London calling.
London Walks connecting.
This… is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets ahead.
Story time. History time.
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A very good morning to you, London Walkers. Wherever you are. It’s June 12th, 2025.
Gosh, I keep doing it. Missed the boat again. I was going to get in a plug for Ann’s upcoming Foodies Walk. But in the way of these things, it’s not upcoming. It’s upcame. Happened yesterday. Riddled with chagrin I’ve made a resolution not to let that happen again. Going to get there in plenty of time from here on out. Starting today. Ann does one Foodies’ London Walk a month. Diaries ready? The next one is on July 10th. And, needless to say, I was going to accompany the passing mention of Ann’s next foodies walk with a tasty bit of food lore. Which, after all, is in keeping with some of the territory she covers on that walk. Food is culture and history and quirkiness and the unexpected. Culture and history and quirkiness and the unexpected are food. That sort of thing. So here you go, is a little appetiser in the sidecar of Ann’s next Foodies’ London Walk. Bread. Our daily bread. The staff of life. Man cannot live by bread alone. Bread and circuses.
Ah, pause there. Bread and circuses. That’s not a bad descriptor for an Ann’s foodies London walk. They’re about food – our daily bread and history’s not-so-daily bread extraordinaire. Which is by way of saying, damn if they aren’t also a circus. The stories, the stuff Ann’s unearthed, what we get to see (in our mind’s eye)…get to see and taste (on our mind’s palate)…it’s an extravaganza, It’s Wow! after Wow! Well, I never! A Barnum and Brothers three-ring circus. You go to the circus you go home and tell your dear ones what you saw. You go on one of Ann’s Foodies’ London Walks you go home and pass the hamper, spread the delicious fun, tell ‘em – to their utter disbelief – some of the food wonders Ann bedazzled you with. In which connection, here’s my two cents’ worth. I learn from Gazur’s Feast of Folklore that in Shakespeare’s hometown – Stratford upon Avon – housewives regularly plunged a red hot poker in the water that was used in baking in order to “remove bitterness.”
And as long as we’re on the subject of bread, let’s think about yeast for a minute. Yeast has to be warmed up to reach its full potential and make the dough rise. So custom and practice in Hertfordshire was to put the yeast in a warm bed. Which was after all, the warmest place in the house. Especially if the baker got into bed with the yeast to help it along.
And if anybody had a premonition that death was stalking a household they’d bake bread to ward it off. The old wives’ tale was that the aroma bread baking in the oven gave off distracted evil spirits. They couldn’t concentrate. Couldn’t work their wickedness on whoever it was who was at death’s door.
That said, if the worst did happen and there was a corpse in the house, you had to lay off baking bread. Baking a few loaves when there was a corpse upstairs was asking for trouble. And if you were at a funeral and got the munchies and there was a piece of bread in your pocket, uh uh, whatever you do, don’t eat it. With good reason. Eating bread at a funeral was ill-advised because it would make your teeth hollow and fall from your skull.
Connections connection. Hollow teeth falling from your skull. And doctors offering their advice and counsel. How about that 19th-century professor of anatomy and physiology in Philadelphia, one Dr Henry Mcmurtie, who advised the youth of the city to steer clear of his profession. Dr Mcmurtie said, Boys, don’t study medicine. By the time you earn your bread you will have no teeth left to eat it with.
And then there was Moses ben Maimon, the Spanish-born 12th-century Jewish philosopher and physician. He knew what caused teeth to fall out. And it wasn’t eating bread at a funeral. Moses ben Maimon said, “He who immerses himself in sexual intercourse will be assailed by premature aging, his strength will wane, his eyes will weaken, and a bad odour will emit from his mouth and his armpits, his teeth will fall out and many other maladies will afflict him.
There, you’ve been warned. Better stick to masturbation. Its ill effects – hair growing on the palm of your hand and blindness – well, it’s the lesser of two evils isn’t it. Salon owners far and wide must be thinking, “we should be so lucky – we could offer palm hair styling.” But you couldn’t do it in the front room of the salon. Passersby would look through the window and gawk. “Oh, look, there’s the football coach in the chair getting a buzz cut for his palms. Well, I never.”
Ok, a bit of Thursday levity, a bit of silliness, a bit of fun. We’re going to get serious tomorrow. More Virginia Woolf and Mrs Dalloway. And what was going on on the world stage in 1923 when Mrs Dalloway went for her walk.
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.