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 Saturday, September 27th, 2025.
Short and sweet today. Both items.
Beckoning us into the London Calling Book Club Corner, Andy Hallett. He of the Shardlake Walks. What’s that book Andy’s holding up? You can probably guess. But let’s hear it straight from the horse’s mouth. Here’s Andy.
“I am as always re-reading the Shardlake Series of books by the great C J Sansom. For the record, I’m contemplating a third Shardlake’s London Walk. If it happens it’ll be compliments of walkers from the first two Shardlake walks. A lot of them are saying, ‘go for it, we’d love for you to create another one.’
Now main event. What a hand of Specials we’ve got going today? A royal flush and three aces in the hole. In short, eight top-flight SPECIALS. That’s in addition to the 17 regular weekly Saturday walks.
And one of those Specials is Dan Parry’s London’s Spymasters. It goes at 2.30 pm this Saturday, September 27th. Goes from St James’ Park Underground Station (the Broadway/Petty France exit). For me, Dan’s Walks are a crystal ball. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that not long after the walk finishes there’ll be a lantern festival of rave reviews floating our way. He’s top-flight, Dan. Top flight here, just as he was at the BBC. I mean Dan Parry was tapped to interview the man on the moon, Astronaut Neil Armstrong. And for good measure, President George Bush. So yes, Dan’s a winning hand – knows his stuff and delivers it with shining intelligence, joy and aplomb.
Anyway, given that Dan’s guiding London’s Spymasters this afternoon, there was nothing for it but to give you a little taster. Here he is – in Horse Guards Parade – talking about Operation Mincemeat, and the James Bond connection. And for good measure going a long way toward setting the record straight as to the true identity of 007.
Here’s Dan.
[extract from Dan Parry’s London’s Spymasters Walk follows]
You’ve been listening to This… is London, the London Walks podcast. Emanating from – – 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, , the former Editor (and subsequently CEO) of Independent Television News.
And , 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.