London Calling. London Walks connecting. This is London. This is London Walks. Streets ahead. Story time. History time.
[INTRODUCTION]
And welcome to our new Saturday edition of London Calling.
Saturday, November 14th, 2026. High noon.
And we’ve got a cracker for you today.
We’re going to spend most of our time in a shop.
But what a shop.
The oldest hat shop in the world. Indeed, it lays claim to being the oldest shop in London.
A shop that was already a hundred years old when the United States of America came into existence.
And the things I saw in there. The people whose names cropped up. The sheer weight of history.
At one point, I was shown something that quite literally took my breath away.
And I heard these words: “This has been locked away in our safe for 200 years.”
Well, you’re going to hear those words too. And the story behind them.
But first, a little London scene-setting.
Because something rather wonderful is happening in the City of London as we speak.
[TODAY IN LONDON – THE LORD MAYOR’S SHOW]
It’s the Lord Mayor’s Show!
And it’s underway right now.
The procession set off from Mansion House an hour ago, at eleven o’clock this morning.
And even as I’m speaking, thousands of people are making their way through the City of London in one of the great spectacles of the London year.
Horses. Hundreds of horses. Military bands. Marching musicians. Ceremonial uniforms. Flags. Floats. Scarlet and gold. More scarlet. More gold.
And crowds. Huge crowds.
And the man the whole thing is about?
The new Lord Mayor of London.
Not the Mayor of London, mind you. That’s a different animal entirely.
This is the Lord Mayor of the City of London. The Square Mile. The ancient heart of London.
His name is BROH-nek mah-soh-YAH-dah
Bronek Masojada. And he’s the 698th Lord Mayor.
And the Lord Mayor’s Show is one of the oldest surviving civic spectacles anywhere in the world.
It goes all the way back to 1215.
Yes, 1215. Magna Carta year. King John on the throne.
Now, London already had a mayor. The first recorded one, Henry Fitz-Ailwin, took office in 1189.
But in 1215, King John granted Londoners the formal right to choose their own mayor every year.
There was a catch, though.
The newly elected mayor had to present himself to the sovereign and swear allegiance.
Which meant making the journey from the City to Westminster.
And from that requirement grew one of the great spectacles of the London year.
The Lord Mayor’s Show.
Eight hundred years later, we’re still doing it.
Think about that.
What started out as a journey to swear loyalty to the king has become this extraordinary explosion of colour and sound and ceremony.
And here’s something rather special about today’s Show.
The river journey is back.
For the first time since 2017, the Lord Mayor has begun his Show day on the Thames.
———-
This morning, at half past eight, he set off from Westminster aboard the Royal Shallop Jubilant, accompanied by a flotilla of boats from the City’s ancient livery companies.
He disembarked at HMS President. And then made his way to Mansion House, where the great street procession was preparing to get underway.
An echo of those long-ago journeys between the City and Westminster.
And then, into the procession.
Six and a half thousand participants. Two hundred and fifty horses. More than fifty decorated floats. Military bands. Musicians. Performers. Livery companies. Schoolchildren.
The lot.
And an estimated 350,000 people lining the route.
It’s a huge, gloriously extravagant piece of living London history.
And there’s another anniversary today.
A hundred years ago, in 1926, the BBC broadcast the Lord Mayor’s Show live on radio for the first time.
So the Show has been going for more than eight centuries. And it’s been going out over the airwaves for a hundred years.
And here we are, broadcasting about it ourselves.
Now, there’s a pleasing thought.
But back to those ceremonial uniforms. All that finery.
Because what do you suppose is one of the most important finishing touches to an outfit like that?
A hat.
Of course, a hat.
Which brings us, rather conveniently, to our Word of the Day.
[WORD OF THE DAY – TRICORNE]
Today’s word is tricorne.
A lovely word. And if you know your Latin, you’ve pretty much got it.
Tri means three. Cornu means horn.
And look at a tricorne from above. Three corners. Three horns, if you like. A three-horned hat.
The brim has been turned up in three places, giving it that wonderfully distinctive triangular shape.
Think 18th-century gentlemen. Think powdered wigs. Think George Washington. Think splendidly attired Georgian officers.
And there’s a nice little historical wrinkle here.
The hat was all the rage long before people generally called it a tricorne.
Back in its heyday, it was simply a cocked hat.
Because the brim was cocked up.
The name tricorne caught on later, in the 19th century.
Which is one of those amusing things language does. We invent a name for something, and then, looking backwards, attach that name to an age that didn’t necessarily use it.
But here’s why tricorne is particularly apt today.
The Lord Mayor of London wears one.
And the Worshipful Company of Feltmakers has a long tradition of presenting a ceremonial tricorne to each incoming Lord Mayor.
In fact, just two years ago, in 2024, the Feltmakers commissioned a very special tricorne for the Lord Mayor.
Made from a single piece of felt, it carried a historic badge and chain decoration that had been worn by a Lord Mayor some 170 years earlier.
And who made it?
Lock & Co.
Lock the hatters, of St James’s Street.
The oldest hat shop in the world.
And the very people we’re about to meet.
There’s our connection.
From the streets of the City, where the Lord Mayor’s Show is in full swing, to a shop in St James’s Street that’s been putting hats on some of the world’s most celebrated heads for three and a half centuries.
