London Walks: Recent Episodes
London Walks
London Walks is the oldest urban walking tour company on the planet. It’s the gold standard of this profession, this craft. Here you can listen to our guides' stories and anecdotes of London.
...they’re old leather boots. Heavy, battered, workaday things. Except they’ve been silver-plated.
Because every Londoner has a handful of places that reassure them the city hasn’t lost its soul. Burlington Arcade is one of mine.
Marie Stopes taught a nation about sex because her own wedding night went so catastrophically wrong.
the nearest the likes of me is ever going to get to an ancient, ever-so-posh, ever-so-upper-class English gentlemen’s club.
The organisation that today bestrides world football like a colossus. And England wanted no part of it.
London Calling. London Walks connecting. This is London. This is London Walks. Streets Ahead. Story time. History time. The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition opened yesterday. June 16th. Which is another way of saying that summer has arrived in London. Not officially. Not astronomically. Not according to the Met Office. London has its own calendar. And […]
The first British monarch ever to travel by rail is hauled by a locomotive named after a flaming river in Hell.
Only the British could take the safest, most respectable hat ever invented and weaponise it.
You suddenly realise that what looks like mere decoration is actually fossilised history.
Eastern European aristocrat arrives in England bringing corruption, contagion, nocturnal habits and highly irregular neck behaviour.
Being a tax collector in medieval London was not exactly a popularity-enhancing career choice.
“I always distrust people who know so much about what God wants them to do to their fellows.”
From a prison cell in the Tower… to a system of government that still shapes Britain today…
"Charlie’s vital green thread through the capital led us instead…along river paths and bridleways…through woodland…past orchards…along the edges of hayfields…through parks and gardens…"
"how much more emotional and vivid a story is when you are standing in front of it, rather than glancing at a screen"
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy began as a wildly improbable idea brought to life in London. This is the story of Douglas Adams, the BBC, and the birth of one of the funniest creations in modern fiction.
The mini skirt explodes onto the streets of Swinging London in the 1960s. The story begins with French designer André Courrèges, a former civil engineer whose futuristic fashions helped ignite a revolution that London girls turned into a global sensation.
He didn't know it but at that moment Charles Cross insured his immortality within the pages of history books.
Now if you know Oxford Street you know the soundtrack. Buses roaring. Taxi horns. Engines revving. Delivery vans edging forward inch by inch like nervous chess pieces. It’s noisy, chaotic, gloriously unmistakably London. So imagine this: Oxford Street… without traffic.
Sixty years ago a seemingly innocuous feature in a London newspaper triggered one of the most extraordinary cultural storms of the 1960s. In a quiet interview with the Evening Standard, John Lennon made a remark that travelled from Fleet Street to the American South — and ignited bonfires of Beatles records. In this episode we trace the tiny London tremor that became an international cultural earthquake.
Why is Everest called Everest? At dusk on the world’s highest peak, we discover a name, a surveyor, and, yes, a London story. A March 3rd story.
Before January claimed the crown, the year began in March. In this London Walks dispatch we step back into Roman Londinium to see how New Year’s Day once fell on March 1st.
Born in Shepherd’s Bush and armed with one of rock’s great roars, Roger Daltrey helped define the sound of modern London. Today’s London Calling marks the birthday of The Who’s legendary frontman.
Meet John Tenniel, the London artist who gave the world Alice, the Mad Hatter and the Cheshire Cat. Born on February 28, this quiet Punch cartoonist drew the definitive Wonderland.
It’s about the seismic shockwave that followed, and is still being felt nearly a thousand years later.
I’m going to do a piece on London Walks at home. Or, more precisely, a piece on my home patch, my London.
What if Trafalgar Square didn’t have Nelson’s Column at all, but a full-scale Great Pyramid instead? Not a model. Not a metaphor. Six million tonnes of ancient Egyptian stone plonked right where the fountains are. This piece takes one of the most jaw-dropping, gloriously bonkers proposals in London history and lets it rip, measuring the pyramid against the National Gallery and St Martin-in-the-Fields, marvelling at its insane size and weight, and imagining Londoners calmly going about their business in the shadow of a monument built for eternity. Big, bold, cheeky and very London.
