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 June 20th, 2025. Summer Solstice eve. A very warm day here in London. But what a thought. 24 hours from now we start heading back into the English winter. Such is life.
And what’s going on here in London? Lots of sport. Tennis-wise it’s climax weekend – semi-finals and finals – at Queen’s. And tomorrow, Saturday, is the Royal Ascot grand finale.
Ascot rolling round always brings to mind one of the great letters to the Editor at the Daily Telegraph. This must have been getting on for fifteen years ago. But I’ve never forgotten. One J.M. Bradley from Wellington in Shropshire wrote in to say, “Bryony Gordon writes that Ascot is ‘one of the few places you can wear a tea set on your head and not look in the least bit peculiar.’ She deludes herself.”
Now speaking of correspondence, a few weeks ago Laurie Bennett from Amelia Island Florida wrote to us. I’d put out a feeler a while back in which I’d said we’re coming up to 400,000 listens on this podcast. And the Analytics tells us where people are tuning in. Every time we look at those Analytics we’re floored – and humbled – because people are listening all over the world. So we can see where you are geographically. But we don’t know who you are, don’t know anything about you. If you were game, write and tell us a little bit about yourself. Didn’t get many takers – just two listeners – but we were delighted to get those two. In the first instance, David, who lives in Huntsville, Alabama and works for NASA, the space agency. And then, in due course, Laurie, who, as I said, lives in Florida. Had lived in London for 18 months about a dozen years ago. And Laurie and her husband were coming back in June – their first time back in London since they lived here a dozen years ago. Laurie’d discovered London Walks when she lived her. And became a London Walks aficionado. Anyway, it was great to hear from Laurie, hear her story. And I ended up reading her story out on one of the podcasts. Laurie makes quilts. And they are stunning. She said she listens to the podcast when she’s quilt-making. Anyway, happy days, Laurie and Wallace pitched up on the Kensington Walk yesterday. We had a great chat. It was very much a case of making a new friends. But the flavoring was that of meeting a couple of old friends. So enjoyable. In the event, the three of us went into St Mary Abbotts after the walk. Had a sit-down and a really good chat. And the Gods were smiling on me. I’d brought the microphone along. And interviewed Laurie. It’ll run sometime this coming week. Anyway, so thoughtful, Laurie and Wallace. They brought me a gift. A seriously beautiful, rare book – signed by the author and the photographer – a seriously beautiful book about where Laurie and Wallace live in Florida: Amelia Island and Fernandina Beach. And where this is leading is the card that accompanied Laurie’s gift. Laurie had written, “David many, many thanks for your lovely words (and word origins!). Your adopted city continues to amaze, as evidenced through your talented guides and robust tours. We are so grateful to be able to participate from our little island to yours. We thought you’d enjoy a bit of our island’s history, and the role of eight flags.”
Thank you SO much, Laurie and Wallace. You thought right. I am enjoying it. And as it turns out, your parenthesis – you said, “Thanks for your lovely words (and word origins)” – word origins, that’s the parenthesis – as it turns out your parenthesis was a flint and steel moment for this podcast. It struck a spark. Very London Walks, that. A London Walk is a three-way collaboration: London, the guide and our very switched-on London Walkers. We learn from them. Are inspired by them. So working her way through the archive, through the whole repertory of London Calling podcasts – must be about 1200 of them by now – Laurie quickly cottoned on that I brood over words, that I’ve got a thing about word origins. And why not? Because words are artifacts, just grave goods or wall paintings in a cave. Words are an X-ray of the past. They preserve history. And sure enough, how did I introduce this podcast? I said it’s climax weekend for Royal Ascot and Queen’s Tennis. That word “climax”, that’s a word worth getting to know. Its origin is ancient Greek. The ancient Greek word for both ladder. And lean. A ladder you lean against the side of a house or a tree or indeed a fence or cliff. The old rhetorical sense – this is from Shakespeare’s time – the old rhetorical sense of climax is a chain of reasoning in graduating steps from weaker to stronger. For the record, it took about 300 years for the word climax to make it into the sexual arena, to describe a sexual orgasm. But there you are, be it sex or the key moment in a hard-fought football game or the critically important moment in a film or a play or a battle, when you utter the word climax you’re saying ladder. Think of the Battle of the Alamo, the Mexican Santa Ana’s forces overrunning the place by going up and over. Up ladders and over the wall. That was the climactic moment in that battle. And come to think of it, in the history of Texas, as enshrined in the phrase Remember the Alamos.
Ok, that’s our introduction for today. Quite a long introduction.
I feel a new series coming on. For the last couple of days I’ve been asking myself, “if someone said to me, ‘what in your estimation David is the most interesting street in London?” What would I say. I’ve got a winner. I wonder if you can guess. I think I’d say Piccadilly. Piccadilly because of its book ends: at the western end Hyde Park Corner and Number 1 London – Apsley House. And at the other end, Piccadilly Circus. But also – and this is hugely important, what flanks Piccadilly. And indeed, runs off Piccadilly. On the south side, Green Park. And the Ritz Hotel. And Arlington Street. And St James’s Street. And Princes Arcade. And Piccadilly Arcade. And Fortnum & Mason’s – fondly known for years as The Queen’s Own Grocer’s. And Hatchard’s, London’s oldest and classiest bookshop. And Christopher Wren’s only West End church, St James’s Piccadilly.
