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 Tuesday, June 3rd, 2025.
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We’re only about 60 hours into the month of June so let’s do June before any more June days tumbleweed into the past.
Name first. Best guess is the month of June takes its name from the Roman Goddess, Juno.
And one very fine Goddess she was. Juno was the Goddess of marriage, childbirth and women.
And she was the Queen of the Roman Gods. She was the wife of the head honcho, the big guy, Jupiter, the chief of the Roman Gods. And now – steady as she goes – because it gets a big dodgy here. Juno wasn’t just Jupiter’s wife. She was also his sister.
Goddess of marriage, childbirth and women. You’d think that would be enough in her portfolio. But not so. This was one busy Goddess. Juno was also the protector – the patron Goddess – of Rome. And for good measure, she was the patron of national finances.
She was noted for her stately beauty and fits of jealous rage.
Well, we get June from Juno. But what about Juno? Where’s that name come from? What’s it mean? Well, tracking back and making connections, the word, the name June is cognate with – this will come as no surprise – it’s cognate with the word junior. And indeed the word juvenile. Which in turn comes from the Latin word for young. The which Latin word, etymologically means “one who possesses vital force.” And sure enough, we’re in Laura Spinney territory here, that Latin word has a Proto-Indo-European root, yeu (which became junior and june and juvenile)…and that proto-Indo-European root means “vital force, youthful vigor.” Well, I’d say the month is aptly named. June is halfway through the year, but considering what it gets up to – the profusion and beauty of its flowers and leaves – the lushness of its green grass – June is the incarnation of vital force and youthful vigor. In short, June may be in the middle of the year but it certainly feels young. Looks young, looks fresh. Has the effortless perfect beauty of youth.
And thinking about Juno’s portfolio – marriage and childbirth – it’s patently obvious that they’re part and parcel of vital force and youthful vigor. Personal note here, I speak as a father, one of whose youngsters is getting married next week.
Now back to our Roman goddess Juno. You have to like her style. Juno’s sacred animal was the peacock.
The gemstone of Juno’s month – the gemstone of June is pearl. Or moonstone. Take your pick.
And June’s flower is the rose or honeysuckle. Again, take your pick. Make your bouquet as you please. And keep that rose in mind. Because I’m going to double back to it in just a minute.
Ok, now who’s for a traditional English rhyme about June and roses and marriage and the honeymoon?
Goes like this:
Married in the month of roses – June,
Life will be one long honeymoon.
Sometimes I feel like a conductor. Or maybe a conductor who doubles as a soloist. In this case, a soloist “singing of summer in full-throated ease.” Yes, that’s June. And, yes, it’s Keats’ line and he’s describing the Nightingale. But if I’m the conductor and London Calling is a Chamber Orchestra, well, maybe the strings, in this instance, are that traditional English rhyme. And for the woodwinds, I’m bringing them up now, they’re what the Victorians said about the month of June. This from the 1864 edition of Chambers Book of Days.
“June has now come, bending beneath her weight of roses, to ornament the halls and bowers which summer has hung with green. For this is the Month of Roses, and their beauty and fragrance conjure up again many in poetical creation which Memory had buried…This is the season to wander into the fields and woods, with a volume of sterling poetry for companionship, and compare the descriptive passages with the objects that lie around. We never enjoy reading portions of Spenser’s Faery Queen so much as when among the great green trees in summer.”
Sounds all right doesn’t it. Makes me want to get my copy of Spenser and head for a fine old tree in this forest. Cue the refrain I first made about London a few days ago: this place has so many trees it’s ecologically classified as a forest.
Now about those roses.
Some poetry first. Robert Burns’ A Red, Red Rose.
O my love’s like a red, red rose
That’s newly sprung in June:
O my love’s like the melodie
That’s sweetly played in tune.
Roses, glorious roses are at their very best in June.
And the red rose is of course the symbol of love – there’s that SNAP! connection – Juno, marriage, childbirth. But it’s also the symbol of England. And of St George, the patron saint of England. And for that matter, of Lancashire. And the Labour Party.
And here’s some London Walks news for you. There’s a subset of our walks that are about to be marked – it’s going to be their symbol – a subset of walks that are about to be marked, each and every one of them, with a red rose.
Can you guess which ones?
That’s right. The half dozen or so Spy and espionage walks. For the very good reason that roses are also a symbol of secrecy.
For starters, that phrase sub rosa. The phrase literally means under the rose. And sure enough under the rose denotes secrecy or confidentiality. Once again, back, back, back we go to the classical world, to ancient Greek and Roman mythology.
Roses were given to gods of silence to ensure secrets were kept. In ancient Rome roses were hung from ceilings in council chambers to symbolize that the discussions held there would remain secret.
And sub rosa is a hardy annual – it’s had no end of staying power. Think of roses being used on confessionals to indicate confidentiality. And now roses – and what they betoken – are going to flag up, identify a bouquet, shall we say, of very special London Walks. And rightly so, secrecy – Top Secret, Classified, For Your Eyes Only – being the stock-in-trade, the modus operandi – of spies and spycatchers.
Roses, spies, Roman goddesses, peacocks, poetry, it’s a rich repast. And for a petit four, let me serve this one up. Fresh out of the oven of June 3rd.
One June 3rd, 1964 – exactly sixty one years ago today – one American sent the following letter to another American. And they were both in London, so this one’s right down the pike of this podcast. The great poet T.S. Eliot wrote to Groucho Marx to say, ‘The picture of you in the newspaper saying that, amongst other reasons, you have come to London to see me has greatly enhanced my credit line in the neighbourhood, and particularly with the greengrocer across the street.”
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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.
And that’s by way of saying, Good walking and Good Londoning one and all. See ya next time.