London calling.
London Walks connecting.
This… is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets ahead.
Story time. History time.
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And a very good morning to one and all. Wherever you are. It’s Thursday, October 24th, 2024.
In Venice it’s the bouquet of flowers just outside the front door that tell the story. What the flowers are saying is that they’ve got a new baby there. White flowers with a blue bow it’s a bambino, a baby boy. Pink roses it’s a baby girl.
Had 68 Stean Street in Hoxton in East London been in Venice on this day 91 years ago – that’s October 24th, 1933 – it would have been white flowers with a blue bow. Maybe two bouquets of white flowers with blue bows. Because Violet Lee Kray had just given birth to twin baby boys, Reginald and Ronnie. Thinking about those two little bundles of joy I got all soppy. Started cooing. Said to Mary, “two baby boys, twins, I’ll bet they were gorgeous.” Mary’s of course much more hard-headed than I am. She said, “they were monsters.” I said, “Mary, they were babies, they were innocent.” She wasn’t inclined to give much ground. She retorted, “something went wrong down the line.”
I don’t know if it’s fun but it’s certainly instructive to play pin the verbal tail on the donkey with Reggie and Ronnie.
It’s pick a tail any tail but no matter how much you rummage around in the verbal tail box every one you pick is a bad ‘un.
I had a go at the Twins’ entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. I thought, I’ll make a random selection of ten verbal tails from the DNB Krays balance sheet, blindfolded I’ll pin ‘em on the Twins and see what the end result is, see what the donkeys look like plastered over with DNB labels.
So what you need to do is picture the Twins with the following tails – ok, labels – pinned on them.
Tail Number One (label Number One): active fantasy life based on charismatic leadership of a gangster firm; Tail Number Two (Label Number Two): male role models included legendary local underworld characters such as Jimmy Spinks, Dodger Mullins, and their own grandfathers, Cannonball Lee and Mad Jimmy Kray. Tail Number Three (Label Number Three): primarily street fighters. Tail Number Four (Label Number Four): sheer viciousness and ferocity. Tail Number Five (Label Number Five): Total disregard for military authority. Tail Number Six (Label Number Six): various scams and low-level extortion enterprises. Tail Number Seven (Label Number Seven): certified insane. Tail Number Eight (Label Number Eight): called the prosecuting counsel ‘a fat slob’. Tail Number Nine (Label Number Nine): mindless violence. Tail Number Ten (Label Number Ten): protection racket.
And there you have them, ladies and gentlemen, the birthday boys, the gangster twins, Ronnie and Reggie Kray, scowling, saturnine, looking fiercely well groomed in their suits and narrow ties… well, they would look fiercely well groomed if the labels, the donkey tails didn’t look quite so much like the tassels and fringe of a tacky burlesque outfit.
But speaking of labels, the Dictionary of National Biography, which in itself is the dictionary definition of sober, serious, earnest, prim and proper Englishness – the Dictionary of National Biography applies a short descriptive label – sometimes it’s just one word – to each and every one of the 60,000 plus biographies that make up its passenger list.
Some examples of DNB descriptive labels: army officer, portrait painter, architect and town planner, physician and botanist, Church of England clergyman and religious writer, judge, motor vehicle manufacturer, etc. Well, you get the idea. Reading between the lines it’s obvious that the DNB is amongst its own with these luminaries. A Britain peopled with people like these is a Britain that is at it should be.
But you come to Krays’ entry and clearly the clothespin goes on the nose – there’s no mistaking the fastidious distaste. It’s there, compressed in the one-word descriptive label the DNB applies to the Krays: Criminals.
Anything else? Yes, just a little bit more berry picking here. That word criminal caught my eye. I went to the other great Oxford scholarly compendium. The Oxford English Dictionary. It turns out the word criminal is one of the 2,000 most common words in modern written English. Which if you think about it, tells us quite a bit about our society and times. Particularly when you bear in mind that there are well over a million words in this rich tongue of ours.
