London calling.
London Walks connecting.
This… is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets ahead.
Story time. History time.
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Top of the morning to you, London Walkers. Wherever you are.
It’s February 21st, 2025. And what do you know, it’s a little bit warmer today. Maybe – just maybe – we’re getting there.
Anyway, let’s fetch a stick and have at the pinata. See what tumbles out.
Ah, here we are. What’s this? I’m tempted to say it’s a potpourri.
But I think a better word, in this instance, would be a goodly assortment of commonplace entries. Right up my street given my obsession with words and language. What’s that London Walks bio entry say about me, “he broods over words, breeds enthusiasms and is ‘unmanageable’. A balterer, literary historian, university lecturer, journalist, logophile and lifelong thanatophobe, he’s also the London Walks “pen” – he writes “the famous white leaflet”, let alone the document you’re reading (this website).” And maybe before proceeding any further, we should get to grips with some of those words. Thanataphobe for starters. Thanatos is the Greek word for death. Phobe, well, that’s the word phobia. So a loose translation would a lifelong opponent of death. Logophile is a love of words. My favorite is balterer. It’s a very old word. Hundreds of years old. Pretty much obsolete now. To balter meant to dance clumsily. So a balterer is someone who dances clumsily. It’s an inside joke at London Walks, that, because Mary, my little English rose and the London Walks capo is a former ballet dancer. Needless to say, she dances beautifully. For her sins, she’s married to a balterer.
But that’s enough preliminaries. Let’s get to the business end of the diving board. That phrase commonplace book.
The dictionary definition of a commonplace book is a depository for ideas, quotes, anecdotes, and information you come across in your reading or when you’re out and about.
Interestingly enough, the first recorded use of the word ‘commonplacer’ in the Oxford English Dictionary is John Donne’s. Yes, that John Donne. The 17th-century genius who produced some of the most lavishly sexed poetry ever written in English. For the record, Donne also used the word thanatos, He wrote a book called Biathanatos, which is said to be the first full-length treatise on suicide written in English.
Anyway, my commonplace book these last few days has some new words and phrases in it that have caught my eye and frankly delighted me. And, yes, this is very London. This place is a cultural and historic and linguistic northern lights. There’s a lot going on here.
So the first neologism that caught my eye was Streateries. Saw it on a poster in Swiss Cottage. It is new. The Oxford English Dictionary isn’t across it yet. And, yes, it’s clever. It fuses the words street and eateries. Indeed, it’s spelled streateries. So I suppose you’re also getting the word treat in there. Streateries are of course temporary – usually they’re temporary – where you can get street food.
And the fun thing about them is that they have a tendency to cluster. Birds of a feather and all that. By way of example, the Leather Lane street food market must have at least 50 or 60 stands and rest assured, they’re from all over the world.
Cuisine-wise it’ll be the most cosmopolitan, the most exotic 150 yards in Europe.
Moving on, I was also taken with the word statuecide. Found it in Sathnam Sanghera’s wonderful book Empireland. It, along with streateries and god knows how many other words is still in Oxford English Dictionary purgatory. Hasn’t yet made it into the heavenly kingdom of the OED proper. But what an interesting phenomenon generally that business is – the business crystallised by Sanghera’s word statuecide. It’s got a very old, very impressive pedigree and lineage.
In western civilisation all the way back to the book of Daniel in the Old Testament. The 60 foot high statue of an idol made of gold, silver, brass and clay. The which is immortalised in the phrase ‘god of brass, feet of clay.’ But in recent history – I love that way of putting it, in this country you can use recent history to describe an event that took place nearly 400 years ago. I’m talking about the equestrian statue of Charles I in Trafalgar Square. After the civil war and the execution of Charles I a brazier with the magnificent name of Rivet was told to break the statue down, down. He didn’t. He buried it. Hid it in his garden. And then made a lot of money selling brass-handled cutlery to both Royalists and parliamentarians. What a sales pitch. He told them the brass handles were from pieces of the statue he’d broken down and look, souvenirs of the Civil War and King Charles I just don’t come any better than this. And then when the Restoration came along in 1660 he earned more plaudits – from the royalists at any rate – by digging up the statue, producing it, presenting it to Charles II. And whatever view you take of the historical turn of events in those days, you have to be glad Rivet did what he did, have to be glad he didn’t do as he was ordered to do. Have to be glad we still have the statue. It is after all the oldest bronze statue in London. And into the bargain, the first Renaissance-style equestrian statue in England.
And if you’d like your history to be considerably more recent, well, there’s the statuecide of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad 22 years ago.
And let us fast forward to five years ago. The statue of leading citizen and slave trader Edward Colston in Bristol that was toppled from its plinth and unceremoniously, ignominiously dumped into the harbour. It by the way is on its second life. It was fished out of the drink and is permanently on display in Bristol’s M Shed museum.
Which, if you think about it, is fitting. The past doesn’t change. What is constantly new is not the past itself but the way we look back on it. Perspectives change. Old facts and events take on new significance. The two lives – the so far two lives of the Edward Colston statue – statuecided and brought back to life – illustrate that phenomenon perfectly.
And for a third word – well, phrase – that’s been added to my word hoard – try Shanghai Grip for size, so to speak. As usual, I’ve got six or seven biographies and histories on the go. One of them is a biography of Edward VIII, probably better known these days as the late Duke of Windsor. And his Missus, the American-born Duchess of Windsor. She who was once described by courtier and private secretary to four monarchs Alan Tommy Lascelles – he made it onto everybody’s radar thanks to the Netflix series The Crown – he was instrumental in preventing Princess Margaret from marrying the love of her life, Group Captain Peter Townsend – anyway, Alan Tommy Lascelles once described the future Duchess of Windsor as “that shop soiled American divorcee with two living husbands and a voice like a rusty saw.”
