London calling.
London Walks connecting.
This… is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets ahead.
Story time. History time.
A very good day to you London Walkers. Wherever you are.
It’s Wednesday, September 10th, 2025.
As always, we’re going to get underway by making a quick stop at the London Calling Book Club Corner. Where there’s an aperatif waiting for us. An aperatif served up today by ace Blue Badge Guide Fabrizio, who wows one and all on our Sunday afternoon Street Art Walk. The aperatif, needless to say, being Fabrizio’s book choice. And no question about it, Fabrizio’s right on the money with this one. He’s reading Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway, not least, because this is the 100th anniversary of its publication. But principally because it’s one of the great London novels. And, yes, unerringly mixing my metaphors, with this one Fabrizio’s singing from the same hymn sheet as me, David, because I’m the guide who created and guides our Mrs Dalloway’s London Walk.
Ok, that’s our aperitif. Main course now. And the time has come for me to step back into the main kitchen. This past week’s been something of a culinary festival. I’ve served up dish after dish about The Ultimate London Walk
Which was absolutely called for. 57 years on London Walks achieving its entelechy – realising its full potential – that’s an occasion and an accomplishment that has to be marked. I’m talking, needless to say, about the 40-mile-long walk all the way across London, north to south, from Hertfordshire to Surrey. As most of you know, The Ultimate London Walk is guide Charlie’s magnum opus, his Sistine Chapel ceiling. So mark it we did – with podcast after podcast. But now we’re back in the main kitchen, back to more traditional fare. And I think today we’ll start a new, occasional series. Working title: Decoding London. (Borrowed from Sam’s Walk by the same name.)
The series will unpack, look at and explicate various and sundry London signs and symbols.
We’re going to start with that London classic: the griffin.
Or to go full monty with it, the London griffin, the red cross and the short sword.
Here we go. Here’s our first thrust and slash.
London’s Griffin, the Red Cross, and the Short Sword
You’ve seen them. Everyone who walks through the Square Mile has seen them. But most people don’t see them. Don’t clock them. Those statues standing guard at the City’s borders. Beady-eyed, wings raised, claws gripping a shield. They’re not lions. Not dragons. They’re griffins. Silver griffins, with a white shield splashed with a red cross and a stubby little sword poking up in the corner.
It’s the City of London’s coat of arms, turned into three dimensions. A riddle in stone and metal. And like everything in London, it yields its meaning if you know how to prise it open.
First: the Griffin
So, what is a griffin? It’s a creature of the imagination, stitched together in the ancient Near East. Part lion, part eagle. The king of beasts married to the king of birds. The earliest griffins show up on Persian carvings and Greek vases nearly 3,000 years ago. They were guardians – fierce, watchful, hybrid sentinels. Lions are power on land. Eagles are power in the sky. Put them together and you’ve got the ultimate “don’t mess with me” gatekeeper.
The word itself comes from the Latin gryphus, which comes from the Greek gryps – meaning “curved” or “hook-nosed.” Think of that sharp eagle beak. Hooked, deadly, ready to rip. So the City’s choice of guardian isn’t random. It’s ancient branding. A griffin says: this place is strong, alert, untouchable.
Where to Find Them
Look for them at the City limits. Blackfriars Bridge. Holborn Viaduct. Moorgate. Embankment. A dozen or so in total. Each griffin rears up on its hind legs, wings flared, gripping that famous shield. They were erected in the 1960s, but the design harks back to Victorian originals that once stood at Temple Bar, the traditional western gate of the City.
So whenever you see a griffin with a shield, you’re crossing a frontier. Stepping from Westminster into the Square Mile. From royal London into merchant London. From the Crown’s city into the City’s city.
The Shield and the Cross
Now the shield. White background. Bold red cross. That’s the Cross of St George.
Why red on white? Well, here’s the story. St George was a Roman soldier turned Christian martyr. The legend of him slaying a dragon came later, but the cross was his emblem. Crusaders in the 12th century wore it on their tunics – a red cross on white, a soldier’s badge of holy war.
By the 13th century, England had adopted it as its national flag. The City of London, proud, rich, independent, nailed its colours to that mast. So when you see that red cross on white, you’re looking at centuries of Englishness, tied to a saint who never set foot in England.
And why St George? Because he was the perfect knight. A soldier saint, fearless, dragon-slaying, Christ-defending. His cult spread like wildfire. Edward III made him patron of the Order of the Garter. Shakespeare has Henry V cry, “God for Harry, England, and Saint George!” And the City – ever eager to show its loyalty to the realm – put George’s red cross on its arms.
And the Sword?
But hang on. There’s something else. Look again at that shield. Top left corner, poking up at an angle – a short sword. A gladius.
Whose sword? St George’s? No. That’s the sword of St Paul.
Paul, the Roman citizen turned Christian apostle, was executed in Rome around AD 64. Because he was a citizen, he wasn’t crucified. He was decapitated. With a Roman short sword. That’s why his symbol is always a sword. And that’s the sword you see on London’s shield.
Why St Paul? Because St Paul’s Cathedral has been the City’s great church for 1,400 years. First Saxon, then Norman, then Wren’s masterpiece. St Paul is London’s patron saint. And the City honours him by planting his sword on its coat of arms, right alongside St George’s cross.
Rome, Martyrdom, and the Vatican
Was that sword the one that beheaded St Peter? No. Different story. Peter was crucified – tradition says upside down – in the Circus of Nero, where St Peter’s Basilica now stands. That’s why the Vatican is there today: it’s built over Peter’s tomb. Paul, by contrast, was killed outside the city walls on the Ostian Way. His burial place became the Basilica of St Paul Outside the Walls.
So the City’s sword isn’t Peter’s, it’s Paul’s. A nod not to Rome’s Pope but to London’s own cathedral, its own spiritual heart.
The Whole Picture
So let’s put it all together. The griffins are the guardians. Ancient hybrid beasts, eagle-eyed and lion-hearted, saying “This is sacred ground, don’t trifle with it.” The shield is the Cross of St George, linking London to England’s patron saint and the crusading heritage of the Middle Ages. And the little sword is St Paul’s – reminding you that this is his city, with his great cathedral at its core.
It’s a perfect emblem for London’s Square Mile: fierce independence (the griffin), loyalty to England (St George’s cross), and devotion to its patron saint (St Paul’s sword).
The sculptor of the post-war griffins was A.R. Broadbent, working from Victorian originals. The most photographed griffin is the one on Fleet Street, marking the spot of the old Temple Bar. Charles Dickens wrote about that very frontier – stepping from the royal courts into the humming hive of the City.
And there’s a nice circularity: St George, St Paul, griffins – all guardians, in their way. The soldier saint, the preacher apostle, the lion-eagle sentinel. The City of London, always guarding its privileges, its wealth, its independence.
Next Time You See One…
So next time you see one of those silver griffins, don’t just walk past. Look. That beak. Those wings. That white shield with its blood-red cross. That little sword glinting in the corner. It’s not just decoration. It’s a whole history lesson in a single emblem.
Ancient Greece, crusader battlefields, Roman martyrdoms, Wren’s cathedral, medieval merchants, Tudor pageantry, Hanoverian kings – all of it condensed into one coat of arms, one griffin.
London does that. It layers. It condenses. It takes the world and shrinks it into symbols you can walk past every day.
The griffin, the cross, the sword: London in a nutshell. Fierce, storied, and never just one thing.
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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.