London calling.
London Walks connecting.
This… is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets ahead.
Story time. History time.
A very good day to you London Walkers. Wherever you are.
It’s Sunday, September 28th, 2025.
First things first. The London Calling Book Club Corner… what do you know, we’ve run out of road. Temporarily. Well, run out of books. So for the next few months it’ll just be the occasional stop by the Book Club Corner. And then when the guides have all moved on, finished the book or books they’re currently reading…and started in on something new…well, we’ll put another candle in the Book Club Corner Window.
Ok, moving on.
It’s Michaelmas Eve. September 28th. The night before Michaelmas – the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels – and once upon a time, you could feel it in your bones.
It’s the hinge of the year. The real turning of the seasons. The equinox has just passed, the nights are suddenly longer, the air has that tang — apples and woodsmoke and a little hint of frost. If Christmas is the hinge of winter, Michaelmas is the hinge of autumn. And for centuries, it was the big moment when the calendar, the harvest, and the supernatural all lined up.
This is where the year gets spooky. Because Michaelmas Eve wasn’t just about tidying up the fields and roasting a goose. It was about putting yourself in order – paying debts, closing accounts, letting farmhands go – and, crucially, protecting yourself from what might be lurking now that the dark half of the year had arrived.
The Archangel Steps In
St. Michael, you see, is the warrior angel. Flaming sword, dragon-slayer, commander of heaven’s armies. You want someone like that around when the veil between the worlds starts to thin. Michaelmas was his feast day – September 29th – but the night before, people felt you had to be vigilant.
They used to say the devil was particularly active on Michaelmas Eve. After all, tradition has it that Michael cast him out of heaven. One Scottish proverb even claims that when Lucifer fell, he landed in a bramble bush – and that’s why you shouldn’t pick blackberries after Michaelmas. They’ve been spat on by the devil, goes the story. (Very convenient if you happen to be tired of blackberry picking by late September.)
Geese, Rents, and Quarter Days
This is the other thing about Michaelmas Eve – it was practical. It was one of the great “quarter days” in England, along with Lady Day, Midsummer, and Christmas. On Quarter Days you paid your rent, settled your debts, and changed jobs if you were a servant or farmhand. Michaelmas was the big autumn one.
And you celebrated it with goose. A roast goose was as much a part of Michaelmas as turkey is at Thanksgiving. “Eat a goose on Michaelmas Day,” they said, “and you’ll never want for money all year.” Which is optimistic – a goose was not cheap – but then again, maybe that’s the point.
In Ireland, the tradition was to kill a goose for St. Michael and sprinkle its blood on the threshold for protection. Over on the Isle of Skye, they sacrificed a sheep – the “Michaelmas lamb” – and had a feast that sometimes went on for days. It was a big one, this festival.
Charms and Omens
But Michaelmas Eve wasn’t just about eating and balancing the books. It was a night of divination. People used to practice love charms — dropping a hazelnut in the fire to see if your sweetheart was true (if the nut burned quietly, good news; if it spat and hissed, you might want to rethink the engagement).
There was also a whole business about looking into a mirror or a bowl of water at midnight, hoping to see the face of the person you’d marry. If you saw a skull instead – well, let’s just say it wasn’t going to be a long engagement.
And of course there were protections to be made: lighting candles, sprinkling holy water, saying prayers to Michael to guard the household. He wasn’t just a dragon-slayer in the abstract – he was the patron saint of soldiers, police officers, and, in the spiritual sense, anyone who needed a little heavenly backup.
The Turning of the Year
If this is all sounding a bit Halloween-ish – you’re not wrong. Halloween is, in some ways, the pagan festival of Samhain Christianised and shifted a bit later in the calendar. Michaelmas Eve gives you an earlier, more ecclesiastical version of the same idea: a night to take stock, ward off evil, and mark the change from light to dark.
Even the geese play into this. After Michaelmas, geese were kept for fattening – the Martinmas goose came later in November – but this was your last big feast before the hard work of winter really began.
Michaelmas Today
And yet – Michaelmas never quite vanished. The universities at Oxford and Cambridge still call their first term “Michaelmas term.” Inns of Court in London still use the old term names. Some country churches still hold Michaelmas services.
And there’s something about the date that still feels charged. The light in late September is particular – golden, slanting, almost melancholy. It’s the moment when summer is finally gone, and you can feel the year shutting down.
So if you want to feel a little old magic this year, mark Michaelmas Eve. Light a candle. Roast something – goose if you can get it, a chicken if not. Step outside and look at the sky – those early autumn stars, hard and bright. Maybe raise a glass to St. Michael, the warrior who keeps the darkness at bay.
Because from here on in, we’re heading into the long nights. And it never hurts to have an archangel on your side.
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, , the former Editor (and subsequently CEO) of Independent Television News.
And , 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.