London calling.
London Walks connecting.
This… is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets ahead.
Story time. History time.
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And a very good evening to you from London! It’s August 25th, 2024.
Today’s pin… I put a wild card into every walk in my repertory. My favourite is my Hampstead wild card. I play it when we summit. Up on the Heath. Highest point in London. 435 feet and seven inches above sea level. I say, “we’re standing here because of something that happened 66 million years ago. Yes, I’m talking about the mass extinction event. The asteroid 15 kilometres across that smacked into what is today Mexico. It created a crater that was 150 kilometres across. But it also created something else. It created a tsunami. A tsunami that was nearly a mile high. That was the extinction event. It killed 75 percent of the life on earth. Did for the dinosaurs. Which of course cleared the way for us, for mammals. So, yes, if we’d been standing here 66 million years ago – standing here on the summit, the highest point in London – standing here nearly a tenth of a mile above sea level – standing here when that tsunami pitched up, we would have been under 4,400 feet of water. We would have been at the bottom of an ocean 1.4 kilometres deep.
And I mention all of that because right now London is worried about being hit by a tsunami that’ll be five metres high. It’s a World War II wreck in the Thames estuary. It’s being described as ticking time bomb. The SS Richard Montgomery was carrying 7,000 tonnes of explosives when it ran aground 80 years ago. Should it explode it could create a five-metre tsunami. That happens I’ll make my way up to the summit on Hampstead Heath. Where I’ll be 420 feet above the crest of the tsunami.
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Moving on, today’s Random – It turns out the late, much lamented Queen Elizabeth II – and thus her son, King Charles III – was a direct descendant, via Edward IV, from the Prophet Mohammed. So the rabid anti-Muslims out there can put that in their pipe and smoke it.
And that brings us to today’s Ongoing. Let’s do another instalment of what’s there at Tottenham Court Road Underground Station. Why it behoves to get there early if we’re going on Adam’s Rock n Roll London Walk or Richard’s Beatles Magical Mystery Tour.
It’s interesting place, the immediate environs of Tottenham Court Road Underground Certainly if I were going on either of those walks I’d get there an hour early and do a little bit of solo-ing. It’s a feast, it’s low-hanging fruit that neighbourhood. There’s a lot to see, a lot to delight in.
A couple of days ago this podcast directed people to the Outernet complex, which is right there, just across the street from the meeting point for those two walks.
Today we’re going to range just a little bit further afield.
We’re going to take a proper look at the Central St Giles complex. It’s just a little bit further east of the meeting point for the walk. If need be, make an instrument landing, use your smart phone to get you there. The address is 1 – 13 St Giles High Street. You’ll certainly know when you’re there. It’s a two building complex that’s way more striking than the gold-plated Outernet Buildings. The Central St Giles complex boasts the brightest, the most colourful buildings in London.
It’s a technicolor extravaganza: red, orange, lime green, and yellow. Fifteen storeys of a high-rent hallucination. It’s more than 400,000 square feet of mixed-use modern architecture. It’s offices and 109 flats and on street level shops and restaurants. It cost £450 and is now nearly 15 years old. But as usual with these things, the more you know about something the more interesting it becomes. So here’s the kicker. The Central St Giles was the famous Italian architect Renzo Piano’s first London building. He’s of course better known for the Shard. And the clincher, Renzo Piano – along with Richard Rogers – was the architect of the Pompidou Centre in Paris. The most famous modern building in Paris. Extraordinary the way knowing that little bit of extra information – making those connections – widens and deepens one’s appreciation. I’d say just stroll over there and walk around it, walk through it. It’s eminently walkable. As one critic said, it’s pedestrian porous at ground level. There’s a courtyard plaza. There are eateries and shops. There’s modern art. The main thing though is the light show of all that colour. It’s as if a wizard waved a magic wand and turned a rainbow into architectural forms. And since you’re right there – at Tottenham Court Road Underground Station – you really should see it.You’re short-changing yourself if you don’t. My advice would be – and of course you can take it or leave it, as you see fit – my advice would be to budget an extra 45 minutes or so, get there 45 minutes before the Magical Mystery Tour starts, or The Rock ’n’ Roll London Walk starts – and walk over there and explore the Central St Giles Complex. Treat yourself.
Three final points. When the buildings were completed the flats were nominated for the London Planning Awards under the Best New Place to Live category.
And to be fair, some of the critics have given the buildings a rough ride. They’ve been a bit snooty. Case in point: Ellis Woodman writing in Building Design. He criticised the “lurid” appearance. He complained that “the site has been overdeveloped, to my mind, grotesquely so” and that its visual impact was “as shocking as that of any building realised in central London in 40 years.” As criticism goes, I think that’s counter-productive. Describing a “visual impact” as “shocking as that of any building realised in central London in 40 years would get me there instanta. I’d sure want to see that. And my hunch is that the public love it. Let the critics huff and puff – or stew in their own sour grapes – they couldn’t design buildings like these – and their learned disparagement counts for nothing over against Joe Public’s awe and delight. But finally, let hear from the architect himself. Here’s what Renzo Piano said about Central St Giles’ brilliant palette of colours.
”The colour idea came from observing the sudden surprise given by brilliant colours in that part of the city. Cities should not be boring or repetitive. One of the reasons cities are so beautiful and a great idea, is that they are full of surprises, the idea of colour represents a joyful surprise.”
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 Museum of London archaeologist, historians,
university professors (one of them a distinguished Cambridge University paleontologist); it includes
criminal defence lawyers,
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.