Every Christmas morning since 1864 (with only one modern break), a hardy band of swimmers has plunged into the icy Serpentine in Hyde Park for a 100-yard dash that has become London’s most extraordinary yuletide tradition. Born from Victorian bravado, crowned with the Peter Pan Cup, and often surrounded by ice and applause, this event is part challenge, part spectacle and utterly festive – a cold-water ritual that defines Christmas in the capital.
Maria Taglioni changed ballet forever. In the early nineteenth century she reinvented the art form, dancing en pointe not as a trick but as poetry, creating the illusion of weightlessness and giving birth to Romantic ballet. This lively, story-rich piece traces her extraordinary rise, her London triumphs at Her Majesty’s Theatre, and her surprisingly proper London life in Connaught Square, just off Marble Arch. From Parisian hysteria to West End adoration, this is the story of the woman who taught audiences across Europe how to believe in flight.
A short walk in London is like a wine tasting. Initial impressions give way to lingering flavours, and just when you think you know the city, it surprises you again. From Shakespeare’s great line about “infinite variety” to the quiet delight of London’s blue plaques, this piece explores the city’s knack for offering small, unsolicited gifts – moments of history, genius, and wonder poured out as you walk. A reflection on why age cannot wither London, and why even a few yards on foot can feel rich, layered, and intoxicating.
On December 22, 1880, George Eliot died quietly in her house on Cheyne Row in Chelsea, brought down not by drama but by a winter cold caught at a London concert. This piece revisits her final days and the life behind the name: the woman who disguised herself to be heard, wrote novels that taught generations how to think and feel, and reshaped English fiction by insisting that ordinary lives mattered. A winter tale of intellect, sympathy, and the quiet power of place.
At one o’clock on a this day in 1846, a man lay on a table in Bloomsbury, a surgeon raised a knife, and pain was about to be switched off for the first time in British history.
Saturday stands slightly apart from the rest of the week. It has ancient roots, a planetary name, and a modern reputation as the day when time loosens its tie. Today's podcast is a gentle (and, yes, personal) wander through its – Saturday's – meaning and magic.
Charles Mathews was Dickens’ favourite actor, a one-man phenomenon who turned London into a cast of characters. This podcast explores his world, his Adelphi triumphs, and the birth of modern performance. And a rider, London Walks is also launching a brand-new walk guided by a former MP, bringing a rare insider’s perspective to a very different strand of the London story.
On December 18, 1679, England’s leading poet, John Dryden, was attacked and beaten in a dark Covent Garden alley outside the Lamb, the area’s oldest pub. The motive was literary. Dryden was wrongly suspected of having written An Essay on Satire, a venomous anonymous poem that skewered the corruption of the Restoration court and appeared to take aim at the Earl of Rochester. The real author was an aristocrat safely protected by rank, but Dryden, a professional writer, paid the price. This piece revisits a story previously told on the London Walks podcast, but from a new angle, exploring how satire worked in Restoration London, why certain lines were dangerous enough to provoke violence, and how words once carried consequences measured in bruises and broken skin.
Published on December 17, 1843, A Christmas Carol emerged from Dickens’s London of fog, gaslight and inequality. This podcast is about the little book that help reinvent Christmas. And about Dickens, his London, and our Dickens's Christmas Carol & Seasonal Traditions Walk.
A lively, cinematic wander into the story of St Martin in the Fields, the church that began life in the fields and ended up beating at the heart of London. From plague pits to Handel, from Nell Gwyn’s funeral bells to today’s world-famous concerts and homelessness work, this is the tale of the warmest, most open-armed church in the city. Architecture. Anecdote. Music. Magic. St Martin’s has it all.
Step off the roaring streets and into a Christmas whispered along the water. On the winter solstice, we explore the Regent’s Canal’s Cinderella stretch, from narrowboats and towpath tales to the transformed world of Granary Square, finishing with St Pancras’s treasure trove of history. A festive London Walk full of stories, atmosphere and discovery.
