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.
It’s Tuesday, August 19th, 2025.
Shall we get started? Right, cue the London Calling Book Club Corner. This one you’re going hear directly from the guide rather than my mediating. The guide is Adam. Year in and year out Adam’s the MVP – the Most Valuable Player. Translation: the best guide in London. What’s that based on? I’ll tell you what it’s based on. It’s based on the hundreds of rave reviews he attracts. He’s like Joe Dimaggio. Every London Walk Adam does he gets at least one base hit. Sometimes more. Sometimes he goes three for three. Or even four for four. I.E., let that sink in, every walk Adam does gets rave reviews. They roll in like waves, like surf. And for a bit of fun, how about this. I teased Adam about this instanta. And that’s by way of saying, out of the hundreds of rave reviews Adam’s received, arguably the best one ever came ashore yesterday. And here’s the thing, Adam’s music walks aren’t just deservedly popular. They’re legendary. But this was a review of his ghost walk.
And does praise come any higher than this? I don’t think so. Out of that mighty chorus of rave reviews, here’s a 13-year-old hitting the highest C ever. It’s in a review written by her mum, Lisa Willis. Here’s mum Lisa, in effect introducing said teenage daughter.
“The Ghosts of the Old City was a brilliant walk. Adam was an enigmatic and thoroughly engaging storyteller. We saw some great nooks and crannies of London and were told some really quite gruesome tales. But that’s exactly what we had been hoping for! My 13-year-old commented that she wished Adam was her history teacher and she’s not easy to please, so well done Adam! The 2 hours flew by. Adam’s walk was the highlight of our weekend in London.”
Thirteen-year-olds – they’re the toughest audience of all. So that’s one for the trophy case.
Now here’s what Adam’s been reading. And there’s a second reason we’re putting the spotlight on him today. Lisa Willis’s review is one very good reason. But another one is the Bank Holiday Weekend is coming up. For which, Adam’s laying on for you, a Music Tours Festival. Six music history tours in four days. What’s not to like.
Here’s Adam.
[Adam’s short piece on what he’s been reading follows]
Thanks, Adam. Sounds a good ‘un.
Ok, moving on. Bell rang this morning. Round one. Danced out of my corner. Floating like a butterfly. Feinting and jabbing. Ready to go at it with London blue plaques.
And then, a tap on my shoulder, a voice at my ear. “Aren’t you forgetting something, David? Don’t you have a loose end to tidy up? What about the ‘Westminster Abbey of the City?’ Voice was right. I was forgetting something. Yesterday was St Helena’s Day and it was the centrepiece of yesterday’s London Calling podcast.
But leaving it at that, not good enough. I was forgetting something. St Helen’s Bishopsgate in London. That’s a big forget. After all, St Helen’s Bishopsgate is, yes, known as the Westminster Abbey of the City. For the very good reason that it’s got more monuments than any other London church. Not to mention several very fine, very early brasses. Let alone some wonderful stories. Wonderful stories starting with sexy St Helen’s. Now hold on to your horses. Be patient. A bit of history first. And keeping in mind what we found out yesterday about St Helena’s 4th-century pilgrimage to the Holy Land. I’ll refresh your memory. Local Christians in Jerusalem took her to a spot they venerated. Told her this is where it happened. Problem was there was a pagan temple on the spot. Empress Helena – she wasn’t a saint yet – barked out an order. “Tear that temple down and get digging.” That’s happened. And they made a helluva find didn’t they. They found the true cross. And Jesus’s tomb. The upshot of which was canonisation for the Empress, and relics becoming a very big deal throughout Christendom, and of course the church of the Holy Sepulchre being erected on the spot.
Now, that was Jerusalem. Jerusalem 1700 years ago.
A dozen years or so before that Emperor Constantine was converted to Christianity. That happened just outside Rome. So we’ve got the Emperor and his mum having a pretty eventful decade about 1700 years ago.
Fast forward a millennium or so. And get thee to London.
We think 1204 if you want to be precise. Cue the entrance of a rich man’s son. The rich man was William the Goldsmith. His son was William Jr. Ever mindful of the big sleep, as they were back then, and how important it was to get a good room at the inn, spend eternity on the right side of the pearly gates rather than in the other place – and how good deeds in the here and now, in this life, could grease the skids, so to speak, get your passport stamped and get you waved through the pearly gates when the time came – well aware of how good deeds were like chits that got those gates open fast tracked you into Heaven, William Jr. did a good deed. He founded a Convent on the spot. And dedicated it to St Helena. Why this spot? Well, think of nearby Bishopsgate. It was London’s front door. Well, the front door for anyone coming down from Cambridge, York, Scotland. Traders, pilgrims, wool merchants, scholars – they all streamed in through Bishopsgate. Plonk a church right there and you’ve got a house of prayer and a parish community ready to serve the steady flow of people. And everything else was right as well. Land was available. It was close to the commercial heart of London but not smack in the noisy middle of it. Perfect for a community of nuns – a little tucked away but still plugged into London’s lifeblood.
And that brings us to sexy St Helen’s. A Benedictine nunnery, that’s what’s here. And, well, girls will be girls. Even if they’re nuns. Maybe especially if they’re nuns. So come 1385 it looks like things have gotten out of hand. The nuns get carpeted. They get carpeted – scolded – for the number of little dogs kept by their prioress. One shudders to think – were they lap dogs? And they were scolded for kissing secular persons. And for wearing ostentatious veils. I’m not sure the crackdown was all that successful. Because in 1439 dancing and revelling were forbidden. It does sound like there were good times to be had with the nuns there at St Helen.
