London calling.
London Walks connecting.
This… is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets ahead.
Story time. History time.
—————————————
And, from London a very good morning to you, wherever you are. It’s September 6th, 2024.
Today’s pin…
500 days and counting. And I for one can’t wait. It’s going to be London’s headline act, the biggest cultural project in Europe. Penny dropped? Yes, I’m talking about the rebirth of the London Museum – the move, in 2026, to its new home, the transformed and repurposed grand old Victorian Smithfield Market. And the pennies are dropping. £50 million of them yesterday. It’s just been announced that London Mayor Sadiq Khan and the City of London Corporation have upped their ante – their contribution – to the project’s coffers – by £25 million pounds each. That’s on top of their previous contributions.
So the Museum is getting there financially as well as physically. Its goal is to raise £437 million for the project. And it’s closing fast. A mere 20 million to go. For the record, the City of London is going to have bragging rights in the matter of the Museum’s finances. £222 million pounds – that’s just over half of the £437 million pound target – has come out of the deep pockets of the City. But hey, they’re not short of a bob or two. It’s not for nothing that the City of London is known as the Wall Street of Europe.
—————————-
Moving on, today’s Random – Stuff happens on London Walks. Unexpected stuff. By way of example, yesterday’s Old Westminster Walk. There were just five of us. Me, David, the guide and two lovely couples. Sharon and John from Yorkshire. And Robert and Maggie from Utah. And top of the list headed Stuff Happens: it pissed down, rained cold ropes. And did we get wet? We did not get wet. Not a drop. There were two interiors on the walk. They helped checkmate the downpour. As did a beautiful, 320-year-old doorhood we sheltered under. So even though that was the hardest London rainfall I’ve seen in the last ten years that claim I stake in the advancer email I sent out to all my walkers, held good. I say, “in 44 years of guiding I’ve never once taken an umbrella. It doesn’t rain on my walks.” Well, there was rain yesterday afternoon. For about ten minutes. And it was a downpour. But it didn’t downpour on us. Didn’t rain on us. But I mention the weather just in passing. I said stuff happens on London Walks. And we had a hat trick of stuff happens on yesterday’s Old Westminster Walk. For starters, the Celebrity Watch Klaxon went off on Lord North Street, the quintessence of the private face of Westminster, it’s a stunning Georgian back street that house for house has more political salons than any other street in London, anyway, there we were in Lord North Street, and suddenly the Yorkshire couple piped up, “Oh my gosh, that’s Andrew Marr just across the street.” Lots of British name recognition there but for the rest of you, Andrew Marr is a legendary television newsman in this country. And there he was.
We take about ten paces and Sheila and Mozart come round the corner. Sheila’s local. Married to a prominent politician. I’ve got to know her over the years. And Mozart is her Lucas Terrier. He’s Westminster’s loveliest dog. And there’s a great back story which Sheila often regales my walkers with. The breed – Lucas Terrier – gets its name from the MP who created the breed in the 1940s. Sir Jocelyn Lucas was a backwoods backbencher who, famously, only ever spoke once in the House. He got to his feet on that memorable day and put the question to the House. He said he’d created a new breed of terrier and would it be all right with the house if he named it after himself. The House of Commons gave him the go-ahead, and Mozart, of Cowley Street, SW1P – I don’t know but I’d like to think that letter P stands for Parliament – the adorable Mozart of Cowley Street SW1P is one of only about 800 Lucas terriers in the world. Meeting Mozart – and Sheila – on that walk is all by itself worth the price of admission.
Ok today’s Ongoing. And this one’s going to be the London Walks equivalent of Kobe Beef. Slices of Kobe Beef. The most prized beef in the world and extremely good.
Or another metaphor that gets the job done equally well. This weekend is a Festival of London Walks. Specials. One-offs that don’t come up very often. The cup runneth over. Fifteen of them in total. That’s the richest bounty, the richest walks harvest in the nearly 60 years that London Walks has been doing its thing.
Most weekends we lay on a couple of ‘specials’. This weekend, fifteen of them. For anybody who loves London walking tours this weekend’s going to be like being a kid in a candy shop. And I hasten to add, the 15 in this beauty pageant are just the specials. Our walking weekend’s going to be like a Cecil B DeMille epic in its plenitude because of course in addition to the specials we’ve also got the multitudes, the 30 or so regulars that run every weekend.
Anyway, I’m just going to run them by you, the 15 Specials London Walks is laying on in its Festival of Walks weekend. Kobe Beef, Festival of Walks, the lushness of a Cecil B DeMille epic – let’s make it four of a kind. The hand we’re dealing you this weekend, it’s like being dealt a perfect hand in bridge. Better than a perfect bridge hand. Fifteen cards in the same suit rather than 13.
Anyway, here’s the London Walks Specials programme for the weekend of Saturday, September 7th and Sunday, September 8th.
Saturday first.
First out of the blocks, Simon’s Day Trip to the Cotswolds. Just five more of them this season. So grab one of them while you can.
And then it’s Ann’s Foodies Walk – Epicurean, Gourmets’, Foodies’ London.
Next up, Alison’s new walk: Bankside, Brothels and the Bard.
Then Adam’s walking down old roads that are rapidly agin, going where the answers are blowing in the wind on his Bob Dylan in London Walk.
Stewart’s also got answers. Stewart’s our most distinguished guide. The former Editor and subsequently CEO of Independent Television News, Stewart’s an expert on the murky world of espionage. He’ll be doing his Hampstead Spies – the KGB in NW3 walk on Saturday morning. And then Saturday afternoon, the wild card. Award-winning professional geologist Ruth will be doing one of her Rocks of Ages walks. Urban Geology in St Giles.
And then it’s on to Sunday. The London Walks Sunday Specials programme gets underway with the niche walk of niche walks. Ann’s Cat Tails – A Feline Take on London History. And talk about an All-Star team of guides. Lisa Honan, the distinguished former diplomat, will be conducting her Empire in a Cup – the History of Tea Walk on Sunday morning.
Stephanie – the former Elephant Keeper at the London Zoo, so Steph’s got a pretty good claim to fame as well – Stephanie will be guiding her Classic London Mews and Hidden Passageways.
Prize-winning Blue Badge Guide Alison will doing her Charming Chiswick Walk.
And then it’s our new Ripper. Our feminist Ripper Walk. It’s guided by Ulrike whose walks come trailing clouds of glory in the shape of scores of 100 percent five-star reviews. The walk’s called Women of the Abbys – The Victims of Jack the Ripper.
Former Museum of London archaeologist Kevin will be conducting his Tudor London – the City of Wolf Hall Walk on Sunday afternoon.
And more star power. Award-winning Blue Badge guide Simon will be doing his hugely and deservedly popular London’s Burning – The Anniversary Walk. Yes, The Great Fire of London Walk.
Then it’s Sue’s Mediaeval London Walk.
And finally Jane Austen’s London. Guided by Rennaissance man London Museum emeritus archaeologist and London author, Kevin.
Mouth watering, isn’t it.
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 Museum of London archaeologist, historians,
university professors (one of them a distinguished Cambridge University paleontologist); it includes
criminal defence lawyers,
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.