On the anniversary of Samuel Johnson’s death, we look back at the life of the man who gave the English language its first great map. From Lichfield beginnings to London triumphs, Johnson’s wit, grit and mighty dictionary reshaped literature and defined an age. A portrait of a brilliant, battered, booming voice that still echoes through London’s streets and our own daily speech.
A vivid, fast moving, cinematic look at Robert Browning on the anniversary of his 1889 Death in Venice. A London-born poet who reinvented the dramatic monologue, eloped with Elizabeth Barrett in a Marylebone romance worthy of a thriller and returned in triumph to Maida Vale and ultimately to Poets’ Corner. Lots of juicy Victorian detail, great lines, and the irresistible contrast of a life shaped in London and a final act written on the Grand Canal.
On the second Wednesday in December, the Dickens Pickwick Club gathers at the ancient George & Vulture – an 18th-century warren of port, oak panels, and old City gossip – for its annual feast of camaraderie, Stilton, steak-and-kidney pie, and booming speeches. This year, my turn arrived: I had to deliver the Himself in the guise of Count Smorltork, Dickens’s “famous foreigner” and virtuoso mangler of the English tongue.What followed was a night of uncommon joviality, literary lineage, personal history, and a foreign Count’s triumphant but catastrophic attempt at English.
This is a lively, fireside wander through the strange and splendid history of the mince pie. It begins in medieval kitchens where the pie was a hefty mix of meat, fruit and spice, travels through the Puritan years when it was frowned upon, and arrives in the present as the sweet little symbol of Christmas we know today. The piece explores how mince pies delight the British, baffle the Americans, and bewilder the French, especially now that Marks and Spencer has vanished from Paris. Warm, humorous and full of festive colour, it celebrates the mince pie as a tiny pastry with a very large story.
Jack’s Christmas Lights Walk begins here for a reason. Villiers Street is the perfect overture: dense with history, glowing with stories, and sprinkled with festive firsts you won’t hear anywhere else. It's London in miniature: short, steep, and overflowing with stories. From dukes and Dickens to Kipling’s fog and railway thunder, this narrow chute between the Strand and the river is a backstage entrance to five centuries of drama. Let alone those Christmas Lights. And their stories.
On 7 December 1941, as Japan struck Pearl Harbor, London was deep in its third winter of war: bruised, blacked out, queueing for scraps, shrugging off sirens. In this episode of London Calling we take the city’s pulse on that day. From wardens chastening Noël Coward to milk carts pulled by dogs, from Advent sermons to Fleet Street’s midnight shock, we watch London discover the attack that would change its fate. A fogbound capital learns, almost in its sleep, that it’s no longer alone.
It’s a hotel, a pub, an art gallery, a very special rendezvous, a backstage pass to Westminster, a living scrapbook of political London, a motherlode of history, and a film set all rolled up into one.
On the anniversary of his death, a rollicking, street-level wander through the life of John Gay – author of The Beggar’s Opera and Trivia – who turned London’s rogues, highways, alleys, gossip, and grit into art that still sparkles nearly three centuries later.
She was the woman who changed everything. Before her, the English stage was a men-only club – boys playing girls, audiences roaring for comedy but never expecting a real woman to step into the light. And then she did. This podcast tells the story of the first actress on the English stage: the mystery, the daring, the scandal, the thrill of that moment when a woman, for the first time, crossed the boards and the audience gasped. It's a wander through Restoration London – the playhouses, the backrooms, the theatrical cut-and-thrust. On the way we meet the colourful characters who made that world sparkle. The managers, the rakes, the playwrights, the divas-to-be.It’s a tale of courage, glamour, gossip and a little danger.The night a woman walked onstage, she didn’t just perform.She redefined the theatre.And, in her way, she redefined England.
A vivid, anecdotal wander through the story of Birkbeck, London’s great evening college: born in the age of gaslight, dedicated to workers hungry for knowledge, and still humming with that after-hours magic today. The piece lifts the lid on the college that turned London’s night shift into a lecture theatre, celebrates the characters and breakthroughs it’s nurtured over two centuries, and shows why this unassuming Bloomsbury outpost is one of the capital’s quiet marvels.
