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 morning to you, London Walkers. Wherever you are. It’s Monday, December 2nd, 2024.
You ready?
Come then, let us go, you and I, to December 2nd, 1918.
That year picked out of a hat? Not exactly.
A project like this, it’s almost like going to a pet shop and picking out a puppy. There they are, furiously wagging their tails, trying to get your attention, “Pick me, pick me, take me home.”
And a lot of them are well nigh irresistible. Give you an example or two, there’s the London December 2nd puppy with the year 1697 on its collar. It’s well, divine. And what sets it apart? December 2nd, 1697 was the opening of the Quire, the first part of Sir Christopher Wren’s St Paul’s Cathedral to be finished.
And then just along from it, how about this little fellow with the year 1856 on its collar? He’s got everything going for him as well. You take him home you’re probably going to want to call him NPG. In short, it was on December 2nd, 1856 that the National Portrait Gallery was established.
But no, we’re going to have this little lady with December 2nd with 1918 on her collar.
And why is that? Thanks to a note I scribbled on the December 2nd page in a 2022 diary.
The note reads: 1918 Women vote.
I thought, hmmm, that’s a red letter day. I’m going to head back there, see what else was going on in London on that all-important day.
Now in the event, it looks like my scribbled note was wide of the mark. All I had to go on was the date – and those two words, “Women vote.” But when I got back to December 2nd, 1918 I drew a blank. False alarm. Nothing about Women vote on December 2nd, 1918. The significant dates that autumn were November 21st, the day Parliament passed the Qualification of Women Act, which allowed women to stand for Parliament. And December 14th, when there was a general election. That election was the first time women were allowed to vote. Well, some women. They had to be over 30 years of ag and meet a property qualification.
So I got something wrong with that diary entry. But no matter because this piece wasn’t in any case going to be about what I’d mistakenly taken for the big story of the day. No, I wanted to go back to December 2nd, 1918 and poke around in the undergrowth. See what else was going on in London on that day.
Which if you think about it, is London Walks through and through. We specialise in showing you bits and bobs of London that you wouldn’t otherwise see.
Anyway, the modus operandi – well, you can guess – I went back to early December 1918 and read the newspapers.
Made some interesting discoveries.
For starters, turns out that Big Ben was silent during the war. That mighty, full-throated bell didn’t sound. The war of course had finally ended, barely three weeks previously, and our much-missed old friend was back in business. All of that was of particular interest to me because of my Mrs Dalloway’s London walk. Virginia Woolf was originally going to title the novel, The Hours. And Big Ben sounds again and again throughout the novel. Always at a hinge moment in the narrative flow. The lines are of course deservedly famous: “There! Out it boomed. First a warning, musical; then the hour, irrevocable. The leaden circles dissolved in the air.”
Mrs Dalloway goes for her walk on a Wednesday in the middle of June in 1923. Less than five years after the end of the war. The very fact that those chimes were sounding again was of course a reminder that the ghastly war was over. What I’m saying is, Virginia Woolf – her generation – indeed, her creation, Mrs Dalloway – will have heard those chimes differently than we hear them. They will have meant something more – something considerably more – to them than they do to us.
And what else is London buzzing with on December 2nd, 1918? Well, for sure, the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm.
And how extraordinary is this? The Daily Telegraph gave full rein to Father Bernard Vaughan’s scathing remarks to the Guild of Glaziers. The priest described the fallen German leader as an “electro-plated Napoleon.” Father Vaughan spoke of a man who “was still free, who had bolted like a rabbit, leaving his wife and family anywhere in order to save his own skin. The man was responsible for throwing fifty or more millions of his fellow-creatures into the terror of war.” He said that “before talking of mercy we must talk of justice.” It seemed to him that the higher in the social scale the criminal was, the deeper was his guilt.
And then – this analogy. And really, it came like a lightning bolt. Father Vaughan said, “We have at last got ‘Jack the Ripper’. Are we going to let him off?”
It’s a show-stopper, isn’t it. But let’s put the Telegraph down – put that Jack in the box – Kaiser Wilhelm as Jack the Ripper – back in his box. Let’s look at what’s going on at Number 10 Downing Street. What’s going on is lots of French flags being waved and a huge crowd and the Marseilles being sung. The jubilant throng is there to greet the French prime minister Clemenceau and the great French General Ferdinand Foch, who are making an official visit to London.
And now, how about if we stroll down to the Thames.
I’ve got a surprise for you. This is just so London. There’s always something unexpected in this town. Something that London will show you that you’re almost certainly not going to see anywhere else. U-boats. Surrendered U-boats. That’s right, German submarines. The silent, unseen killers that nearly did for this country. Sank millions of tons of shipping. Including of course the Lusitania.
They’re coming to London today. One of them will be moored off the Terrace of the House of Commons. Another off Westminster Pier. A third will be near Tower Bridge. And a fourth at Greenwich. Each U-Boat will be commanded by a British officer and will have a nucleus British crew on board. The public will be able to visit the U-boats. There’ll be a small admission charge. Those monies will be devoted to naval and mercantile marine charities.
Well, you can picture it in your mind’s eye, can’t you. What I wouldn’t give to see it in the flesh, so to speak. A U-boat moored off the Members’ Terrace of the House of Commons. I guess you could say I do see it, because now that I know that it was there it’s impossible for me to go out onto Westminster Bridge, look at the Members’ Terrace, and not see that U-boat moored right alongside it there.
And of course you can’t help but wonder, what happened to them? Were they broken up into scrap iron? Did they end up as munitions in the sequel, the gathering storm that was just 21 years in the future.
I’m thinking I’m going to do some digging, Try to find out what happened to those U-boats. If my research sonar is able to track them down, I’ll drop some depth charges, bring ‘em back to the surface. You’ll be the first to know.
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.