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. Far and wide. Near and close.
It’s July 2nd, 2025.
But it’s also July 2nd, 1850.
175 years ago to the day.
The world has raised its whip. Where will it descend?
It’s going to descend on the dining room at 4 Whitehall Gardens.
4 Whitehall Gardens was a house that stood just along from the Banqueting House. In the direction of Parliament Square. Stood approximately where the Ministry of Defense stands today.
The house came down in 1938. But you can still see it. Indeed you can see the very room, the dining room. Where the whip descended. Do a search for Whitehall Privy Gardens. It’ll bring up a print of the dining room – the interior of the dining room – of 4 Whitehall Gardens. So that’s where. As for when? Yes, it’s July 2nd, 1850. But we can narrow the focus. It’s nine minutes after eleven o’clock at night.
And as for who? It’s Sir Robert Peel, arguably the greatest Prime Minister of the 19th Century.
And so we come to What?
In the words of the next day’s edition of the Times, “Sir Robert Peel is no more.”
That’s the lofty note.
Hitting the middle register, the Times tells it like this.
Heady stuff isn’t it. Political prose that’s port or even brandy compared to Muscadet.
Now I borrowed that great line from Virginia Woolf’s great novel, Mrs Dalloway: “the world has raised its whip, where will it descend?”
And we now know the answer to Where? And When? And Who? And What?
But I think we can work another Where? And another When? Into the weave.
Let us go, you and I, to June 29th, 1850. Let us go, you and I, to the top of Constitution Hill. You could in all fairness say it’s right there, just then, that the world has raised its whip. And it’s there, at this moment, this hour, that it’s going to descend. It’s going to descend on our man, 62-year-old Sir Robert Peel, the former Prime Minister. And there he is, coming into view, on horseback. Right there, on the top of Constitution Hill.
Oh my gosh. His horse has thrown him. He’s fallen face downwards. Oh no. His horse has trampled him on his back. Yes, you’re right to fear the worst. He’s suffered terrible internal injuries. He’s carried to his house, there at 4 Whitehall Gardens. To the dining room. He’s a dying man. He’s got about 72 more hours to live. Three short days that are also long and painful days.
Now I’m going to call Time Out on the Field here and make a short announcement. A short announcement about London. This place, it’s like a painting. Our own painting. A painting you keep adding to but never finish. Every time you find something out about London, that’s like another brushstroke. “Oh, so that happened here.” Maybe if you’re listening to this your painting of London will have some of the same brushstrokes mine has. My painting of this bit of London – Constitution Hill – has long had two other brushstrokes. Over the course of her 63-year-reign there were eight assassination attempts on Queen Victoria’s life. Two of the eight took place on Constitution Hill. One in 1840. Another in 1842. In both instances, Queen Victoria was riding in a carriage down Constitution Hill. Her would-be assassins aimed pistols at her, pulled the trigger. And missed. You’ll be wondering what happened to the would-be assassins. They were charged with high treason but the juries found them not guilty by reason of insanity.
I’m tempted to say that for me Constitution Hill is London’s grassy knoll. Two attempts there on Victoria’s life. And Robert Peel’s horse throwing him there and then trampling on his back. The world had raised its whip and it descended there on Sir Robert Peel. It descended as well, was aimed at Queen Victoria. But missed. But, yes, those are the three daubs of paint, the three brushstrokes on the Constitution Hill section of my painting of London. Those two assassination attempts and Sir Robert Peel being thrown head first from his horse. It was there that Sir Robert Peel got into Charon’s boat and started his journey across the Styx to Hades.
Anything else? Yes. It’s maybe a little bit macabre but let’s accompany the badly injured baronet – Yes, Sir Robert Peel was a baronet – let’s accompany the badly injured baronet to his house at 4 Whitehall Gardens. And when we cross Whitehall, just before we get to the house, let’s not forget another failed assassination attempt. Well, it was a failed assassination attempt that succeeded. Walking along Whitehall Sir Robert Peel’s private secretary, Edward Drummond, was gunned down. Shot in the back and killed by a Scottish woodsman named Daniel McNaghten. McNaghten pulled the trigger in the mistaken belief that Edward Drummond was Prime Minister Robert Peel.
And to close, a reminder of why we’re remembering Sir Robert Peel today. Not because it’s the anniversary of death. Lots of people in London died on July 2nd, 1850. No, we remember Sir Robert Peel because he created the modern police force. It’s why British coppers are called Bobbies. The name Bob is of course a short form or nickname for Robert. Or if you prefer, Bob is a diminutive of Bobby, which is a shortened form of Robert. Robert Peel. Bob Peel. Bobby Peel. Bobbies.
And sometimes, not so many years ago, in Northern Ireland, the police were referred to or nicknamed Peelers. Bears repeating, founded by Robert Peel the Metropolitan Police and police elsewhere in the country were nicknamed Peelers in his honor. Or if you prefer, in recognition that they were his creation.
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.