A festive flourish with extras. Nary a hint here about the extras – you'll have to listen to the piece. But the main course is a little appetiser from Ann, a trailer if you will for her upcoming series of Eating Christmas Walks. This tasty talk's mostly about turkeys and geese. It's Ann so you can expect warmth, wit, history, latest goings on. Basically a generous helping of Yuletide flavour – a perfect sprinkle of Christmas cheer for your day.
A reflective, elegiac tribute to Tom Stoppard, marking his death at 88. The piece traces his journey from a childhood shaped by exile to his life as one of Britain’s most brilliant and beloved playwrights. It honours his delight in language, his dazzling intellect, his late-in-life reckoning with history, and the gentleness that infused his work. It’s a quiet, intimate meditation on a mind that illuminated the stage and a light now softly gone.
On November 29th, 1814, in a cramped London workshop smelling of hot metal and wet ink, Friedrich Koenig and Andreas Bauer’s steam-driven printing press thundered into life – and the world quietly tipped into its modern age. The Times secretly ran its entire issue on this whirring mechanical wonder, doubling – no, quadrupling speed overnight. Londoners didn’t know it, but the very rhythms of their city – news, politics, scandal, the spread of ideas – had just been turned up a big notch. On the anniversary of that day London Calling tells the story of that breakthrough morning: clatter and clank, a hint of cloak-and-dagger secrecy, a dollop of London ingenuity, and the moment the printed word stepped onto the express train of history.
Fade in. Church Row, Hampstead. Late Victorian London. A perfect Georgian house, all calm exteriors and candlelit windows. Inside, one of the most explosive figures of the age paces like a caged star. Bosie: aristocratic beauty, agent of chaos, lover and undoer of Oscar Wilde. This is the widescreen version. A story of forbidden passion, furious fathers, courtroom tragedy and a golden boy on the run from the chaos he helped create. Hampstead becomes a film set, and Bosie the dazzling, dangerous protagonist whose every move begs for a close-up.
Step into London at its most dazzling. From designer hotel lobbies to elegant Georgian squares, from grand department stores to quiet, candle-scented churches, the city becomes a forest of firs, each one dressed to the nines in baubles, ribbons, and stories. This is the tale of how Christmas trees travelled from the hearth fires of Germany to the palaces of Hanoverian royals and finally into the hearts of Londoners. It’s a romp through centuries of tradition, invention, and good old festive showmanship. And when the history fades into the twinkle of modern lights, there’s Claire’s Christmas Tree Walk to carry it all forward. She leads you to the best of the best on December 4, 6, 11, 13, 18, and 20. Consider it London’s Christmas present to you: a guided wander through the city’s most glorious constellation of trees, each stop a story, each tree a little bit of magic.
On November 25th, 1952, Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap opened in a still-sooty, post-war London — and never stopped running. London Calling strolls down West Street to tell the tale of the world’s longest-running play: its famous first night, the legends behind the “Holman performances,” the stars who got their start, the stubborn little clock that’s ticked through seven decades, and why the curtain can never quite fall. A whodunnit that became a what-on-earth-keeps-it-going.
Twice, on the same date 281 years apart, the River Thames froze solid – first in 1434, when London’s lifeline turned to stone, and again in 1715, when it became a carnival ground. From famine fears to frost fairs, this is the story of a city brought to a standstill by winter, and how Londoners turned disaster into revelry.
A high-speed voyage through the life and legend of the Cutty Sark – the world’s last surviving tea clipper and one of London’s brightest maritime icons. From her birth in 1869 on the Clyde to her record-breaking races home from China, we follow her glory days, decline, and resurrection in Greenwich. Along the way, we meet the Scots poet who named her, the witch who inspired her figurehead, and the sailors who made her the fastest thing under canvas. A story of craftsmanship, competition, and sheer beauty – the ship that refused to fade into history.
A turn through London as it was on 22 November 1963. Evening crowds spilling out of offices, Christmas lights warming up the West End, the city in its ordinary hum. Then the flash: the news from Dallas, arriving like a cold wind through pubs, Tube stations and shopfront radios. A portrait of London on the day it paused, listened and felt the shock of a distant tragedy ripple through its own streets.
