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 Sunday, October 26th.
And here it is – here’s your daily London fix.
You can almost hear it before you see it.
That hush. That intake of breath. That little flurry of movement as the auctioneer raises the gavel.
And then – bang.
History changes hands.
Welcome to Sotheby’s, Mayfair.
A place where billionaires, dreamers, collectors and the mildly curious all come to do the same thing: hold their nerve until the hammer falls.
It started small. London, 1744. Samuel Baker, a bookseller with a good eye and a sharper instinct, auctions off “several hundred scarce and valuable books” belonging to a certain Sir John Stanley. That modest sale on 11 March 1744 planted a seed that’s grown into the world’s most famous auction house.
Two hundred and eighty years later, Sotheby’s is still at it – selling everything from Rembrandts to rare whisky, from couture handbags to gemstones the size of ice cubes. It’s still headquartered on New Bond Street. Still synonymous with value, glamour and a dash of theatre.
Because make no mistake, it is theatre. The auctioneer stands centre stage, one hand on the podium, eyes flicking across the room like a hawk watching prey. “Lot 32… do I hear 500? Thank you, 550, 600 now, 650… going once… twice…”
Bang. Sold.
And the audience exhales.
Ok. Gear shift. When to go – and what you’ll see
Sotheby’s London opens its doors Monday to Friday, ten till five. Most of the time you can just wander in and have a look round the preview galleries – and it’s free. You’ll see the works going under the hammer: paintings, jewels, fashion, sculpture, watches, furniture, curiosities.
The auctions themselves happen at all hours – morning, afternoon, sometimes glamorous evening sales. Check the Sotheby’s website for times; you can attend in person, online, or even bid by phone if you’ve got the nerve.
There’s no strict dress code, but it’s Mayfair. Let’s just say blue jeans are fine if they’re good jeans and you’ve made some effort with your shoes. This isn’t a pub quiz; it’s the world’s oldest auction house.
And here’s the irony: blue jeans do sell at Sotheby’s. A pair of 19th-century Levi’s, dug out of an old American mineshaft, fetched nearly £70,000. So yes, denim’s perfectly welcome under the hammer – just maybe not the thing to wear when you’re in the room watching it happen.
And if you ever find yourself tempted to raise that paddle, remember: when the hammer comes down, the buyer pays not just the “hammer price” but a “buyer’s premium” – about 27 per cent on the first million or so, then slightly less above that.
The showstoppers
Now let’s talk about some of the jaw-droppers.
Late 2023. A bottle of whisky sells in that very London room for £2.2 million. The Macallan 1926 – sixty years in cask, one of only forty bottles ever made. It’s the most expensive whisky ever auctioned. You could buy a terrace house in Islington for that.
Then there’s fashion royalty. In Paris, the original Hermès Birkin bag – the actual one designed for Jane Birkin herself – went under the hammer for over ten million dollars. One handbag. Ten million.
At the artier end of things, the record price at Sotheby’s still belongs to Amedeo Modigliani’s Nu couché (sur le côté gauche) – 157 million dollars. The buyer’s paddle practically caught fire that night.
And the numbers don’t stop there. The Macklowe Collection – a divorce settlement turned art sale – fetched 922 million dollars across two nights. It became the most valuable collection ever sold at auction.
And then there are the surprises
Not everything sells for the stratospheric sums. There are quiet marvels too – manuscripts, letters, little historical fragments. A Beethoven sketch sold for £166,500. A Roman coin might fetch a few thousand. Occasionally, a piece fails to sell altogether and is “bought in”. The silence when that happens – you can feel it like a cold draft.
Sometimes there are mishaps. Paintings dropped. Frames cracked. Protesters shouting about looted artefacts. A few years ago, a Banksy shredded itself seconds after being sold. The shredded half promptly became worth twice as much. Only at Sotheby’s.
The people behind the gavel
The auctioneers themselves are half-actors, half-mathematicians, part-showmen, part-ringmasters. They’ve got to track dozens of bids, read body language, keep the rhythm alive. The greats – Tobias Meyer, Oliver Barker – have their own followings. Watch them at work and it’s poetry. Precision and poise and pace.
They’re the voice of Sotheby’s. Their cadence – “Do I have five? Five! Six! Seven! Seven in the room, thank you!” – is a kind of music.
What’s coming up
If you fancy seeing the show for yourself, October’s your month.
On 28 October, the Modern & Contemporary sale goes live. On 29 October, Arts of the Islamic World & India. Then from the 16th right through to the 30th – Handbags & Fashion. All on New Bond Street. All open to the public.
And each one comes with its own temptations.
From the watch sale: a platinum Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Offshore from 2021, expected around £150,000. Or a rare Patek Philippe quietly ticking up in value.
In jewellery: a René Boivin gold-and-turquoise necklace, circa 1950 – mid-century glamour you can practically hear clinking with champagne.
Then the showpiece: a Claude Lalanne necklace from the Pauline Karpidas collection. Sculpture you can wear – surreal, exquisite, pure art.
And, yes, more handbags. A Hermès Birkin 30 in pale alligator with gold hardware, 2020 vintage, expected between £80,000 and £100,000. That’s Mayfair for you: bags at the price of Bentleys.
So what’s it like to be there?
Electric. The air hums. Bidders glance, nod, twitch. Assistants whisper into phones – “Yes, sir, you’re still in.” Cameras flash, catalogues rustle, and every few minutes the gavel cracks through the air like a pistol shot.
You can sit there with your coffee, your folded arms and your low paddle number, and for an hour you’re inside the bloodstream of global taste and money.
It’s high drama. It’s London theatre with oil paint, gold, silk and diamonds.
And the best bit? You can just walk in.
That’s the thing about Sotheby’s – it looks exclusive, but it’s not a locked door. Anyone can come and watch. The previews are free, the auctions open. And once you’ve been, you’ll never read a sale headline the same way again.
Because you’ll know what it feels like – that pause, that whisper, that final breath before the auctioneer says,
“Going once… going twice…”
Bang.
And the world changes hands.
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 £25 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 Jack the 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.