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 October 28th, 2025. And it is, your daily London fix.
You could spot him through the fog – a man made of gold.
There he sits in Kensington Gardens, Prince Albert himself, glinting like a misplaced idol from some half-forgotten religion. And in a way, that’s exactly what he is. The Albert Memorial isn’t just a monument; it’s a temple. Built not for a god, but for a husband.
Victoria loved him – properly loved him – and when he died, she didn’t so much mourn as rebuild the skyline in his honour.
Albert: the steady German prince who married the young Queen and tried to civilise the most powerful woman on Earth. He was clever, serious, slightly priggish. The kind of man who thought a perfect evening involved a report on sewage reform and a cup of cocoa. But he steadied her. He believed in progress and drains and decency. He was, in short, the best kind of bore.
Then in 1861, typhoid cut him down at forty-two. Victoria shattered. Curtains drawn, black dresses, the lot. She went into a sort of emotional lockdown that lasted decades. But the thing about Victoria is: she didn’t do feelings quietly. She monumentalised them. And so – the Albert Memorial.
Designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott, the busiest man in Gothic England. He could put a spire on anything that didn’t move. He dreamt up this thing: part church, part crown, part fever dream. One hundred and seventy-six feet of marble, mosaic and gold, right on the edge of Kensington Gardens. A great Gothic canopy, like a celestial bandstand, with Albert himself sitting under it – calm, robed, catalogue of the Great Exhibition in hand – facing south toward the Royal Albert Hall.
And yes, that was deliberate. They face each other. It’s architectural pillow talk.
He’s gilded head to toe – leafed in gold so fine it had to be reapplied a few years back, because London weather eats romance for breakfast. But when the sun hits him, he still glows like the patron saint of self-improvement.
Round the base: four corners of the world. Europe, Asia, Africa, America – each with an animal sidekick. The Victorians adored allegory. So you’ve got a camel for Africa, an elephant for Asia, a buffalo for America, and a horse for Europe. The whole Empire reduced to a petting zoo.
It’s absurd. And magnificent. And entirely serious.
The Victorians built with moral intent. Every carving, every frieze meant something. Around the plinth are the great names of civilisation – Shakespeare, Newton, Raphael, Handel – the roll call of human progress. The message was simple: Albert stood for everything decent and improving. He wasn’t a soldier or a swashbuckler. He was a thinker, a builder, a man who believed civilisation was built on elbow grease and a good filing system.
And if you think that sounds dull – well, that’s what’s so endearing. The man was an enthusiast. He loved ideas, education, exhibitions, science, plumbing – anything that made life work better. He wasn’t glamorous, but he was good. And goodness, for Victoria, was the sexiest thing imaginable.
After his death, she made her grief a national event. Mourning became a moral virtue. And the Memorial – unveiled in 1872, after ten years of chisel work and sermons disguised as sculpture – was the high altar of that faith.
Of course, modern Londoners can’t resist a bit of irony. We snigger at the grandeur. We say it’s gaudy, overdone, kitsch. Which it is. It’s all those things. But it’s also something we’ve almost forgotten how to do: it’s sincere.
The Victorians weren’t embarrassed by feeling. They built feelings in stone.
There’s something heartbreakingly straightforward about that. They didn’t hide their emotions behind glass and steel. They made them ten storeys tall and covered them in gold leaf.
And yes, it’s pompous – but it’s pompous with purpose.
If you stand there, looking up at him, you can almost hear the Victorian hum of confidence: the world’s getting better, progress is certain, civilisation’s a train steaming into the future – and Albert’s the man shovelling the coal.
But there’s another hum underneath it: the sound of one woman’s grief. Because this whole shining mountain was built to say one thing – I miss him.
When you know that, the grandeur softens. The ridiculousness becomes moving.
Walk around it and look closely – the detail is astonishing. Every inch carved, every figure symbolic. Angels, saints, thinkers, doers – the entire population of virtue. And at the centre, the quiet man who somehow inspired it all.
Victoria called it “beautiful beyond words.” She wasn’t wrong. It’s daft and dazzling and absolutely human.
You stand there today – joggers whizzing past, buses rumbling on Kensington Gore – and you realise it’s still doing its job. It still makes you stop. It still glints through the London gloom and says: here’s what happens when love meets architecture.
It’s not a war memorial. It’s not a monument to conquest. It’s a love letter. Written in gold.
And if that’s not the most London thing imaginable – heart and hubris welded together – I don’t know what is.
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.