Advancer for the distinguished diplomat Lisa Honan's Upcoming Empire in a Cup – the History of Tea Walk. A lively, anecdote-soaked ramble through the surprising story of how a humble leaf conquered Britain. From locked tea caddies and clipper ships to wartime tea stockpiles and family feuds over the proper order of milk, this is the tale of a drink that shaped a nation. A warm, cinematic wander steeped in history, charm, and the sort of fun only tea can brew.
On the evening of 20 November 1944, after five long years of wartime blackout, London turned on a few of its street lights again. Londoners stepped out to see it for themselves, faces tilted up to lamplight they had almost forgotten. It was only a handful of streets, a tentative first step in a city still at war. But the glow above the pavements felt like a promise that the worst might finally be behind them.
"I’m looking out the window and what do you know, it’s snowing. Yes, snowing. In November! Ok, it's just a few flurries, but the white stuff it is..."
A brisk, atmospheric wander through the day the Duke of Wellington’s funeral stopped London in its tracks. The piece sweeps the listener into the crush of half a million Londoners lining the streets, the clatter of the colossal funeral carriage, and the peculiar mix of awe and disorder that only a Victorian spectacle could summon. It’s a story of a nation saying goodbye to its greatest hero, but also a peek at the London of 1852: smoky, chaotic, sentimental, and gloriously itself.
A lively, anecdotal wander through the London Borough of Islington – from its Saxon beginnings as Giseldone, “the hill of Gisla,” to its current status as London’s most eclectic, outspoken patch of ground. Once rural pastureland where Londoners came for milk and fresh air, Islington grew into a hotbed of politics, art, and attitude. The piece takes readers down Upper Street and along the Regent’s Canal, past Bunhill Fields and the Emirates Stadium, pausing to salute the borough’s famous sons and daughters – from John Wilkes to Johnny Rotten. It’s part history, part love letter, full of wit, colour, and contradiction, capturing a place that has always refused to sit quietly while London goes about its business.
A lively, irreverent romp through the history of the codpiece – that flamboyant flap of cloth that began as a modesty patch and ended up as the Renaissance’s most outrageous brag. From its humble medieval origins to its glorious, padded, jewel-encrusted heyday under Henry VIII, the piece traces how the codpiece became both fashion and farce, weapon and wink. Stuffed with anecdotes, double entendres, and a dash of scandal, it explores how this unlikely garment strutted its way through art, politics, and amour before quietly retreating from the stage. A story of swagger, status, and sheer nerve – proof that in Tudor England, size really did matter.
Just when you thought the Fortnum’s Christmas tale was complete, the shop quietly unveiled its most spectacular secret in centuries. Hidden for two years behind a cheerful Zebedee Helm collage, a brand-new Double Helix Staircase has now risen at the heart of 181 Piccadilly. Inspired by Leonardo da Vinci and hand-built by master craftspeople in Sussex, it is part architectural marvel, part swirling artwork, and entirely Fortnum’s. This unexpected addendum returns us to Piccadilly for a second helping, celebrating a staircase that is already becoming a landmark in its own right.
This London Calling podcast opens with Fortnum & Mason glowing across Piccadilly like London’s Christmas signal flare. It introduces the store as the elegant grand duchess of Piccadilly, tracing its history from 1707 when William Fortnum and Hugh Mason turned candle stubs and ingenuity into a legendary shop. It goes on to sketch Fortnum’s reputation for refinement and playful luxury, from its royal associations to its famous hampers and teas. The Scotch egg origin story makes an appearance, along with a quick portrait of what makes the perfect one. The heart of the podcast is the store at Christmas, especially this year’s spectacular displays. The windows are described as miniature theatrical worlds with whirling teacups, musical tins and a giant hamper that seems to open itself. The façade becomes a glowing advent calendar, and inside you step into a swirl of scent, sparkle and festive indulgence. For good measure the listener gets a suggested two-hour Fortnum’s experience. First, slow, ceremonial browsing through the ground floor food hall and Christmas room. Then ascending for refined calm in the Diamond Jubilee Tea Salon for tea, cakes and a view over Piccadilly. Finally, a gentle wander back through the upper floors and out into the winter street. Podcast ends by declaring Fortnum & Mason the perfect opening chapter for a series on London’s great Christmas shops.
