London calling.
London Walks connecting.
This… is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets ahead.
Story time. History time.
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A very good evening to you, London Walkers. Wherever you are.
It’s Saturday, June 28th, 2025.
I’m up against it this weekend. Have to produce the main newsletter for July, the one that comes out on July 1st. And there are – wait for it – fifteen new London Walks coming on stream.
A tranche of them – fourteen of the fifteen – are the second most important development – if development’s the word – in London Walks’ long and illustrious history. Second only to the genesis of the company, its arrival on the scene nearly 60 years ago.
I’m talking of course about The Ultimate London Walk, in its 14 sections or segments. More on it in a minute.
The 15th new walk is Rick Jones’ East Enders Pub Walk. It’ll be a Thursday evening number. Start at 5.30 pm. It’s going to be a spiffing introduction to that great institution: the English pub. Pub history, pub culture, pub lore, pub practices, pub grub, pub architecture and signs and names, what’s on tap, you name it. The walk’s been created by – and will be guided by – Rick Jones, the former Chief Music critic of the Evening Standard. The walk will visit several pubs. And the Truman Brewery. And surprise surprise the first pub and the last pub they’ve both got a pub piano. Which Rick will play. So the walk will be a walk and it’ll be social and there’ll be some imbibing. And fellowship. And it’ll begin and end with a concert of sorts. What’s not to like?
Now as for The Ultimate London Walk. Well, we went live with it this morning. The whole shebang is now up on www.walks.com. And, yes, people are booking it. Understandably so because guide Charlie wet his finger, put it up in the air and it was pretty clear which way the wind was blowing. There’s been a lot of interest. We’re pretty sure some of the legs of the Ultimate London Walk – maybe most of them – will sell out.
Anyway, watch this space. I’m going to do a whole podcast or two about The Ultimate London Walk. It’s the Mount Everest of London Walking tours. Mount Everest prior to 1953. Never been scaled before. Charlie who’s created it and will be guiding it is the Edmund Hillary of The Ultimate London Walk. We’re very very excited about it. It’s going to make a splash. Attract a lot of attention.
So that’s a quick round-up of the London Walks news. And a de facto explanation why the next few days here at London Calling are going to be a little bit different from our normal fare. The temptation was to bank the fires down for a few days – just not serve up any podcasts while I work through these other big London Walks projects, the forthcoming newsletter and The Ultimate London Walk and the outrider walk, Rick Jones’s East End Pub Walk.
But I thought, ‘no, I’m going to see if I can do it, can put out something every day, even if it’s slim-line compared to the usual fare here.
So for the next few days it’ll be a tray of bonbons, as opposed to the standard fare, the usual three or four or five-course feast.
Offer up a few bagatelles. Toast a few London marshmallows every day so there’s something for you, even if it’s not a Sunday roast.
So what’s it going to be today? What’s on the tray of bon bons?
Here it comes and what do I spy with my little eye – I spy a few choice bits and bobs about The Monument.
First thing’s first: the Monument is a 17th-century skyscraper. And of course you know it was built between 1671 and 1677 to commemorate the Great Fire of London. But did you also know they were thinking two birds with one stone. It was going to be a telescope tube. And then there’s the unfortunate business of the suicides. People leaping to their death. And all of that gets a bit weird. It gets a bit weird because it was mostly bakers who were jumping to their death. Or in one case a baker’s daughter. And of course you have to factor in that it was a baker who started the Great Fire. But that’s the reason for the cage. It was erected in 1842 to put a stop to the suicidal leaps from the viewing platform up near the top of the Monument. Of course it’s a well-known fact that the Monument is 202 feet high and if it were to topple over in an easterly direction the very top of it – which sports a ball of flame – would touch down exactly on the spot where the Fire of London begin. What’s less well known is that in September 1940 one of the first bombs dropped on London in the Blitz exploded exactly. 202 feet west of the Monument. What else? Well, if you’re thinking of making the climb up to the platform gird up your loins – you’ve got a 345-step climb ahead of. you. I suppose it was inevitable that those 345 steps attracted athletes. Well, attracted those with a competitive streak. Fit young Londoners like to run to the top and back down. Run against the clock. And they’d wager they could do it in a certain number of seconds. That sporting event was said to have been inaurgurated by a nimble little drawer who worked at the Baptist Head Tavern in Old Bailey. This was in 1730. The word on the street was that the young athlete got his quickness, got his speed and nimbleness from his job at the Baptist Head. All day he was running up and down cellar steps fetching drinks. His detractors – the sceptics – bet him he couldn’t do it in three minutes. Fooled them. The lad did his race to the top and back down to bottom in two minutes and 32 seconds. He did himself and his backer proud. Doubly so because on his way down, he wasn’t out of breath at all. He was able to call out, “Coming, Sir, coming!” exactly as if were fetching an order of a pitcher of wine. Once a drawer, always a drawer.
And there, that’s your pitcher of that very special wine – London history, a great London story, London anecdotage for this installment of London Calling.
How does a few choice bits and bobs about The Monument g
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 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.