London calling.
London Walks connecting.
This… is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets ahead.
Story time. History time.
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A very good morning to you, London Walkers. One and all. Wherever you are. It’s Monday, March 17th, 2025.
St Patrick’s Day.
We can get stuck in by making a couple of connections about the two main islands in the British Isles Archipelago. And as long as we’re at it, did you know that there are more than 6,000 islands in the archipelago. How’s that stat for a showstopper?
But yes, the two principal islands are of course Great Britain and Ireland. The name Ireland comes from the name of a Gaelic Goddess. As for the name Britain, it’s believed to come from a Celtic word meaning “the painted ones” or “the tattooed folk.”
Anyway, near the top of the news this morning, the consternation – there’s a lot of it – in Wales about the thrashing the English side visited on their Welsh opponents yesterday in the Six Nations Rugby Tournament. All the more painful for the Welsh given that rugby is the national sport. Cue St Patrick. Cue St Patrick because it’s believed the patron Saint of Ireland was in fact Welsh-born. But never mind. That’s a lot closer to home than the patron saint of England, St George. He was born in what today we’d call Turkey. He lived a long time ago, St Patrick. Fifteen centuries ago. He’s said to have been captured by pirates and sold into slavery in Ireland. Six years later he escaped, made his way to France, where he became a monk and subsequently a bishop. Returned to Ireland as a missionary in 432. Or thereabouts. Got there and got on with it. Carried all before him making the country properly Christian. He suppressed the power and influence of the Druids. He banished snakes from Ireland. I’d like to know how he did that – did he get up on a stump and thunder “slither away”? But the fact of the matter is, there are no snakes in Ireland. As for the shamrock, he used it – its three leaves – to illustrate the doctrine of the Trinity. And why is today St Patrick’s Day? Has to do with Easter. St Patrick’s Day always fell in the period of Lent. And it was a respite. The Lenten restrictions on eating and drinking were lifted. It was a time of great merrymaking in the community. Still is. The community today is worldwide.
Thanks to the Irish diaspora. Think of the St Patrick’s Day parades in New York and Boston. Think of the river in Chicago being dyed green. Hey, there’s even a St Patrick’s Day parade in Moscow.
Festivities, celebrations, feasting, the Irish diaspora…handbrake turn here. I’ve been on walking tours all over the world. The most memorable one was in Dublin. The guide was a very old man. At one point he said, unforgettably, “we’ve had too much history in this country.” It wasn’t so much a blinding moment of revelation for me as an eye-opening moment. Because in this country, history is celebrated. The English especially can’t get enough of their history. Their glorious history. Different story in Ireland. So since it’s St Patrick’s Day – a day celebrated all over the world thanks to the Irish diaspora – the Irish diaspora that’s an important part of that history – some Irish history – painful as it is – is called for.
Ireland was first invaded in 1169.
The subjugation of Ireland and the Irish to this country, it took 750 years for what became the Republic of Ireland to free itself of those manacles. And let’s make a London connection. There’s a statue of Prime Minister Robert Peel in Parliament Square. Depending on where you are in the British Isles there are various nicknames associated with Robert Peel. When he was Home Secretary he brought in the modern police force. To this day a nickname for British coppers is Bobbies. Bobby being a diminutive of Bob which in turn is a diminutive of Rob which is short for Robert. The modern police force was the creation of Bobby Peel. Ergo the name, Bobbies. But in Northern Ireland the police are still called – by part of the community at any rate – Peelers.
Head south, to the Republic of Ireland, Robert Peel is remembered as “Orange Peel.” And why is that? Here’s why. Robert Peel was the Chief Secretary for Ireland for six years. In the words of the great historian Cecil Woodham Smith, he had “no liking for the Irish character, no sympathy with Irish aspirations, he ‘cordially detested’ Irish life and identified himself with the extreme Protestant party. He stoutly opposed Catholic emancipation; he was responsible for a severe coercion act. It was his habit, after a good dinner, of rising, standing on his chair, putting one foot on the table, and drinking the Irish toast to ‘the pious, glorious and immortal memory of William III’. William of Orange in other words. Which prompted the Irish Liberator, Daniel O’Connell, to give him the nickname, ‘the Orange Peel.’
And as bad luck would have it, Robert Peel was the Prime Minister during the potato crop failure. The blight that struck Ireland in 1845 and led to five ghastly years of starvation and disease. A crop failure that became a famine; took the lives of over a million men, women and children. A disaster that affected the history not only of Ireland and England but also America. Think of those thousands of Irish emigrants, carrying with their few pathetic belongings a burning hatred of England. And they carried something else: that most dreaded disease: typhus.
Everything is connected.
Or is it? Because this day, St Patrick’s Day – in 1845 the first year of the potato famine, on St Patrick’s Day in 1845, here in England, in London,
an inventor named Stephen Perry, takes out a patent for the rubber band. History. It’s dizzying. In London the rubber band pitches up, in Ireland, less than 300 miles away, that horror of horrors, a national catastrophe, the Irish potato famine, sinks its talons into the Emerald Isle. Well, I suppose they are connected. Contrasts are just as revealing as similarities. Maybe more so.
Ok, main course coming up. And let me introduce it this way. I’ve said this before but it bears repeating. A London Walk is a three-legged stool. Two of the legs are achingly obvious. The third leg is often under the radar. The two achingly obvious legs are 1. London and 2. its history. The stories about the neighbourhood we’re exploring.
The third leg of the stool – the one that most people pay no heed to, but in many respects it’s the most important leg – is the people who go on our walks. They make London Walks possible. Without them, well, London would still be here. And the history would still be here. But London Walks wouldn’t be around.
And as every London Walks guide will tell you, it’s the people who go on the walk – the people you get to meet – they make this the best job in the world. They’re bright, they’re fun, they’re interested, they’re from here there and everywhere. And they’re from all walks of life. It makes for a fascinating mix. When I was an academic – in the English Department at UCL – if there was a party, a gathering, well, for the most part, it was everybody else who was in the English Department. Different story on a walking tour. I get to meet wonderful people who are doing really fascinating things – people I’d never get to meet otherwise. And that happy state of affairs, well, one thing often leads to another. Some of which is reflected in these podcasts. The which is very much the case here. On Saturday I did my Kensington Walk. A walker named Steve and his lovely wife Joyce were on the walk. Steve’s a conservation architect. Conservation architect? What’s that? I hadn’t a clue what a conservation architect is, what they do. How they do what they do. The descriptor of Steve’s line of work was brand new to me. I’d never heard of a conservation architect. Well, one thing led to another and après walk the three of us ended up in a lively cafe – but not too noisy – and I got Steve to tell me about what he does, tell me about his line of work and why it’s important. Not to say fascinating. And, lucky break, I had the microphone with me. Ergo this podcast.
Now this is maybe a bit self-indulgent but toward the end of our tete a tete the conversation drifted over toward the walk the three of us just been on. And I was very pleased to hear that Steve and Joyce had enjoyed it and had nice things to say about it. They gave me a pat on the back and yes, unashamedly, I didn’t plump for modesty, didn’t edit that out. But hey, it counts for so much more when it comes from a customer. Rather than us blowing our own horn. Here’s the interview…
Ok, I’ve just finished my Kensington Walk. And I’m with Steve and Joyce. And Steve is a conservation architect. Is that right?
[Interview with Steve the Conservation Architect 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.