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. Wherever you are.
It’s Tuesday, May 20th, 2025.
May 20th. If May 20th were Credence Clearwater Revival it’d come right out and say it, “I put a spell on you.” If May 20th were a bridge hand it’d be one of the best bridge hands ever. Let’s see what May 20th has been dealt.
Christopher Columbus died on May 20th, 1506. Something about May 20th and the New World because the Marquis de Lafayette died on May 20th, 1834. And long as we’re here, well, let’s refresh that memory. Put some flowers on that grave. It’s in Paris, incidentally. Lafayette – to the undying shame of the third-rate American politicians a generation ago who crowed about the French being surrender monkeys – Lafayette was the French military officer and politician who volunteered to join General George Washington’s Continental Army in the American War of Independence. And who well and truly closed the deal. Lafayette commanded the Continental Army troops in the decisive Siege of Yorktown, the Revolutionary War’s final major battle. What Lafayette and those Continental Army troops did at Yorktown secured American independence.
What else? Well, here in London, just about a hundred years before Yorktown – May 20th, 1685 to be exact – Titus Oakes was flogged from Aldgate to Newgate Prison. Aldgate to Newgate Prison, that’s a mile and a half – about three times as far as the Via Dolorosa, Jesus’s walk to his crucifixion. It hardly bears thinking about, Titus Oakes’ walk. Though walk’s hardly the word for it. And what happened in London on May 20th, 1685 was just one Act – Act III let’s say – in that particular historical pageant. Titus Oates was, well, the whipping boy for the so-called Popish Plot. Tried and found guilty he was sentenced to be imprisoned for life, and to be whipped through the streets of London five days a year for the remainder of his life. On May 18th he was put into the pillory at the gate of Westminster Hall – Westminster Hall is still there of course, it’s a key stop – and rightly so, no other building in this country crystallises its history like Westminster Hall – it’s a key stop on our Old Westminster Walk. Passers-by taunted him and pelted him with eggs. The next day was London’s turn. Oates was taken to London, where, sure enough, he was pilloried. And as long as we’re at it, let’s pillory the word pillory. Affix it here for your contemplation. It was a wooden framework with holes for the head and hands. London had pillories aplenty: in Cheapside, Cornhill, and Newgate. The idea, needless to say, was to entrap offenders in the device and thus expose them to public abuse. Being pilloried in London was Act II. Act III was today, May 20th, 1685, Oates was stripped, tied to a cart and, as I said, whipped from Aldgate to Newgate. The next day – Act IV – he was whipped from Newgate to Tyburn. In case you’re wondering, that’s just over four miles. Yes, Jerusalem’s got nothing on London when it comes to vias dolorosa.
But it’s time to avert our gaze. Let’s go to May 20th, 1806. Go to 13 Rodney Street in Pentonville. Say hello to a newborn. Some newborn. John Stewart Mill. The English philosopher, political economist, politician and civil servant. He’ll learn to read and write ancient Greek when he’s three years old. Latin and arithmetic at eight. And logic at twelve.
Sounds a bit daunting, a bit dry, doesn’t it. In which case, let’s fast forward to May 20th, 1845. Important day for the poet Robert Browning. He’s going to pay his first visit to Elizabeth Barrett. She was an invalid. Confined to a bedroom by her despotic poet. But she sure could write. Her 1844 volume of Poems was a sensation. Not least to Robert Browning. He wrote to her, “I love your verses with all my heart, dear Miss Barrett.” One thing led to another and Robert Browning arrived at 50 Wimpole Street on this day in 1845. And so began one of the most famous courtships in literature.
And that’s all she wrote. No, not quite. On May 20th, 1946 – two months before this American citizen pitched up – W. H. Auden became an American citizen.
And that’s it, it’s been a rich repast – a six course meal – this May 20th biographical and historical feast. Time now to put our napkins down, push our chairs back, and repair to the drawing room.
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.