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 Friday, October 24th.
And here it is, your daily London fix.
This one’s aces high. And what a pair of aces. A London building that’s fitted up with a portable flogging and beheading kit. That’s one ace. The other ace is that same building is the hall where hope began.
Let’s play that second ace first. The hall where hope began.
That’s the where.
There are several whens.
And today – October 24th – is the anniversary of the Big Bang of those whens.
Because it was on this day in 1945 that the United Nations officially came into being.
Now, the paperwork had been signed four months earlier – out in San Francisco, of all places – at something called the United Nations Conference on International Organization.
Fifty nations turned up. Six weeks of talking, drafting, wrangling, hoping.
The war in Europe was ending, the Pacific still burning.
And the world was basically saying: right, we can’t go through that again.
They met in San Francisco’s Veterans’ Building. On June 26th, 1945, they signed the Charter – the blueprint for a new way of running the planet.
But signing it wasn’t the end of the story – it was just the spark before the flame.
The UN wouldn’t actually exist until the Charter had been ratified by the five big powers – the U.S., the Soviet Union, China, France and Britain – and a majority of the others.
That happened on October 24th, 1945.
That’s the real birthday. The day the Charter came into force.
The Big Bang moment.
Two years later they made it official – October 24th became United Nations Day.
So that’s the global bit. Now let’s bring it home – because the first proper meeting of the United Nations didn’t happen in New York.
No, no. The famous glass tower by the East River wasn’t even built yet.
The first General Assembly met here – in London – in the winter of 1946.
And not in some palace or government building, but in a church hall.
A very grand church hall, mind you – Methodist Central Hall, Westminster.
You’ve probably walked past it a dozen times. That big domed Edwardian hulk opposite Westminster Abbey. Looks a bit like a civic cathedral.
Built in 1911 – the Methodists’ way of saying, “faith and public service can share a roof.”
They called it a hall, not a church.
And that’s what it was: open to all, a place for people to meet and talk and argue and dream.
So, January 1946. London’s still battered. Bomb damage everywhere. Rationing. Fog. But still London – practical, generous, resilient.
And what does London do? It hosts the world.
On January 10th, 1946, the delegates file in.
Fifty-one nations. Two thousand people in all.
Flags hanging from the balconies. The Abbey’s bells drifting through the mist.
And under that great dome, the world tries to start again.
Lord Halifax opens the session.
Paul-Henri Spaak of Belgium becomes the first President. Trygve Lie of Norway – the first Secretary-General.
They talk about peace treaties, nuclear energy, the new Security Council.
But really they’re talking about hope – how to make that Charter mean something.
And listen to the words they were working from:
“We the peoples of the United Nations, determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war…”
“To reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights… the dignity and worth of the human person…”
“To promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom.”
Now imagine hearing those words in a city still half in ruins.
That’s London for you. It doesn’t just watch history; it hosts it.
And Methodist Central Hall has hosted plenty.
Gandhi spoke there in 1936 – barefoot, calm, quietly terrifying to the British establishment.
A decade later, Attlee’s Labour Party used it for their post-election rally – the welfare state being born under that same dome.
Then in 1961 it was Dr Martin King’s turn.
Fast-forward forty years and there’s Gorbachev talking glasnost and the end of the Cold War.
The BBC does its New Year broadcasts from there. There’ve been peace rallies, pop concerts, public inquiries, even a Eurovision jury once upon a time.
If you go inside, there’s a small bronze plaque that says,
“Here, on 10 January 1946, the first General Assembly of the United Nations met in this hall.”
Easy to miss. But what a thing to remember.
So yes – today’s United Nations Day.
When you hear that famous line – “We the peoples of the United Nations…” – think of that hall opposite Westminster Abbey.
Think of the delegates in their overcoats.
Think of a bomb-damaged city lending its dignity to a newborn world.
Because that’s what London does. It opens its doors, even when they’re hanging off their hinges.
And that’s why I call it the Hall where Hope began.
And no, I haven’t forgotten. The other ace. The portable flogging and beheading kit. Here you go, I’m playing it now. It’s classic London Walks, this. Hidden in plain sight. You don’t see it until your London Walk guide points it out. But from that moment on, you always see it. You can’t not see it. You can’t unsee it. Yes, that last one is a little bit indulgent – a reverb from yesterday’s podcast. Anyway, let’s get you to see what you’ll never again be able to unsee on the front of the Hall of Hope. Look on either side of the front door. There they are – carved in stone – what a pair – two bundles of rods or staves, each of them tied together round a single-headed axe. The business end of the axe sticking out of the top. The rods or staves – the Latin word for them was fasces – were for flogging. Punishment for less serious crimes. The axe – well, you can guess – it was reserved for capital crimes. It was for beheading. And, yes, it was portable. A portable flogging and beheading kit. An official the Romans called the lictor would carry it over his shoulder. He’d be at the head of the parade the Romans would hold when they conquered a place. It was, not to put too fine a point on it, a symbol of power and authority. Well, that’s a bitesize version. A whet your appetite version. In the pipeline – coming your way right here – I’m going to do, one of these days, a full-on piece about this extraordinary symbol. An ancient symbol that’s travelled a very long and complicated road. It’s been a long march – all the way from the Roman Republic to modern democracy. Watch this space.
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 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.