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 Thursday, March 20th, 2025.
A lifetime ago – well nearly a lifetime ago – the great novelist, short story writer and essayist V. S. Pritchett wrote some undying words about London and Londoners.
Here’s the passage.
“This weight of the city and its name have other associations, mainly with the sense of authority, quiet self-consequence – known among us as modesty – unbounded worry, ineluctable usage and natural muddle. These are aspects of a general London frame of mind. If Paris suggests intelligence, if Rome suggests the world, if New York suggests activity, the word for London is experience. This points to the awful fact that London has been the most powerful and richest capital in the world for several centuries. It has been, until a mere 35 years ago, the capital of the largest world empire since the Roman and, even now, is the focal point of a vague Commonwealth. It is the capital source of a language now dominant in the world. Great Britain invented this language; London printed it and made it presentable. At the back of their minds – and the London mind has more back than front to it – Londoners are very aware of these things and are weighed down by them rather than elated. The familiar tone of the London voice is quick, flat-vowelled and concerned. The speaker is staving off the thought that hope is circumscribed and that every gift horse is to be looked at long in the mouth. He is – he complains – through no fault of his own, a citizen of the world. Half his mind, like that true Londoners, Antonio in The Merchant of Venice, is with his galleons overseas. And I do not speak only of the top people in LLoyd’s, the Bank of England, Downing Street, Lambeth Palace or Buckingham Palace, or what we call the Establishment; I speak of the bus drivers, the office-workers, even the office cleaners. It is the man who is painting your house who tells you he ‘sees’ the French government has fallen, that the Congo is unsettled, or that there is a dock strike in New York or ‘trouble’ in the Middle East. Foreigners are the Londoner’s nightmare; it is a nightmare he paid to have every night when he goes to bed. Sometimes rather well paid. There can be few of London’s nine millions who have not one close relative abroad and one at sea and who are not directly aware, like modest seismographs, of what is going on behind the scenes in places where the weather is better. They will mention the matter in pubs, lifts, at shop counters, in bus queues. The man who delivers my beer shuddered this week at the thought of what is going on in Iran: he once made a structural alteration in the Shah’s Rolls-Royce, outside Teheran. The publican at the end of the street worked on a survey in Turkey: he worries about the Turks, economically, geographically. A local waiter can run you off a résumé of the financial prospect and political tangle in Singapore.”
Brilliant stuff, isn’t it. You’ll find it in the first chapter of V.S. Pritchett’s book-length essay on London, called London Perceived. Which I think is the best book ever written about London.
Anyway, the true Londoner I have in mind this morning is Ajit, our pharmacist. Ajit’s of Indian extraction but he couldn’t be more of a Londoner. He’s whip-smart, he’s fun, he’s funny. He’s a great pharmacist – but he’s so much more than a pharmacist. I love going in there. He always makes me laugh. And true Londoner that he is, like Antonio, half his mind is with his galleons overseas. Foreigners are his nightmare. They cause him unbounded worry. And that’s part of Ajit’s general frame of mind, consummate Londoner that he is.
So this morning, as I bade him farewell, he called out to me, “we’re not ready to be Banksy’d. Not yet.” Slow on the pickup I of course didn’t get it. “Huh, what are you on about now, Ajit?”
Ajit said, “Come on slow coach, who’s Banksy, what’s he do?”
“Well, he’s the world’s most famous street artist. He paints stuff on walls.”
“Yes, he paints shadows.”
“Ok, and what’s your point, Ajit?”
“Nuclear warheads, what’s left of us after a nuclear war?”
“We get nuked we’re so many shadows on a wall. In the unlikely event that a wall is still standing.”
“Thanks for that thought, Ajit. Now that’s really cheered me up.”
But it did, actually. That, er, exchange was so London, and so Londoner of Ajit. And I loved the way he’d played the language. Very London that, too. Using the word Banksy that way. “We’re not ready to be Banksy’d. Not yet.”
And more London. I had two appointments – two different nurses, two different procedures – at my GP this morning. One of the nurses was from India but had lived for a time in New Jersey. I listened spellbound as she talked casually about the caste she belongs to.
And the other nurse was from Lebanon. Ajit the pharmacists and the two nurses – all three of them Londoners through and through. Consummate Londoners. An Indian nurse, a Lebanese nurse, an Indian pharmacist and for good measure an American patient. I quizzed them. They’re all of course bi or tri-lingual. Cue a favourite joke: if you speak three languages you’re tri-lingual; if you speak two languages you’re bi-lingual; if you only speak one language you’re English or American.
Moving on, splashed all over the front page of the Metro a big photograph of the Princess of Wales knocking back a pint of Guinness. As a subtitle put it – it was part of a Royal salute to St Patrick. And inevitably the headline was, Kate’s the Guin-cess of Wales!
But this is a phenomenon that’s maybe worth mulling over for a minute or two. Craig Brown makes the telling point that he knows the faces of royals better than he knows his own because he sees their faces more often than he sees his own face. He rightly says the Queen’s was the most familiar, the most photographed face in human history. Craig Brown says the late Queen’s was a face that we absorbed, almost without noticing, every day of our lives: on television, on coins and postcards, in newspapers and books and magazines, online, on walls, in galleries and on stamps. And cutting to the chase, he says, “the distribution of attention is absurd but it is something we must learn to live with.” There’s no getting away from it. And look, that phrase is a double entendre in this instance. Because the dark side of this moon is George Orwell’s great dystopian novel 1984. Big Brother’s face is everywhere. It may sit uncomfortably – but so it should. This distribution of attention phenomenon – in this instance it’s the Princess of Wales – has its parallels, is cut from the same cloth as the ubiquity of Big Brother in 1984. You have to wonder, what does all this really mean, what does it say about us, what’s really going on here? How did it come to this?
And as long as we’re on this subject generally, let’s get into our stride with an anniversary. What is it about this time of year? I suppose it’s sort of spring cleaning time. Out with the old and all that. A couple of days ago – March 17th – was the anniversary of the abolition, in 1649, of the monarchy. And another abolition, just over 300 years later – March 18th, 1958 – young women of aristocratic families being formally presented at court to the monarch. The practice of presenting debutantes at court marked the young women’s entry into high society and the marriage market. It was a tradition that got started in the 18th century. And it all ground to a halt on March 18th, 1958. That was the last hurrah, the last time debutantes were presented at court to the monarch. And why did the axe fall on the ceremony? The polite answer is Britain was becoming more egalitarian and debutantes – a formal presentation at court and all that rigamarole – it was outmoded, out of step with the times. Times were a changing and the ceremony had seen its day.
But Princess Margaret’s explanation gets my vote. She said, “we had to put a stop to it, every tart in London was getting in.”
And one other quintessentially London item. London, the times they are a changing. Which is by way of saying, the days of something else that’s just so London might be numbered. I’m talking about the famous black taxis. Two days ago the Evening Standard reported on some disturbing findings by the Centre for London thinktank. The Centre for London said the black taxi – a famous London icon – could be extinct by 2045. London cabbies are baling, quitting the trade. The Centre for London ran the numbers and drew the logical conclusion. If they continue to leave the trade at the current rates an iconic part of the capital’s transport system will be lost by 2045. Certainly the numbers are worrying. There are currently just under 15,000 licensed taxis in London. That’s down more than 8,000 on the nearly 23,000 there were just over a decade ago.
Let’s hope that wound can be staunched. London wouldn’t be the same – would be a duller, poorer place – without its iconic black cabs and the consummate Londoners – characters every last one of them – who drive them.
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.