Clapham begins as a riverside outpost on the Archbishop’s side of the Thames, a little upstream from the City’s bustle. Its story kicks off with the memorable wedding feast of Osgod Clapa’s daughter, a moment of Anglo-Saxon high life set against reed thatch, woodsmoke and river mud. From there, the place grows by accretion and accident: manor lands, market gardens, pious foundations, and in time a Georgian dreamworld of airy squares where the great and the good came to polish their consciences. The Clapham Sect take the stage, plotting abolition and reform over prayer meetings and polite tea. Then comes the nineteenth century, the railways, the villas, the commuters, the whole swirling transformation of London pushing south. By the time we reach the present day, Clapham is a patchwork of leafy commons, handsome terraces, lively high streets and echoes of the visionaries who once made it a moral powerhouse.
We begin on High Street Kensington, where two grand department stores – Barkers and Derry & Toms – stand as gleaming monuments to the Art Deco age. From there, it’s off on a journey through one of the most elegant design revolutions of the twentieth century. Art Deco: what it is, where it came from, what to look for. The clean lines, the geometry, the glamour – a “return to order” after the chaos of the Great War. Paris leads the dance, London joins in, and the world never looks quite the same again. There’s a stop in Paris for a feast of Deco at the Louvre – and a little feast of another kind at Le Hangar, my favourite Paris restaurant – before we return home with news of new London Walks, new guides, and Christmas just beginning to sparkle
There's a lot to be said for a journey into the real Dickens’ London – not the sanitised, stage-managed version you find in theme parks or TV reconstructions, but the city itself. The stones, the mist, the narrow courts where the man himself walked. It’s about how much of Dickens’ world is still here, hidden in plain sight – if you know where to look. The alleys that inspired him, the workhouses that haunted him, the law courts that fed his satire. We separate myth from memory and see how London shaped Dickens, and how Dickens, in turn, helped shape London’s image of itself.
It’s London, 1697 – the city bawling, bustling, brawling its way into the 18th century – and out of Smithfield mud and mischief comes William Hogarth, the man who drew London naked. This episode of London Calling follows the boy from Bartholomew Close who grew up to be the city’s mirror, moralist, and mischief-maker. From A Harlot’s Progress to Gin Lane, Hogarth painted a London of drunks, dreamers, rakes, and rogues – and in doing so, invented the modern comic strip, fought for artists’ rights, and showed us ourselves, warts and all. It’s the story of London’s first true visual journalist: sharp-eyed, streetwise, full of bite and wit. The man who proved a picture really can be worth a thousand sins.
Ann’s at it again – prowling through London’s backstreets, history purring at her heels. Her walk, A Cat Tails – A Feline Take on London History, is just what the city ordered: playful, surprising, and full of sharp little claws of insight. Expect stories of moggies and monarchs, ship’s cats and literary felines, from alleyways to palaces. She’ll be teasing out London’s long, tangled relationship with the creatures who’ve ruled our hearths – and sometimes our hearts – for centuries. This is the advancer: a sneak peek before the cat’s out of the bag.
It’s November 8th, 1674. The rain drifts softly over London as the light fades early and a blind old poet slips away in Bunhill Fields. This London Calling podcast follows John Milton – born in Bread Street, schooled under St Paul’s, hunted near St Bartholomew-the-Great, dictating Paradise Lost in Petty France – through the London of his life and death. We meet “the Lady of Christ’s,” the young scholar who became the thunderous voice of English verse; the blind visionary who saw eternity more clearly than most. From the alleys of the City to the stained-glass glow of the Milton Window in St Margaret’s, Westminster, it’s a portrait of the Londoner who gave the world its most magnificent lines.
On Helen Suzman’s birthday, David takes us from apartheid-era South Africa to Hampstead’s Vale of Health – to the very house where Suzman’s actress niece Janet Suzman lived with director Trevor Nunn. It’s a story of courage, art, and a family of difference-makers who refused to take the easy script.
