London calling.
London Walks connecting.
This… is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets ahead.
Story time. History time.
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And a top of the morning to you from London. It’s August 3rd, 2024.
Today’s pin…well, a bit of egg on my face. Yesterday I led with the Elizabeth Line being shortlisted for the Stirling Prize, the UK’s foremost architectural award. I said the Elizabeth Line was one of six finalists in the shortlist and that, sure enough, three of the six structures on the shortlist are London buildings. Well, permit me to wipe the egg off my face. Make that four of the six buildings on the shortlist are London projects. I’m going to roll out the other three as today’s pin. (And why didn’t I mention them yesterday, you ask. Hand on heart here, that’s a matter of rationing things out. You’ll appreciate that putting one of these out every day is a fairly punishing schedule – British pronunciation, there – so yesterday I held back on these three, said to myself, I’ll save those for tomorrow. Anyway, the other three on the shortlist are: the National Portrait Gallery, the King’s Cross Masterplan and Chowdhury Walk, a housing development in Hackney.
So consider yourself primed. Watch this space. The winner will be announced on October 16th.
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Moving on, today’s Random – V.S. Pritchett reminded us that English is the language now dominant in the world. He said, Great Britain invented this language; London printed it and made it presentable. And that’s by way of saying we are now moving into London book festival season. Two solid months of them. Starting with the Queen’s Park Book Festival on August 31st and September 1st.
And then for a week, beginning on September 11th, it’s the Chiswick Book Festival. That one takes place in various and sundry Chiswick locations and it’s perhaps worth bearing in mind that the Guardian described Chiswick as London’s most literary borough. As everybody knows – or should know – the greatest novel in the English language opens in Chiswick. And Alison, who taught English Lit, does a Chiswick walk that attracts nothing but rave reviews.
Then a couple of days later, the September 20th weekend, it’s the Barnes Book Fest.
And then when October rolls around it’s Wimbledon’s turn. The Wimbledon Book Fest runs from October 17th to the 27th.
You’re spoiled for choice at the end of October. The London Literature Festival Southbank kicks off on October 23rd and runs through November 2nd. And finally a brand new festival. The Southeast London Bookfest will run over four weeks in November. A shortlist of sorts. And yes, six of them. What is it about that number six? Turns out it’s the smallest perfect number. God created everything in six days. The seventh day he rested – presumably chilled by reading a book. Six is the symbol of Venus, the Goddess of Love. Six book festivals. A dice has six faces. So any roll of the dice London book festival-wise is going to come up a winner. And six, well, that’s four fingers and a thumb – that’s five – that’s one hand to hold the book – and your forefinger on the other hand – that makes six – to turn the pages. So that takes care of that.
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And so we come to today’s Ongoing. We’re going back exactly 110 years. August 3rd, 1914. In the House of Commons Edward Grey makes one of the most important speeches ever given by a Foreign Secretary. The night before, Germany had demanded that its troops be allowed to pass through Belgian territory. A gross violation of Belgium’s neutrality. And so it was becoming clear that the rough beast slouching our way, had arrived at last. It wasn’t just another ‘Balkans quarrel’ that was in prospect. It was a major war in which France might be crushed. Grey tells the House Britain still had freedom to decide and was not committed by treaty – but he also referred to ‘obligations of honour and interest’ which were at stake and those would compel Britain to take a stand. In short, the balloon was going up on the Great War, the mother of all catastrophes, as the Germans came to call it. The dice were effectively cast. The Great War would start the next day, August 4th. After his speech Edward Grey left the House of Commons and went to his office – the Foreign Office – in Whitehall. That evening, at dusk – come dusk this evening you might think about this moment – that evening at dusk Edward Grey is standing at his window looking out over St James’ Park, where the sun has just sunk in the west. He sees a lamplighter turning up the gaslamps on the street below him. The gaslamp in question is still there. Knowing full well that war is about to break out, Grey says, ‘The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our life-time’. How right he was. Because historians now think of World War I and World War II as the same conflict, separated by a 20-year hiatus. An armistice – that one signed on November 11th, 1918 – an armistice, I hardly need remind you, is a temporary cessation of hostilities. In short, the lights went out all over Europe for nearly a third of a century. They weren’t lit again in Edward Grey’s lifetime. He died in 1933.
I suffer from an incurable case of bibliomania. One of the greatest voyages in my long lifetime of sailing through seas of wonderful books was reading Barbara Tuchman’s The Guns of August. Her masterpiece about the outbreak of World War I. Coming across that passage – the Foreign Secretary standing at his window that evening, looking out at the gaslamp lighter, and saying, “the lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime” – that passage has for evermore been part of my mental furniture. And were I guiding our Old Westminster walk this morning, one of the first stops on my route would be Edward Grey’s house on Queen Anne’s gate. Coming to London and finding that house was transformative for me. Before I made that find, he’d been a historical figure on a page in a great work of history. Finding his house turned him into a flesh and blood human being. I knew how he got home that night. I knew he walked through that secret passageway, Cockpit Stairs.
I could see him letting himself into the house. Or perhaps the butler letting him in. Scion of an old dynastic family, he would have had a butler. The gloom of the innermost recesses of the house chiming with the gloom of his mind at that hour in world history. And seeing that house – easily the grandest house in that street of grand houses – what also comes into focus is Edward Grey’s sense of entitlement. Worth bearing in mind that in 1914 the Foreign Secretary had a more important brief than the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister was running this country. The Foreign Secretary was running a much bigger, much more important entity. He was running the British Empire. One of the three or four most important players on the world stage.
And if your townhouse – that’s your townhouse, to it we can add your lands, your country estate in northeastern England – if your townhouse is the grandest house in the grandest street right at the heart of the capital of the British Empire, you have a sense of entitlement that’s almost boundless. It just stands to reason that you should be running the world. Be forever at the high table. Be a mover and shaker second to none.
If you’re interested in history – and who isn’t – there’s no better reason for coming to London. To see their houses is to see them, lift them off the page, get to know them way better than you can if you just read about them.
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.