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 Tuesday, July 22nd, 2025.
Entelechy. That’s the only word for it. Sixty years on London Walks has found its entelechy.
And, yes, here’s a crib sheet for that word entelechy. It’s a really fine word. With the best possible pedigree. We get it from Aristotle. It means, realised its potential. Actuality as opposed to potentiality. The entelechy breakthrough for London Walks is the walk we’re calling The Ultimate London Walk. With it, London Walks has realised its potential. For anyone who’s brand new to this, The Ultimate London Walk is the walk that’s never been done before, the walk that’s going to start in the countryside, in Hertfordshire, on the northern edge of London and walk, in fourteen stages, all the way across London. Walk to the southern edge of London. Walk to the countryside down in Surrey. It’s a walk that’s been over 30 years in the making. It’s the brainchild and creation of London Walks guide extraordinaire, Charlie Forman. But there will be several stages of the walk where you’ll be getting two guides for the price of one.
Anyway, earlier today I caught up with Charlie on Hampstead Heath. And we had a good natter about the project, about The Ultimate London Walk. And that – it was an interview of sorts – is what this edition of London Calling is about. I got Charlie to bring us right up to date with where it’s at. To use a pretty good London historical analogy, Charlie is Brunel and The Ultimate London Walk is the Great Eastern. And it, the London Walks Great Eastern, is now on the slipways, and will be launched in just under seven weeks’ time. That’s exciting. We’re beside ourselves with anticipation. So of course I wanted the Brunel of the London Walks Great Eastern to fill us in about the final brushstrokes he’s applying these last few weeks. And indeed get him to provide a few more bits and bobs of back story. Get the whole thing into sharper focus. And that’s what happened. So without further adieu, here’s Charlie with the very latest – leavened with some backstory – on The Ultimate London Walk.
[Interview with Charlie follows]
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.