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 evening to you, London Walkers. Wherever you are.
It’s August 7th, 2025.
You know, just living in London – ordinary, every day life in London – it’s a little bit like panning for gold.
Maybe the best ever panning for gold. Best ever because you don’t have to go to any trouble. London does it for you. And because the stream called London is extremely rich in gold deposits. Every day you make great finds. London bestows its riches on you.
As metaphors go, panning for gold can hardly be improved on. Here’s why. Let’s start by reviewing the key principles of panning for gold. First, density difference. Gold is seven times heavier than other rocks. Its high density is the fundamental principle behind gold panning. And, well, London gold is the genuine article. It’s the very definition of high density.
Second, water as a medium. Water is crucial for separating the materials and allowing the heavier gold to settle to the bottom. Well, that’s London isn’t it. London – daily life in London – it’s a fast-moving, richly endowed stream.
Third, gentle agitation and washing. The shaking and washing motion must be controlled to effectively separate the materials without losing the gold. I’d say the gentle agitation and washing is simply a matter of being receptive, spotting those specks of gold when they come your way. As they always do.
If you’re sentient, friendly, open, interested, courteous, good-humoured – and polite, good manners go a long way in London – well, the specks of gold will practically seek you out.
Happened to me today. This sort of gold, it’s like sunlight spilling through the trees. Ok, curtain up on three golden London nuggets that found their way to me today. Three nuggets – dabs of London experience – that made me richer.
First, this dozen-word “made my day” exchange. Got off the 328 at my local bus stop. At the bus stop, a young mum of colour. My hunch was Islamic North African antecedents. Because of her head covering. But going by her accent, totally a Londoner. She was wrestling with a two-seater baby stroller. A two-seater baby stroller fitted up with two tiny, cute as could be little girls. My guess was about ten months. All in pink. And, well, I had to know. I asked her: “Twins?”
She replied: “Yes”
I said: “Identical?”
The young mum said, “Yes.”
I said, “Can you tell them apart?”
The young mum said: “Sometimes. Sort of.”
Made my heart sing. There, in twelve words and 4.5 seconds you have a crystallisation of why I live in London. Why I love living in London.
Okay, second gold nugget. Did my Kensington Walk today. Afterward, quite by chance, I bumped into Mandy, who’s the garden specialist for Opportunity Kensington. She was, well, gardening. She’s the gal who’s doing a lot of the rewilding in the St Mary Abbots churchyard turned green oasis. I mentioned to her that the last time I’d done the walk the group and I had been regaled by the workmen who were digging for the new gates for the church and were finding lots of human bones. Well, it is the churchyard, after all. And the churchyard was a graveyard a long time ago.
And then Mandy hit me with it. A classic instance of the truth of John Constable’s saying, “we don’t truly see until we understand.”
Mandy said, yes, that’s the reason those re-wilding garden plots are framed with those boards. They told us we couldn’t dig down more than fifteen centimetres. For that very reason. So we had to build the ground up and secure it with those wooden surrounds.”
The illumination I got from that, it was a flash of lightning. I’d noticed those boards but never gave them a second’s thought.
And, well, 15 centimetres is just under six inches. It’s a show-stopping and sobering thought, they’re so close, those bygone Londoners. Six inches down from us. God knows why but I don’t find that macabre. On the contrary, there’s almost something comforting about it. They’re keeping us company.
And one more pretty special gold flake.
I’ve got a thing about books. I’m fond of saying I suffer from an incurable case of bibliomania. And, well, a gate swung open today. I suddenly thought, I know what I’m going to do. I’m going to ask the guides what they’re reading at the moment. Or recently read. The game plan is to turn a little nook of London Calling into the London Calling Book Club Corner.
The idea begot the action: The All Points Bulletin went out haste post haste. And the guides answered the call.
So we’re going to inaugurate the London Calling Book Club Corner with one of three books David G. served up. Utterly appropriate that because there’s no guide who’s better read than David. He is, after all, the scion of a famous British publishing family. And – this goes without saying – he’s a brilliant guide. Warm, funny, friendly, articulate, extremely well informed.
Anyway, Welcome to the London Calling Book Club Corner. David’s moderating. Here’s one of his recommendations.
“I recently read: The Restless Republic by Anna Keay. It’s a superb account of the decade following the execution of Charles I, told through the experience of people who lived through it. Meticulous as to fact but with the propulsive energy of a novel. Invaluable background to the Revolting London walk offered by Ulrike, Ian and me.”
Thanks David. And you’ve got two more in the oven. Their turn will come.
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.