don’t know why I’m surprised – I shouldn’t be after all this time – I know full well how talented and creative this team of guides is, so exciting new walks, it’s what I should come to expect. But the Wow! factor, it never abates. And it certainly never gets old. So this issue of the newsletter, not just one new walk. Not just two. Not just three. But something like a half dozen. All of them really special. But one of them is spectacularly primus interpares. If this were baseball it’d be a walk-off ninth inning grandslam homerun in the seventh game of the World Series. And, yes, this is a teaser. I’m not going to say any more. You want to find out what’s awed me – and the word’s not too strong – you’ll have to quickly sign up for the newsletter. Or make related enquiries.
Ok, moving on. Today’s stop at the London Calling Book Club Corner. What London Walks guides are reading.
Stepping up for the second time this week is Citlali. Citlali of Harry Potter and Jack the Ripper and Disastrous London fame. Here’s the other book Citlali’s had a go at of late. She says, “I’m also about to finish Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams. It’s set in Southeast London, particularly Brixton and Peckham, where I live. And deals with the challenges of daily racist micro-aggressions as well as giving a very honest and colourful portrayal of the local Caribbean community.”
Many many thanks, Citlali. Another London author who wasn’t on my radar screen but now is.
Ok, main event. Tomorrow, the 16th, is an important day in the Malaysian calendar. So I’m readying a piece on Malaysia on Thames to mark the day.
Today, I’m making a withdrawal from the bank. Dan Parry, one of the brightest stars in the London Walks constellation, was guiding the Ripper a while back. Just for fun I grabbed a chunk of it. Well, more than for fun really. The point here is that some people book a private walk. They book it by the subject of the walk. There are others who book guide first, walk second. They ring up and they say, “we want Shaughan for or we want Luisa for or we want Stewart Purvis CBE for or we want Adam for and so on. They’ve been with that guide before. They know how good he or she is. And they single the guide out. We want this walk and we want it to be guided by. Dan’s one of those guides who’s developed a following. But the thing is he’s best known for his London Spycraft Walks. He – along with Stewart Purvis CBE up in Hampstead – is our resident expert on espionage. The thing is, you’re a world-class expert in a certain field there’s always a danger of being typecast. The point is that a great guide is a great guide whatever he turns his hand to. So Dan Parry’s an expert on London spycraft and espionage, but he can do the business whatever he turns his hand to.
So, here you go, here’s Dan guiding the Ripper Walk. Just a taster, a sample. And of course entirely appropriate because this is Ripper season.
Here’s Dan. Permit me to enjoin you to “Enjoy!”As waiters are wont to say these days.”
[Extract from Dan’s Ripper Walk follows]
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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.