And you know something, there’s good times to be had there 600 years later. Today.
Not least, a sight for sore eyes. St Helen is a knockout. A time-traveller’s dream parked right in the steel and glass jungle of the City. You’ve got the Suppository – that’s what I called it, everybody else calls it the Gherkin – you’ve got the Gherkin puffing its chest out next door. And across the way there’s Lloyd’s flashing its steel ribs. And whoa, here – tucked in like an old lady at a rave – is St Helen’s.
And here’s the thing: step through those doors and you’re not just in another London church. You’re in Shakespeare’s parish church. That’s right – when the Bard was living there in Bishopsgate in the 1590s, this was his Sunday spot. Same pews, same stones, same light slanting in. Imagine: the bloke who gave us Hamlet probably scowling at the sermon, his mind wandering to blank verse.
Ok, we’re inside. You seeing what I’m seeing? That’s odd isn’t it. Two naves. Side by side. Looks like the church has split down the middle. Which is more or less what happened: the parishioners on one side, the Benedictine nuns on the other. A kind of ecclesiastical duplex. Gossip and trade deals this side, prayers and chants that side. You can almost hear the choir of habits rustling.
And you know something, the nuns are still there, still with us. They’ve left their mark. During the Great Plague, the parish liked to boast that their prayers held the pestilence at bay. Bit of a stretch, but then again, stories have a way of sticking to stones. And speaking of sticky – there’s even a whisper of a ghostly nun who still glides about the north nave. No chains, no moaning – just the soft swish of a wimple. London’s most evanescent, most discreet ghost.
Ok, now back to the living. This was the parish of merchants, grandees, movers and shakers. They flocked to St Helen’s, queued up to leave their mark in marble, brass, and Latin bombast. Which is why it’s called the “Westminster Abbey of the City.” Want a Who’s Who of Elizabethan London? It’s chiselled all over these walls.
Sir Thomas Gresham, for example. The City’s Bill Gates. Founder of the Royal Exchange, financier to Elizabeth I, the bloke who gave us “my word is my bond.” His memorial brass is here, just a few paces from the modern trading floors of Bloomberg and the Bank of England. No question about it, his spirit still stalks the Square Mile.
Or Sir John Crosby. There’s his bust, just over there. He built Crosby Hall – just down the lane. That was a big deal. An even bigger deal was playing host to none other than Richard III. Yes, that Richard III. Shakespeare gave him his “winter of discontent” speech in Crosby Hall. Which means the neighbourhood doubled as both palace and stage-set.
And how’s about a proper Elizabethan caper. Crosby Hall again. Behold Sir John Spencer’s daughter, Catherine. Catherine Spencer was the richest heiress in England. She was kept under lock and key by her stern father. She was one unhappy young woman. Because she was in love with Lord Compton. You can guess the sequel but not the particulars. The general principle is, where there’s a will. Or, as they say, Love conquers all. Lord Compton smuggled Catherine out in a bread basket. A giant bread basket. Imagine the kitchen boys huffing and puffing as they carried out what they thought was a mega-loaf but turned out to be their mistress. And where did the two lovers get married? Why St Helen’s of course. London’s original Uber Eats delivery.
The church itself is a survivor. The Great Fire of 1666? Came within a whisker but St Helen’s walked away unsinged. The Blitz? The Luftwaffe flattened everything around here – Crosby Hall’s remains were carted off to Chelsea – but St Helen’s? Just a few cracked windows. As if those medieval nuns had left an invisible shield hanging over the place.
Ok, so when are you going to see it? Now look, I’m obviously not a disinterested party but surely good advice is good advice wherever it comes from. That’s by way of saying, we’ve got three walks that take in St Helen. The Ancient City at Night, the Heart of the City and Lisa’s East India Company Walk. And here’s the thing, there’s no rote learning at London Walks. London Walks guides don’t memorise a script. Every guide will make it their own. Just as the same scene painted by three different artists – you’re going to get three very different paintings. Hand on heart here. It’s something I love about London Walks. We hear it all the time. It can be three different walks that have one or two points in common but the treatment of the points in common will vary from guide to guide. We even hear that about the same walk. For example, “I went on the Old Westminster with Shaughan and yours and his are significantly different. His emphases, some of his point outs, etc.” By way of illustration here, Lisa Honan, the distinguished former diplomat who guides the East India Company Walk will, amongst other things, make the point that six of the founders of the East India Company are buried at St Helen’s. And that indeed, the historically important island St Helena – Lisa was the Governor of St Helena – is named after St Helen’s, our London Church. St Helena was where Napoleon breathed his last, so for my part, thanks to Lisa’s walk, every time I go to St Helen it’s double vision time. Out of the corner of my eye I always see the Little Corporal, all glowering mistrust, peering at us from around the corner.
Ok, let’s take our leave of St Helen, Bishopsgate. Our first impression is also our last impression. And I’d say our strongest impression. Can be summed up in one word: contrast.
Outside: swaggering towers, strutting steel and glass. Inside: human scale, warmth, intimacy. It’s like stepping through the wardrobe into Narnia. No spire, no swagger – just a church that knows exactly who it is and has nothing to prove.
So there you have it. St Helen’s Bishopsgate – two hearts under one roof, one for nuns, one for merchants. The Westminster Abbey of the City. The church that staged a bread-basket romance, cradled Shakespeare’s Sundays, watched Richard III plot next door, saw off plague, fire, and bombs, and still sits there quietly, in the shadow of the Gherkin, waiting for you to open the door.
Go on. Don’t just walk past. Step in. Take a look around. You’ll be glad you did.
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.