And then on the north side you’ve got Cambridge House, the former premises of the Naval & Military Club, known to every cabbie in London as the In and Out Club. And there’s the secret river, it’s traceable in a street line. And the lane that leads back to a country village in the heart of poshest Mayfair. And London’s grandest arcade, that’s of course Burlington Arcade. And Bond Street, arguably London’s poshest shopping Street. And the Royal Academy. And the Albany. Well, you get the idea. The pickings don’t come any richer than Piccadilly and its oases and tributaries. So, thinking of an occasional series, howzabout doing a walk, so to speak along one side of Piccadilly, east to west, or west to east, and then back on the other side. Picking them off one by one, the pearls on the chain that is Piccadilly.
And I thought, I’m going to launch this series today, June 20th, with the pearl that’s probably the least well known. The pearl that might well be the most exclusive of them all. The Albany.
It’s on the north side, quite a way along toward Piccadilly Circus.
It’s thoroughly and rigorously private. But go for it. Being thrown out of a place is always a mark of a good walking tour. You walk up into the courtyard you will be politely informed that it’s private and you’ll be asked to clear off. But you’ll get a couple of rewarding minutes before you get shooed away. And if you turn on the charm and are very civil and polite the Hall Porter or whatever his official job title is might take a minute or two and tell you a little bit about the place. Built by Lord Melbourne, the Albany, originally called Melbourne House, is a three-storey, seven bays, 250-year-old mansion with a pair of service wings flanking a front courtyard. The front courtyard is as far as you’ll get. But venturing up there is worth it. Thirty years or so after it was built it was converted into 69 bachelor apartments. The centerpiece of the conversion was called the Ropewalk. The Ropewalk is a long covered walkway supported on thin iron columns. It’s worth catching a glimpse of. It goes on forever. The apartments, called sets, are accessed off common staircases without doors. Very much like Oxbridge Colleges.
The visuals are great. But the invisibles – the history, the biographies – are even greater.
Just to give you a taste, the apartments, the sets – in their day they were known as Albany Chambers, were casual residences of bachelors and widowers, not to mention the nobility and gentry who had no settled town residence.
Ok, let’s do some name-dropping. Two of the first residents were Lord Althorp, the 3rd Earl Spencer, and yes, the ancestor of Diana Princess of Wales. There’s a wonderfully salacious Diana, Princess of Wales Albany story, but I think I’ll hold back on that – keep it in reserve for our Old Palace Quarter Walk.
Another name: the great 19th century statesman and politician George CANNING.
. The historian G.M. Trevelyan said of Canning, “For five years England had been guided by the genius of Canning, and seldom have so much brilliance and so much wisdom combined to produce such happy results.” Canning was the dominant figure in the British cabinet before he became prime minister. He at last ascended to No. 10 Downing Street in 1827 but died just 119 days after taking up the position. For nearly 200 years he was the shortest serving prime minister in British history. Liz Truss finally unseated him in that regard in 2022.
And speaking of history and historians, the greatest historian of the all, Lord Macauley, lived at the Albany for 15 years. It was there, in Block E and No. 1 on the west side, that he wrote his famous history.
Dickens’ great fellow Victorian novelist, Bulwer Lytton, lived in Block H and No. 6 on the west side. That set was previously occupied by the great romantic poet Lord Byron. The greatest British politician of the 19th century – he was a four-time prime minister – was William Ewart Gladstone. And sure enough, Gladstone had a pied a Terre at the Albany.
And to end our short biographical tour of the Albany, a very weighty matter indeed. In 1806 Daniel Lambert – the heaviest man who ever lived – occupied Albany chambers when he wasn’t being exhibited. At the time of his death, in 1809 – he was 39-years-old – Daniel Lambert weighed nearly 53 stone. I’ll leave you to do the maths. But what gives you a better idea I think is the factoid that six men of normal size could fit together inside his waistcoat and each of his stockings was the size of a sack.
And that’s just a quick snack at the banqueting table of the Albany’s fascinating history.
Next time you’re down at Piccadilly, that end of it, that side of it, do a little bit of people watching. In a couple of minutes 400 people will walk by there. And not one of them will look up at that courtyard, look up at the Albany. They walk by completely clueless. Walk by mindlessly, blissfully unaware. And what I’d say is, once you know a little bit about the place how can you not be panting to go and see it. “So that’s what that is, that’s the Albany. That’s where all those famous people lived. That’s maybe the richest biographical and historical dish on this famous street. Knowing some London history – knowing a little bit about what you’re walking by – it’s transformative. It’s like that moment in the Wizard of Oz when Dorothy and Toto get caught up in the tornado and get whisked away from hum drum, everyday, black and white rural Kansas to technicolour Oz. “Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas any more.”
You get right down to it, not being in Kansas any more, that’s why you go on London Walks.
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.