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 Monday, July 28th, 2025.
“The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.”
That, of course, is the famous opening line of L.P. Harley’s novel, The Go Between.
And, well, 1933 is the past. And from this vantage it certainly looks like a foreign country.
Now to mix my metaphors, on this day in 1933 – July 28th – the butterfly of modernity was trying to get out of the chrysalis of the past.
To wit: an announcement on the BBC began: “This is the National Programme.”
Now it wasn’t that the words were particularly significant. It was who was speaking the words. A woman. Mrs Giles Borrett. She was the first woman announcer at the BBC. And those were the first words she uttered.
And what a flap it caused.
This country couldn’t believe its ears. A woman announcer. It was all over the newspapers the next day.
The Daily Telegraph double-headlined its coverage: Woman Announcer’s Debut. Voice of Sombre Tone.
The Telegraph piece reads: “Mrs Giles Borrett, the BBC’s first woman announcer, made her initial announcement in the National Programme yesterday. She spoke in the afternoon and doubtless was heard with particular interest by many women. Her voice, described as ‘mezzo’, struck me as distinctly unusual – deep and of uniform timbre. There is a sombre quality about it which heightens the contrast with the voices of the men announcers. I thought there was a certain lack of light and shade, but the defect may be remedied with experience. Certainly she spoke with perfect aplomb, very deliberately and clearly, and made no slips.
Her debut lasted less than two minutes, and her “lines” consisted of the items to be played by the Hotel Metropole orchestra. I should say that her style is less expressive than that of her men colleagues, but this also may be remedied in time. In any case a short list of orchestral items does not lend itself to a tour de force. She has no affectations, and her pronunciation of foreign words seemed to me excellent.”
My God it’s patronising, isn’t it. But, there you go, that word patronising – it’s cognate with the word patron, the root of which is lord or master, and that in turn is ultimately derived from the Latin word for father. Paternal, for example, is in that same family of words.
So, yes, it was a man’s world. The which is proclaimed after all by her broadcast persona: Mrs Giles Borrett. She was the one who was making the National Programme announcement but name-wise she’s off-stage, so to speak. It’s her husband’s name that gets flagged up. For the record, she was born Margaret Sheila Graham and the name she preferred was Sheila. Bad enough that women had to overcome that. But even the technology of the day seemed to be against them.
Jean Seaton, the BBC’s official historian, says “Sheila had a lovely fruity voice, a low voice. That was the one break she caught. One of the problems if you go back to the 20s and 30s was the quality of sound broadcasting. Low voices were believed to, and perhaps did, sound better given the technology at the time. So her iconic low voice may have been her foot in the door at the BBC.”
In the event though, the first woman announcer’s foot was prised out of the door. Back where you came from. And the door was slammed shut. As the Daily Mail put it, Mrs. Giles Borrett, the first and last BBC woman announcer, was sacked only four months after her debut. And it’s not pretty, the reason she was shown the door. As an experiment the BBC tried her out reading the news. That was a red line. Jean Seaton’s read is in those days news was believed to be the most impersonal form of media. And news readers were expected to be male to represent the corporation and keep the impersonal tone. The upshot: the BBC received a huge wave of complaints from women. Not to put too fine a point on it, the BBC caved. Pulled the plug on Mrs Giles Borrett. But the Mail’s reading of the runes was only half right. And it wasn’t the important half. Sheila Borrett was the first BBC announcer. But she certainly wasn’t the last.
But the whole episode does leave you scratching your head in wonderment. Women brought about the downfall of the BBC’s first woman announcer. About all you can say is L.P. Hartley was right: the past is a foreign country.
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.