London calling.
London Walks connecting.
This… is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets ahead.
Story time. History time.
Top of the morning to you London Walkers. Wherever you are.
It’s Bank Holiday Monday, August 25th, 2025.
First, as per usual, a quick stop and a quaff at the London Calling Book Club Corner. It’s the last chance saloon before we light out for the territory. (Which, come to think of it, is an appropriate way of putting it, isn’t it? “Light out for the territory” is the famous last line of the great classic American novel, Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn.) Ok, so let’s huckle down with Dan this morning.
In fact, this is Dan Parry Day on London Calling. The whole of this podcast is given over to Dan. The main act is a really tasty interview with him. And why not, because Dan Parry is one of the brightest stars in the London Walks constellation. People really take to him. And they love his walks, as our mailbag eloquently attests to.
Anyway, turns out that Dan is reading Ben Macintyre’s new book, The Siege. One of the most dramatic London stories in the last half century, it’s about the SAS at the Iranian Embassy. Dan says it’s perfect for his purposes because – I’m quoting now – “it happens to be the dramatic ending of my Spies & Special Forces Walk. Great story, great book!”
Full agreement, Dan.
And on that note, let’s segue over to our main fare, my interview with Dan. Here we go.
[Interview with Dan follows. Interview in which Dan talks about the four walks he does: London’s Spymasters, Spies & Special Forces, Pirates, Press-Gangs and Execution Dock and Jack the Ripper. Talk about growing up in London, being a cowboy in Australia, university in Lancaster, his distinguished career with the BBC, a distinguished career in which he interviewed, amongst others, astronaut Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, and President George W. Bush. We hear about the first London Walk he went on. He was 18 years old. His mother took him on Alan’s Spies’ & Spycatchers’ London Walk. And he was hooked. And 20 years later or so, we got him. And what a catch he was. One of the finest plumes in the London Walks hat. Here’s Dan.]
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.