Now for years – no decades, even a century – there’s been gossip that the hold – and, yes, I’m afraid hold is the mot juste – the hold Baltimore-born Wallis Simpson had on the future King of England was down to a bedroom trick she’d learned in a Chinese brothel in 1925. It was called the “Shanghai grip” – I didn’t know its name until I sat wide-eyed poring over John Parker’s biography King of Fools. Anyway, it seems that the Shanghai Grip was a sexual technique where a woman would tighten her vaginal muscles in order to make a matchstick feel like a cigar. Yes, it was once described that way.
And given that the future Edward VIII was reputed to suffer from bouts of impotence, well, you can perhaps get a feel for the hold the shop soiled Mrs Simpson had on the hapless future Edward VIII.
Well, to be honest, that’s pretty puerile, pretty scurrilous. It’s salacious royal gossip at its most distasteful.
But given the turn of my mind, I was fascinated by the turn of the phrase. It is simultaneously exotic – Shanghai – and crude – “grip”. And I at once began to think about whether it would have any hold – get any play – in other cultural eras. We know the phrase was bandied about in the Jazz Age, in the 1920s. But it’s simply impossible to imagine strait-laced Victorians uttering those two words. “Oh she’s really good at the Shanghai Grip.” Or even more preposterous, the prim, proper world of Jane Austen. The thought of the foolish Mrs Bennet in Pride and Prejudice gossiping away with a neighbour about the progress her five daughters are making with their Shanghai Grip. Inconceivable. Wouldn’t happen. Except maybe in a very naughty – and very funny – Monty Python rendition of the novel.
That’s not to say “Shanghai Grip” wouldn’t make the cut in any previous era. One can readily imagine a Shakespeare character – Falstaff say – or more darkly, Iago – going right to town with it.
And for a final phrase, I give you Ukraine president Zelensky saying Trump “lives in a disinformation space.” A disinformation space of Russian propaganda. There are 8 billion people in the world. My hunch is there’s “disinformation space” between all eight billion pairs of ears. Tricky word, this, but mentally we’re all snowflakes. Each of those eight billion mental spaces is unique. And, alas, there’s disinformation in all of our minds. Though that wasn’t what the Ukrainian president was banging on about.
But that phrase – “living in a disinformation space” – it’s fun to also apply that phrase to English Literature. I mentioned Iago. And thus by implication, Othello. Poor Othello, tragically he’s living in a disinformation space. Thanks of course to the steady drip of the evil poison Iago whispers in his ear.
Or Mr Collins, that garrulous fool in Pride and Prejudice.
Describing him, Jane Austen speaks of “the self-conceit of a weak head, living in retirement.” Living by himself in other words. She says his original “great humility of manner” had altered greatly and been replaced with arrogance and vanity due to “early and unexpected prosperity.” And his “very good opinion of himself, of his authority as a clergyman, and his rights as a rector, made him altogether a mixture of pride and obsequiousness, self-importance and humility.”
Anyway, Mr Collins has managed to convince himself that Lizzie, the heroine of the novel, will marry him and that he’s a very good catch for her. Which of course couldn’t be more wrong. Lizzie is 100 times brighter than foolish, preposterous Mr Collins. She has a cool, discerning, highly refined mind. She’d sooner stick needles in her eyeballs than be Mrs William Collins. And while the phrase of course wasn’t to hand 200 years ago, it’s easy to imagine Lizzie murmuring to her father, “Mr Collins is living in a disinformation space.”
Ok, those are the diction entries for this particular chapter in my Commonplace book.
Let’s finish with a couple of pieces of London news. One of them is London Walks London news. I’ve got a new point out for my Hampstead Walk. The Brigit Jones house in the new Brigit Jones film, Mad About the Boy. It’s in the village on the Heath, the village within the village – the Vale of Health. We go right by it on the Sunday morning Hampstead Walk. Going to be fun to point it out.
And as for local London news. The latest hot number on the London thievery spectrum seems to bicycle thefts. Though bicycle hi-jacking is probably more accurate. It’s all over the news of late. Front page story on the current Ham & High for example. What’s new about this rash of thefts is people out riding their expensive bikes are being violently assaulted by the thieves. The thieves – two of them – are on a motorbike or moped. They pass a cyclist. Take a good look at the bicycle. If it’s an elite, seriously expensive bicycle – and these days high-end bicycles cost eight to ten thousand pounds – the thieves stop and wait for the cyclist to catch them up. They kick the cyclist off the bike, wrestle it away from the owner, the pillion rider gets on the bike and rides off.
And likewise, off goes the driver of the moped or motorcycle. The Ham and High story said three bikes were recently hijacked that way on a single morning on the ring road round Regent’s Park. It’s a different cup of tea, so to speak, from traditional bike theft. I.E., bikes that are locked being snatched after the lock cable is cut or the lock is picked. That form of bike theft has been going on forever. This new evil genie, just out of the bottle, is much nastier. It’s violent robbery. You don’t just lose your bike, this time there’s a good chance of injury to insult. The battery element.
It’s now been going on for about 18 months. The average is two bikes a day. Cyclists says there’s now “a climate of fear.” They say cyclists are threatened with knives. And that bicycle insurance now costs as much as car insurance.
One space in my head that is not a disinformation space is my son’s experience as a cyclist in Changmai, in Thailand. He’s lived there for several years. He says nobody in Changmai locks their bicycle. They would just never be stolen. Theft is not a problem.
So what is it about Thailand? What is it about London? Big question. And the answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind.
Or if it is susceptible to answering, that answer would surely be a matter of dizzying profundity. And if you want to rephrase the question, is it London that makes the thieves? Or do the thieves make London. Answers on a card please. No, make that answers on a learned, 600 page treatise.
See you next time.
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.