The word criminal as we know it – as a noun – first pitches up in Elizabethan times. Interestingly it was used to describe anybody who was accused of a crime. That usage is now of course obsolete.
But back to the Krays, no end of good stories. Out of the blocks the DNB tells us they became icons of a very British form of criminality inextricably linked with memories of the 1960s.
I think there’s not much doubt that their intelligence, such as it was, was primitive. I’m thinking of Ronnie Kray saying, “I’m homosexual but I’m not a poof.” Why is it that with these low-lifes there’s always some sort of crude, degraded sense of honour lingering about like a bad smell? I bring this up because of what happened in the pub, The Blind Beggar. I’m talking about Ron Kray gunning down south London gangster George Cornell in front of shocked witnesses. Shot him dead because George Cornell had called Ron Kray “a fat poof.” One wonders if George Cornell would be alive today – an elderly, harmless, pink-cheeked nonagenarian – if he’d called Ron “a fat homosexual” or “a fat gay.”
The other set of words that flaps like a banner on a flag pole when it comes to the Krays is Mr Justice Melford Stevenson, pronouncing sentence on the twins – jailing them for life with a minimum of 30 years – telling them, “society has earned a rest from your activities.”
And on that note, let’s do a wrap. We pitched up here because the Krays are birthday boys today. Were they alive they’d be 91 years old today. They’ve of course been kaput getting on for 30 years. Waiting patiently there in their graves. They’re going to need a lot of patience. But for all we know they could be hobnobbing – sipping tea and remembering the good old days – with Frank the Axeman Mitchell and Jack the Hat McVitie and Grandpa Cannonball Lee and who knows, maybe even George Cornell. A buried very merry burying of the hatchet.
And finally – surely you knew this was coming – one of the brightest stars in the firmament of London Walks “Special Walks” is Adam’s monthly Krays in London outing. If London Walks specials were a platter of doughnuts Adam’s Krays in London walk would be the first one to be scarfed. It’d be the chocolate doughnut with the whipped cream. That’s because of the combination of the subject and the guide. I mean, the Krays were so outrageous, so shocking that walk would be riveting if it were guided by a cement flower pot. So you can imagine the fireworks you get if you front it with arguably the best guide in London. Yes, Adam, the platonic ideal of a great raconteur. As I’m wont to put it, “Adam is the only human being I know who talks like a well-written magazine article.” And the secret sauce is Adam’s a Scot. The combination is, well, fissile. Reg and Ronnie Kray and, to use the American acronym, the GOAT guide. That’s GOAT – G-O-A-T – Greatest of All Time. The Tom Brady or Michael Jordan of the London guiding scene. The GOAT guide who happens to be a Scot. Put those two fissile elements together and you’ve got the walking tour equivalent of The Biles II – world-beating gymnast Simone Biles “Triple Double” spectacular – that’s two flips and three twists – that leaves you rubbing your eyes. “Did that really happen? Did I just see that?” In the words of walker Jocelyn Fiske – she went on Adam’s most recent Krays Walk – “Thoroughly enjoyed Adam’s commentary en route, the myths dispelled, the environment explored, the culture of ‘protected’ community and the steady descent of Adam into Billy Connelly intonation.”
Anyway, yes, Adam’s Krays in London Walk – subtitled The East End, Gangland & The Dark Side Of The Swinging 60s – takes place once a month. The next time the chocolate doughnut with the whipped cream is going to be there on the London Walks platter is Sunday, November 3rd. It’ll be there for the taking at 10.45 am from Bethnal Green Tube Stop, the West exit.
And what do you know. Here’s a bonus. Here’s Adam himself talking about the walk.
[Adam’s talk about the Krays walk follows]
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 Museum of London archaeologist, historians,
university professors (one of them a distinguished Cambridge University paleontologist); it includes
criminal defence lawyers,
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.