London calling.
London Walks connecting.
This… is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets ahead.
Story time. History time.
A very good morning to you, London Walkers.
Wherever you are.
It’s Monday, February 23rd, 2026.
And here we go.
Here’s your daily London fix.
Flags are funny things.
A bit of cloth.
A splash of colour.
Something that flaps about in the breeze above a building most people hurry past without a second glance.
And yet.
Nations march behind them.
Armies die under them.
Cities pour centuries of meaning into them.
As the old line has it,
a flag is not the cloth but the cause that moves it.
And few flags in Britain are as quietly loaded with history as the one that flies over the City of London.
You know it.
White field.
Red cross of St George.
And up in the top left quarter, a small red sword.
Neat. Crisp. Unassuming.
But that little sword,
and that big red cross,
carry a story that runs deep into medieval Europe and
deeper still into the City’s own identity.
So today, ladies and gentlemen, we’re going to take it apart properly.
Story time. Symbol time.
Let’s begin with the obvious bit.
Yes, that bold red cross is
the Cross of St George.
By the later Middle Ages,
George had become England’s patron saint,
and his red cross on white
had become the national emblem.
But here comes the first pleasant jolt.
St George was not English.
Not even slightly.
He was, in fact,
what we would today call a Turk. More precisely,
he was a Roman soldier of
Greek Christian background
born in Cappadocia,
in what is now central Turkey.
Third century.
Eastern Mediterranean world.
A very long way from the misty fields of England.
That always produces a lovely moment on a London Walk
when people learn that England’s patron saint was born about two thousand miles from Trafalgar Square.
History loves a twist.
So how did his cross become England’s cross?
For that we go to the age of the Crusades.
From the twelfth century onward, Western European armies
marching to the Holy Land
began adopting
simple identifying crosses on
their surcoats and banners.
The English increasingly used a red cross on white.
The French used white on red. Heraldry was becoming systematised.
Battlefield visibility mattered.
By the late twelfth and
early thirteenth centuries,
the red cross had become
strongly associated with St George and with England.
Clean. Bold.
Unmistakable at a distance.
Perfect medieval branding.
And the City of London,
being quick on the uptake, embraced it.
By the thirteenth century
the City’s arms were already taking recognisable shape.
The red cross of St George formed the backbone.
But the City,
proudly independent-minded
even then,
added its own distinctive flourish.
Enter the sword.
Now here
we need to gently but firmly
clear away one of London’s most persistent little myths.
The sword in the top left quadrant is not the instrument of St Peter’s martyrdom.
It represents the martyrdom of St Paul.
And once you clock that, the whole thing snaps into focus.
Peter, of course, in marked contrast,
met a very different end.
According to the earliest
and most widely accepted Christian tradition,
Peter was executed in Rome during the persecutions
under Emperor Nero,
sometime in the mid-60s of the first century.
And here comes
the famous and
rather moving twist.
Peter is said to have asked
to be crucified upside down, because he did not consider himself worthy
to die in the same manner as Christ.
Now in the Roman world, the manner of your execution depended very much on your legal status.
Roman citizens were normally granted the comparatively swift death of the sword. Crucifixion, by contrast, was the slow, public horror largely reserved for slaves and non-citizens.
Paul, crucially, was a Roman citizen.
That sword, in other words, says citizenship.
And citizenship, in every age, brings advantages and privileges. Think of London’s Guilds.
Which makes the City’s choice of symbol all the more resonant.
Peter’s emblem is the cross.
Paul’s is the sword.
And that sword – the sword of St Paul’s martyrdom – is the sword we see on the City of London flag.
The red cross of St George is England speaking.
The sword is London adding its signature.
Which immediately raises a rather obvious question.
Why Paul?
Why not Peter,
or Matthew,
or Thomas,
or one of the other heavy hitters
of the early Church?
The honest answer is we don’t know for sure.
There’s no surviving document that tells us exactly why the Roman missionaries made that choice in the year 604,
when the first cathedral was founded here under Bishop Mellitus.
But we can shed some light on the matter.
Paul was the great missionary apostle,
the man who took Christianity
out into the Gentile world.
