London calling.
London Walks connecting.
This… is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets ahead.
Story time. History time.
A very good morning to you London Walkers. Wherever you are.
It’s Monday, September 8th, 2025.
London Calling Book Club Corner first.
And it’s back to Adam again. With a second London book recommendation.
Here’s Adam.
[Adam’s voice piece here]
Ok, main course. One more from Hadley Wood. I was very curious about our walkers on the trailblazing, the first ever Ultimate London Walk. Wanted to find out a little bit them, where they hailed from, what caught their eye about something so utterly different from standard London Walks fare. And naturally I took the mic along because I thought some of you would want to meet them as well. Turns out it was a very interesting mix of people. Mostly but not entirely Londoners. A couple of Scots who, in Adam’s lapidary phrase, came down to see what all the fuss was about. And stayed. A lovely lady from Lebanon. Who is now a Londoner. A couple of home counties ladies. One from Tonbridge Wells, and one from Letchworth in Hertfordshire. And a handful of Americans. A couple of them on holiday. But they’ve been to London many times. Others well like yours truly well and truly transplanted. Have lived here for years. I think I got ten of them in all to tell me a little bit about themselves and what it was about this hugely different cup of tea – The Ultimate London Walk – that caught their eye. I began with Alison. She’s a Londoner now. Has been for quite a few years. But she’s originally from Scotland. And then at the end of day – six or seven hours later – I caught up with Alison again. Wanted to hear what she thought. What she’d made of our day in the wilds of northern London. And that’s no exaggeration, because so much of our walk was through woodlands and along streams and across hayfields. Punctuated with villages and village greens and village ponds.
Anyway, here we got. Let’s meet ten of of the London Walkers who pioneered the first ever Ultimate London Walk.
[brief interviews follow]
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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.