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 morning to you, London Walkers. Wherever you are. It’s July 3, 2025.
How’s this for a headline: Books on the Bonfire.
That sound like 20th-century London?
“No chance”, you say.
Well, you’d be wrong.
And today’s the anniversary – the 71st anniversary of a frenzy of book burning in the UK. Including the very heart of London: Trafalgar Square.
The occasion – the day, July 3rd, 1954 – had an impressive epithet: D-Day.
No, not that D-Day. But the two of them belonged to the same family, so to speak.
D-Day was Derationing Day.
And Derationing Day was this day, July 3rd, 1954.
It was celebrated the length and breadth of the British Isles. Celebrated not least with bonfires and book burning.
The books that went up in flames were the hated Rationing Books.
H-Hour for D-Day was midnight on July 3rd, 1954. At the stroke of midnight the Government Office in question – the Ministry of Food – relinquished its control over the last two items remaining under control: meat and bacon.
Cue a gathering in Trafalgar Square of the London Housewives Association.
Flanked by a Welsh flag and a Union flag the London housewives began their celebrations with a record of The Yeomen of England. In its coverage of the story The Times noted that the volume on the loudspeakers was at full throttle.
For good measure – and to drive the point home – at intervals the loudspeakers boomed out a parody on The Roast Beef of Old England.
And as Big Ben did its own booming, the housewives tore up their ration books.
Never one to miss a campaigning opportunity, politicians weren’t behindhand in getting in on the act. The Conservative candidate for Parliament for Hayes and Middlesex set fire to about 500 Rationing Books at a fete in his constituency.
Elsewhere, the Minister of Fuel and Power burned a large replica of a ration book at an open-air meeting in his constituency.
Point counterpoint, though. The Minister of Food – Major Lloyd-George (yes, he was the son of David Lloyd George the Great War Prime Minister) – Major Lloyd-George announced that he’d be keeping his ration book as a souvenir.
The bonfires – the book burning, the tearing up of the ration books, the high spirits – that was the effervescence. But the backstory’s a serious business. It’s food for thought. Sobering food for thought.
Food rationing began on January 8, 1940. January 8, 1940 to July 3, 1954 – that’s 14 and a half years. In 1954 there was a whole generation of young people who grew up under the command and control apparatus of the rationing books. Young newlyweds at the start of the war had to toe the line with rationing books until they were middle-aged couples.
Some particulars for you. Bacon, butter, and sugar were the first foodstuffs that were rationed.
And of course like Pinnochio’s nose once in place – and let’s tell it like it was, it was necessary – but anyone once in place, it just grew and grew.
What it was about was ensuring fair distribution of essential goods. And diverting resources to the war effort.
But, yes, like a cancer it took off. Over the course of the war rationing expanded to include meat, milk, cheese, eggs, cooking fat. To that you can add tinned goods, dried fruit, cereals and biscuits.
And for good measure, any number of nonfood items, including clothing and coal.
You went shopping you had to take and produce your Ration Books. Otherwise no sale.
Is there a takeaway here. Sure. Wars don’t end when they end. July 1954 came along a long long time after VE Day in May 1945. And V-J Day – Victory in the Pacific Day – in August 1945.
And here’s a little digestif – well, two little digestifs – to see this tale out.
One, the rationing was worse – stricter, more heavyhanded – after the war ended because the Americans turned off the taps. Stopped sending the aid – the food and other goods they shipped across the Atlantic when the shooting was going on.
And D-Day – D Rationing Day lit another bonfire. The price of meat heated up overnight. The housewives who celebrated in Trafalgar Square on Saturday night got a nasty shock when they went to the butcher’s on Monday and ordered their de-rationed meat for the week. Prices rocketed up as soon as the cleaver came down on rationing.
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.