And for a mission church
planted in what was already a bustling trading centre,
he was symbolically a very neat fit.
Cathedral first.
Patron saint follows.
Very Roman.
Very strategic.
Very medieval.
Now, there is one more word here that deserves to be opened up properly.
Gentiles.
Because Paul is always described as the apostle to the Gentiles.
And that word is far richer
than its modern,
rather flat meaning of simply
non-Jewish.
It comes from the Latin gentilis, from gens,
meaning a people,
a tribe,
a nation.
So when the early Church spoke of the Gentiles,
what they literally meant was the nations.
Paul was the apostle to the nations. The man who flung the doors of the new faith wide open to the wider world beyond Israel.
And here is where the word acquires an extra layer of poignancy
when you stand in medieval London.
Because the Jews of England
in that period
were a people
with an immensely powerful historical memory of nationhood, but no political homeland on the map of contemporary Europe.
They lived,
quite literally,
among the nations.
Among the Gentiles.
Which gives London’s choice of patron saint
a rather interesting resonance.
Because in 1290,
when Edward I
expelled the Jews from England, the moment was widely celebrated in Christian London.
Bells rang across the City.
And if you were a betting person, you might very reasonably wager that the bells of St Paul’s were among them.
The apostle to the nations…
standing watch over a City
that had just driven out its Jews.
History, as London so often reminds us,
is rarely simple.
And more often than not,
pretty ugly.
Now, back to the flag itself.
The earliest surviving examples
of the City’s cross and sword
date from the thirteenth century, and by about 1380
the full coat of arms was
firmly established.
No single designer
steps forward
from the medieval mist.
These things evolved,
settled,
hardened through repeated use.
Think of it less as a moment of invention
and more as a long process of
civic self-definition.
Was there an earlier completely different City flag?
Not really in the modern sense.
In the early medieval period,
cities tended to use seals,
banners and shields
rather than fixed,
standardised flags.
The City’s identity appears
to have grown organically
around
the cross and sword combination rather than replacing some earlier unrelated design.
By the later Middle Ages
the image was everywhere.
On seals.
On documents.
On ceremonial display.
And in due course,
naturally enough, on flags.
One lovely heraldic detail.
The sword is always shown upright,
pointing upward.
That is the correct orientation. Every so often
someone draws it incorrectly
and the heralds wince quietly into their tea.
Because in heraldry, direction matters.
A lot.
Today, that same design still flies proudly over Guildhall,
over Mansion House,
and marks the City boundaries with those magnificent
dragon-topped posts
guarding the Square Mile.
White.
Red cross.
Red sword.
Seven centuries of continuity.
And here’s the very London flourish to finish.
Millions of people pass under that flag every year.
They photograph the dragons. They notice the cross.
But very few clock the sword.
And fewer still know what it means.
Which is exactly why we love it.
Because London is like that.
The biggest stories are often hiding in plain sight,
stitched into stone,
painted onto shields,
fluttering above our heads
while we hurry for the Central line.
So next time
you’re in the Square Mile
and you see that crisp white flag with its bold red cross and its neat little sword in the corner,
you’ll know.
England gives you George.
London claims Paul.
And that small red sword is not decoration.
It’s identity.
Seven hundred years
of the City saying,
quietly but firmly:
This is who we are.
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 £25 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 Jack the 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 a former Member of Parliament, three terms at Westminster, bringing first-hand experience of power, policy and political theatre to the very streets where it all played out.
It includes two barristers, three doctors, two geologists, a distinguished museum curator and a former Time out Editor.
It includes authors, historians, national journalists, a former London Museum archaeologist, and university professors (one of them an eminent Cambridge University paleontologist).
It includes a criminal defence lawyer, Royal Shakespeare Company and Royal National Theatre actors, and two professional photographers. And last but not least, the creme de la creme of top flight professionally qualified Blue Badge Guides, including 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 here’s the clincher. We’re playing at home.
London Walks is London-based. Period.
We’re not an impersonal, faceless platform run from halfway round the world. There’s no chatbot. No call-centre script. When you contact us, you reach a real person. A Londoner. Someone who actually knows the streets you’re about to walk.
That’s not a detail. That’s the difference.
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.