London calling.
London Walks connecting.
This… is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets ahead.
Story time. History time.
A very good evening to you London Walkers. Wherever you are.
It’s Wednesday, September 3rd, 2025.
First stop, the London Calling Book Club Corner. Find out what London Walks guides are reading. In the Chair tonight, the great Richard Walker, he who is fast closing in on 500 five star reviews for his Hi-End, VIP, Small Group Guaranteed Jack the Ripper’s Whitechapel Walk. So what’s Richard’s reading, well, this one’s right down the pike.
Here’s Richard.
“Hi David
Just finished two. Michelle Higgs’ A Visitors Guide to Victorian England (2014) and Steven Keogh’s Jack the Ripper: A 21st Century Investigation. (2023)
The research never ends!”
Truer words were never spoken, Richard. And in your case, it serves two ends: that masterpiece of a walk of yours and your own book on the Ripper, which is in the pipeline. There, I’ve spilled the beans. There’s your heads-up, ladies and gentlemen. Look out for it, it’ll be with us in a few months now. And what I’m hearing on the grapevine is it’s going to be pretty special, controversial even. Can’t wait.
Ok, moving on.
We’ve had some post. Post about postcodes. Perfect, really.
One of our walkers — a West Londoner — wrote in after the Postcodes episode. And what he said was this: “Hang on, isn’t there a bit more rhyme and reason than we made out? Once you get away from the central 1s and 2s, doesn’t the numbering fall into alphabetical order by district name? Hence Acton W3, Chiswick W4, Kensington W8. A, C, K. Alphabetical. Not geographical. Look, here’s the 1930s map to prove it.”
And he’s right. There is an alphabet at work. A secret orderliness hiding in plain sight. Postcodes, it turns out, are less like spaghetti flung against the wall, more like alphabet soup.
Let’s ladle some out. West London first. W3 is Acton. W4 is Chiswick. W6 is Hammersmith. W8, Kensington. W9, Maida Vale. W10, North Kensington. W11, Notting Hill. W12, Shepherd’s Bush. W13, West Ealing. W14, West Kensington. That’s a pretty solid alphabet march: A, C, H, K, M, N, N again, S, W, W.
Hop north. The NWs tell the same story. NW2 is Cricklewood. NW3 Hampstead. NW4 Hendon. NW5 Kentish Town. NW6 Kilburn. NW7 Mill Hill. NW8 St John’s Wood. NW9 The Hyde. NW10 Willesden. NW11 Golders Green. Again — alphabet soup with only the odd noodle out of place.
And swing southeast. SEs have the same ring about them. SE2 Abbey Wood. SE3 Blackheath. SE4 Brockley. SE5 Camberwell. SE6 Catford. SE7 Charlton. SE8 Deptford. SE9 Eltham. Onward, onward, marching to the tune of the ABC.
It holds beautifully through the 1930s. That’s when the General Post Office imposed the order, trying to make life easier for postmen staggering under the weight of letters. If you know your alphabet, you know where you are.
But — and there’s always a “but” in London — it doesn’t take long before the cracks show. The tidy alphabet never quite survives contact with the real, messy city. The war comes. Neighbourhoods expand. Populations shift. Postal demand grows. And suddenly the alphabet has to give way to pragmatism.
Which is why today you get oddities. W5 is Ealing, but W7 is Hanwell, which should by rights be down at the H end of the queue, not squatting between Ealing and Hammersmith. Or SE10 — Greenwich — which jumps the queue entirely, because Greenwich was too important not to have its own early slot.
And then, of course, there’s the great central London muddle: ECs and WCs, where the numbers aren’t alphabetical at all but reflect the old postmen’s delivery beats, stitched together like a patchwork quilt. That’s where Paris can look smug — its arrondissements curling like a perfect snail shell — while London throws its alphabet in the air and says, “Good luck, postie!”
So where does that leave us? Well, somewhere wonderfully London. A city that flirts with logic, tiptoes into order, then promptly winks and goes its own way. Postcodes are the city in miniature: eccentric, irregular, a little chaotic — but if you know how to read them, they reveal patterns, layers, history.
And for that, we’ve got our West London correspondent – Richard in Chiswick – to thank. He’s given us a fresh pair of spectacles. The alphabet spectacles. Put them on and suddenly the jumble starts to spell something out.
That’s the joy of London. You think you’ve got it pinned down, and then someone pipes up with, “But what about this?” And off we go again, on another little ramble through the greatest city on earth.
Alphabet soup. Only in London could even the soup be historic.
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.