[THE MAIN EVENT – LOCK & CO.]
That’s when the business began.
Charles II was on the throne.
London was still recovering from the Great Fire, just ten years earlier.
And over in St James’s Street, a man named Robert Davis opened a hat shop.
A business that would go on to become one of the most remarkable commercial survivors in London history.
Three hundred and fifty years.
Let that sink in.
Three and a half centuries of customers coming through the door. Three and a half centuries of heads being measured. Hats ordered. Hats made. Hats collected.
Kings. Queens. Admirals. Prime Ministers. Actors. Artists. Explorers. The great and the good. The famous and the infamous.
And quite a few perfectly ordinary people who simply wanted a good hat.
The business moved across the street to its present home, Number 6 St James’s Street, in 1765.
And it’s still there.
Still making hats. Still measuring heads. Still looking after customers.
And here’s another lovely anniversary coincidence.
The Lord Mayor’s Show goes back more than 800 years.
The BBC first broadcast it 100 years ago.
And Lock & Co. is celebrating its 350th birthday.
Three anniversaries in one story.
That’s London for you.
And there’s one more American connection.
The United States is celebrating its 250th birthday this year.
Lock’s was already a hundred years old when America declared its independence.
And among its customers have been some pretty extraordinary Americans.
Which brings us to the first person I met when I visited Lock’s.
[MARTHA AND PAUL]
Martha.
Martha is a young hatter at Lock’s. Charming, knowledgeable, enthusiastic.
And she’s going to take us into the world of this remarkable business.
Here’s one of the questions I asked her.
Think of all those famous people who’ve walked through that door over the last 350 years.
If you could bring just one of them back, have them walk through that door today, who would it be?
She didn’t hesitate.
Jackie Onassis.
And there was a fascinating reason for her choice.
Because hanging on the wall of the Heritage Room, preserved under glass, there’s something extraordinary associated with Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.
A personal record of the exact shape of her head.
Not a photograph. Not a drawing in the ordinary sense.
Something much more unusual.
And it bears her signature.
It’s kept in company with similar records connected with Franklin Roosevelt, Noël Coward, Cecil Beaton and others.
Quite a collection.
And you’ll hear Martha explain how those records were made, using a remarkable old contraption called a conformateur.
But then Martha handed me over to Paul.
Paul is Lock’s house historian, the curator of the Heritage Room.
And this is where the story took another extraordinary turn.
Because Paul has access to the historical records, the old documents, the treasures that have survived from earlier centuries.
And at one point, he unlocked a cabinet, opened it.
And took out a ledger.
An ancient ledger.
We’re talking about a book more than two centuries old.
And there, in that book, is an entry associated with one of the most famous men in British history.
Admiral Lord Nelson.
Nelson was a customer at Lock’s.
He first ordered a cocked hat from them in 1800. He ordered more in the years that followed.
And in September 1805, just weeks before Trafalgar, he made his last recorded visit to the shop.
The hat associated with Nelson at Trafalgar was a Lock bicorne.
And the shop still has the old records.
Now, I’ve been telling London stories for a long time.
But I can tell you, standing there looking at that ledger, with Paul explaining what I was seeing, was one of those moments.
One of those moments when history suddenly stops being something in a book.
It becomes tangible.
You can almost reach out and touch it.
Well, in this case, I practically could.
And it took my breath away.
So that’s what we’ve got for you today.
Two wonderful people. Martha and Paul.
One extraordinary shop.
Three hundred and fifty years of London history.
And hats. Lots and lots of hats.
So, from the Lord Mayor’s tricorne to the heads of Jackie Onassis and Admiral Lord Nelson, it’s time to go through that famous door at Number 6, St James’s Street.
Let’s meet Martha.
[over to the interview with Martha followed by interview with Paul]
And there you have it. The very first London Calling Saturday Show. Our new weekly format. Every Saturday at noon.
And yes, we’re still feeling our way with it. This week’s the very definition of early days.But taking stock, I’m feeling pretty good about it.
Because getting me off the leash of having to put out a podcast every single day has done exactly what I hoped it would do.
It’s freed me up. To get out and about. A lot more.
This past week, for example, I sallied forth to Bohemia House in West Hampstead. Met and interviewed Tomas, the charming young Czech manager there. That turned into a Special. A couple of days later I ventured over to Camden Town. Discovered that the place where I misspent much of my youth – working as a News Editor at WTN – stands on a site once known as Dead Dogs’ Hole. Who knew? Certainly not me. Another Special.
And I caught up with Richard III on a couple of his walks. Did some microphone work with him. More material for the cupboard.
So it hasn’t just been this Saturday edition. I’ve managed to work a couple of Specials into the weave of the week as well.
And that’s exactly what I was hoping for.
So, all in all, I’d call it a reasonably successful start.
Let’s see what next week brings.
But one thing you can absolutely count on. London Calling. Every Saturday. Twelve noon. That’s our new fixture. Same time, same place. High noon. Every Saturday. London Calling.
In the on deck circle, next Saturday, November 21st.
And between now and then? Well, methinks there’s a pretty good chance there’ll be another Special or two coming down the track before we get to next Saturday.
Keep an ear out.
And in the meantime, keep the faith. And keep Londoning – good Londoning – one and all.
This is London. This is London Walks.
Streets ahead.