London calling.
London Walks connecting.
This… is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets ahead.
Story time. History time.
Hail fellow, well met London Walkers. Wherever you are.
It’s Wednesday, October 22nd.
And here it is – your daily London fix.
Story time.
History time, indeed.
Here’s some history for you.
A Short History of the Railways
(Being All That Can Be Remembered)
The Railways were invented by George and Robert Stephenson, who were Good.
Before that, people travelled by horse – which was Slow and therefore Wrong.
The first railway engine was called the Rocket,
because it went off with a bang and frightened everyone.
It was followed by the Locomotive, which was Latin for “Train.”
Soon railways covered the whole country,
and you could go from London to Scotland in under a fortnight –
provided you were First Class and alive at the end.
This was called the Golden Age of Steam,
because the trains were always late,
but in a picturesque way.
Everyone agreed it was a Glorious Epoch –
especially those who did not have to travel.
Later, Dr Beeching arrived and did away with everything –
which was a Bad Thing.
Since then, England has been waiting patiently for a train that actually turns up.
A Short History of the Internet
(Being All That Can Be Remembered)
The Internet was invented by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who was Good,
and by several Americans, who were Loud.
In those days, everyone communicated by letter – or shouting.
Then came the E-mail, which was Latin for “You’ve got post.”
Soon people began sending one another pictures of their cats –
which was thought to be a Sign of Civilisation.
Social Media followed,
and everyone started shouting again – only now globally.
Historians call this the Digital Renaissance,
though most people call it doom-scrolling.
Finally, Artificial Intelligence arrived
and began writing history books itself.
This was deemed both Revolutionary and Slightly Worrying.
A History of France
(A Mistake)
France began when a man called Clovis dropped his sword and said “Oops.”
Ever since, France has been noted for Style, Wine, and Surrender.
The French Revolution happened because everyone was Cross
and had nothing to eat except cake.
The guillotine was introduced as a labour-saving device – and it worked.
Then came Napoleon, who was Short but Energetic.
He conquered Europe, lost it again,
and was sent to an island –
which is what always happens to over-enthusiastic Frenchmen.
France has since been ruled by Revolutions, Republics, and Restaurants –
its three great institutions.
Right – confession time.
Needless to say, none of those snacks were history.
They’re pastiches. Homages.
Affectionate doffs of the cap to two old schoolmasters –
W. C. Sellar and R. J. Yeatman –
who, back in 1930, produced the comic masterpiece 1066 and All That.
And the reason I’m talking about them today
is because W. C. Sellar had a cameo in yesterday’s podcast about Brent.
A quick reminder: the great Victorian prime minister Gladstone
was forever behind the curve over the so-called Irish Question.
Sellar caught that beautifully –
wittily guying the grand old man and his travails.
He quipped that Gladstone
“spent his declining years trying to guess the answer to the Irish Question;
unfortunately, whenever he was getting warm, the Irish secretly changed the Question.”
When I unearthed that, well, I was enchanted.
Wanted to meet this W. C. Sellar.
Who was this chap?
And that, of course, is London through and through.
This place is just so stimulating.
If you were a bloodhound, this city would be paradise –
scent after scent, no end of fascinating trails to follow.
So I was off.
W. C. Sellar.
Track him down.
And what a trail it turned out to be.
You start with a throwaway joke about Gladstone –
and before you know it,
you’re knee-deep in the life of a Scots schoolmaster
who quietly wrote one of the funniest books in the English language.
W. C. Sellar – yes, that W. C.;
and yes, I made the lame lavatory joke.
But let’s give the man his due.
The initials stand for William Charles.
William Charles Sellar: dignified, scholarly, faintly donnish –
and, as it happens, quietly hilarious.
You know something?
It’s like London is a master of ceremonies with a taste for the absurd,
a wry sense of humour,
and a world-class magician’s flair.
Having the time of his life –
pulling rabbit after rabbit out of the hat.
This W. C. Sellar gig is a perfect case in point.
It’s so London.
It’s the joy of London.
Well – one of the joys of London –
the way its connections ripple out.
One minute you’re in Brent,
the next you’re halfway to Edinburgh
by way of Punch magazine
and a classroom full of boys who’d rather be anywhere else.
This quiet Scottish teacher – this master of muddle and mirth –
once lived and taught just up the way.
Picture it: Edinburgh, 1898.
William Charles Sellar is born –
bright, bookish, with a sly sense of humour.
Fettes College for school.
Oriel College, Oxford for university.
A spell in the First World War.
Then the classroom – chalk, Latin, English,
and the hum of adolescent boredom.
That’s where he met R. J. Yeatman –
another teacher, another survivor of the staffroom.
Together they found a release valve in Punch magazine.
Their big idea: tell history not as it happened,
but as it’s remembered.
Hence 1066 and All That –
A Memorable History of England, Comprising All the Parts You Can Remember.
It was a work of genius – daft, deadpan, devastatingly accurate.
They caught something profoundly English:
the way we treat history as a series of half-remembered anecdotes,
confidently misremembered and cheerfully wrong.
Sellar was the quieter of the two –
slim, bookish, fond of walking –
the sort who could drop a line that left you laughing all week.
Yeatman, the performer, the front man.
But together – lightning in a bottle.
1066 and All That became a classic –
still in print nearly a century later.
And here’s where Brent sneaks back in.
Sellar spent much of his later teaching life at Mill Hill School,
just on Brent’s edge.
Imagine him there in the 1930s –
tweed jacket, pipe smoke, dry wit –
commuting past Cricklewood, notebook in pocket,
dreaming up kings who were “Good” or “Bad”
and battles fought for “A Good Thing.”
Brent’s good at that – hiding its gems in plain sight.
Quiet borough, big shadows.
You walk its streets and bump into history – literal and comic.
Sellar’s the kind of figure who’d have fitted the place perfectly –
clever, understated,
and far funnier than he let on.
He died in 1951 –
long before British humour was fashionable,
before Monty Python, Yes Minister, or Blackadder.
But he’d already written their template:
dry irony, confident absurdity, mock-pompous history.
So next time your train wheezes through Brent,
think of him –
that shy Scottish master who made the muddle itself the joke.
And remember his golden rule:
“History is not what you thought.
It is what you can remember.”
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.