London calling.
London Walks connecting.
This… is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets ahead.
Story time. History time.
A very good day to you London Walkers. Wherever you are.
It’s Monday, September 8th, 2025.
London Calling Book Club Corner first.
Recovering lawyer Tom Hooper’s second day in the Chair.
If this were Ascot Tom would be backing three horses.
Another way of putting that, Tom’s not just a bibliophile. He’s a promiscous bibliophile. Tom’s dating three books at the same time. None of them know about the others.
Tom says all three of the books he’s dating are about journeys.
He says, “I’ve started the biography of Pope Francis, particularly to read about his early life in Argentina. And his journey to be the first Pope born outside Europe in a thousand years.” Splendid. Keep the papal bulletins coming, Tom. Counsel for the defence will want them entered into evidence.
Ok, moving on.
Truth be told, I’m in a bit of haze, bit of a daze. So it’s anybody’s guess where this one’s heading.
Bit of a haze, bit of daze because of the travelogue of my last day-and-a-half dash about.
So this is London Calling from the Muddy Place where two rivers meet. In short, I’m in Kuala Lumpur. The Muddy Place where two rivers meet. That’s what the place name Kuala Lumpur means.
A euphemism it isn’t.
In marked contrast to just about the last uniformed person I saw in London. The label on his uniform said, “Hygiene Operative.” Which, if you think about it, is a euphemism of a euphemism. The first euphemism being Rest Room Attendant. A restroom – at no little risk of belabouring the obvious – isn’t a restroom, it’s a loo. And of course that splendid English word loo is also a euphemism. Good London story, that one. Goes back to the days when London streets were hardly wider than footpaths and had a kennel, an open sewer running down the middle of them. Maids of all work – all work indeed – would sling the contents of the chamber pot out of an upstairs window… and if they were of a kindly, considerate disposition they’d give a warning shout before they let fly. They’d call out ‘gardez l’eau’, which of course is cod-French for watch out for the water. Water is of course another euphemism. What they were saying was watch out for the slops, watch out for the piss and turds I’m about to sling out of this window.
So, if there’s a bottom line here – I use the word bottom advisedly of course – if there is a bottom line here, it’s gardez les euphemisms. Or show them a clean pair of heels, head to the muddy place where two rivers meet.
Giddy stuff, euphemisms – especially against the foil of plain speaking – that contrast can make you tipsy, dizzy, leave you reeling. Which is what I am just now. But it’s not because of the euphemism Hygiene Operative over against Muddy Place – you want a riff, now there’s a thought, the full title of that job could be Muddy Place Hygiene Operative – in at I’m in a bit of a haze, bit of a daze, it’s because of my travelogue.
And it’s not at all ’I was in London a few hours ago and now I’m in Kuala Lumpur.’
No, That’s no big deal. That travelogue’s done millions of times a year. Rather, it’s the London I was in one moment. And from that, to being in Kuala Lumpur. That was a haze- and daze-making travelogue. From that London of deep woods and open fields and countryside and streams and village greens and tithe barns – a London I didn’t know existed – from that London to the muddy place thousands of miles away, the muddy place known as Kuala Lumpur. No wonder my head’s spinning.
The trap door I fell through to get me to the end of this rope was language – the word euphemism in particular – so let’s bring this in with another linguistic post mortem. This sometimes – more than sometimes, it often – happens to me. An infinitely ordinary word – a word I’ve used a bajillion times and never given a second thought to – will kick me in the shins and say, ‘hey, look at me, will you, pay attention to me. And if you don’t I’m going to keep you awake at night, haunt your dreams.
So i was thinking about something Alison said. She was that lovely Scots lass – the language teacher – who i interviewed twice for The Ultimate London Walk. She was my first interviewee before we started. And then i caught up with her at the end of the day, when we’d completed the second walk. I caught up with her and asked her what she thought. Had it worked for her, had she liked it? Thinking back over the day – over those two walks – where we’d been – what we’d seen – what was her verdict? Well, if you listened to that podcast, you’ll know that it met with Alison’s approval, lock, stock and barrel. And one of the points she made was, “I met a lot of interesting people.’
Anyway, for some reason that infinitely quotidian word ‘people’ hit home with me like it’s never hit home in the millions of times I’ve heard it and used it. Yeah, the word ‘people’ kicked me in the shins and said ‘hey, look at me.’
So I did. I dove down. Here’s what I found. Here’s what I brought up.
Allow me to back up and get a run at this.
Here we go.
Here’s a word you use every day — “people.” Seems ordinary, doesn’t it? But it’s carrying Rome on its back.
Step into the Forum, two thousand years ago. The crowds, the chatter, the soldiers clanking through — the Romans had a word for that mass of humanity: populus. That’s the ancestor of our word “people.”
Populus marches into French, becomes peuple. Crosses the Channel with the Normans, turns into Middle English peple. And, voilà, our modern “people.”
Dig deeper and it’s older still — from an Indo-European root meaning “army, host.” So baked into the word is the idea of numbers, of strength together.
And look at the family tree: popular, population, public, populace — even the poplar tree, named because Romans planted them in public squares. The tree of the people.
So next time you say “people,” don’t just hear six letters. Hear a Roman crowd, hear an army on the march, hear the marketplace hum. That’s what’s echoing in the word. Ordinary on the surface, epic underneath.
And what’s that up ahead of us. Is that Shooter’s Hill? And beyond it, the Dover Road? And hey you thinking what I’m thinking? We’ve been time-warped ladies and gentlemen. This ain’t 2025. It’s 1775. You sure, that the Dover Road ahead of us? Or some other road? All I know for sure is we’re going there. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe the next day. Stay tuned.
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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.