Meet the saint who looked after London’s grafters – from blacksmiths to Shakespeare’s mates.
From Saxon arches to Wren’s soaring spire, from the rebel hanged at its doors to the golden dragon that’s ruled the skyline for three centuries, St Mary-le-Bow has witnessed a thousand years of London life. Its bells gave birth to the Cockneys, its court judged the clergy, and its crypt hides a mystery stretching all the way to Wall Street. Fire, faith, riots and rebirth – this is the story of the church that quite literally defines London.
London Calling gets ambushed by events – from Dick Cheney’s death to a hawk called Breeze patrolling Lincoln’s Inn. A day of coincidences, literary echoes and London surprises, wrapped up with Francis Beaumont’s poem On the Tombs in Westminster Abbey. Proof, if ever you needed it, that London never stops writing the script.
From couvre feu to Cockney – how St Mary-le-Bow’s bells became the sound that shaped London’s identity. Once they told Londoners to bank their fires; centuries later, they told Dick Whittington to turn again. These were the curfew bells, the comeback bells, the heartbeat of a city that never stops ringing.
Ann's Foodies London – The West End walk is coming up By way of an appetiser, she's whipped a little dish of culinary history (and nostalgia) for us. About Lyons' ice creams (this is their centenary, after all). And make not mistake, Lyons’ ice creams were more than desserts – they were time capsules. From the Zoom rocket to the Fab lolly, each one tells a tale of pop culture, post-war hope, and good old British fun in the sun.
Every November, London flares with fireworks and half-forgotten history. London Walks Capo David traces the story behind the rhyme – Guy Fawkes, the Gunpowder Plot, and the strange endurance of a failed revolution. From the haunted cellars beneath Parliament to the Tower’s shadowed ramparts, the ghosts of 1605 still stir. The gunpowder never exploded, but its charge is still humming under London’s stones.
What is it about October 31st?This piece roams from Luther’s hammer on a church door to the end of the Battle of Britain, from Houdini’s final curtain to the Celtic bonfires of Samhain. It traces how Halloween began as an ancient threshold between worlds and became the world’s biggest fancy-dress party. Along the way we glimpse Mexican marigolds, Austrian bread for ghosts, Japanese lanterns, and a universal truth: that once a year, humans everywhere like to dance with the dark and laugh at their fears.It’s funny, atmospheric, and full of surprises – a story of thresholds, history, and a date that refuses to stay quiet.
Two parter today. Forget the fake cobwebs and the pumpkin punch – this is the real Halloween experience: history, mystery, and magic in the world’s greatest treasure house. Guided by Marc – host of the award-nominated Extraordinary Stories of Britain podcast – you’ll explore the British Museum after dark, when the crowds are gone and the marble whispers. From the Rosetta Stone to the Elgin Marbles, five thousand years of civilisation glow under the glass dome of the Great Court. Spine-tingling, civilised, unforgettable – it’s Halloween the London Walks way.Followed by: Tucked behind Victoria Gate Lodge lies one of London’s tiniest and most tender secrets – the Hyde Park Pet Cemetery. Born of a little girl’s grief in 1881, it grew into a miniature city of marble headstones for beloved dogs, cats, parrots and rabbits. It’s the Victorians at their most human – sentimental, heartfelt, and quietly profound. Join us among the mossy stones and whispering trees for a story of love, loss, and loyalty – a forgotten corner of London where even the ghosts have wagging tails.
Slip off Oxford Street and into another world – chandeliers, Rembrandts, and the best cakes in Marylebone. Housed in a stately mansion on Manchester Square, the Wallace Collection is London’s most beautiful secret: an 18th-century treasure chest of art, armour, and elegance. A museum that still feels like a home – and, thanks to Rick Mather’s sunlit café, the sweetest spot in the city for tea.
He gleams through the London fog – a man made of gold. The Albert Memorial isn’t just a monument; it’s a love story cast in marble and gold leaf. This episode of London Calling tells the tale of Queen Victoria and her beloved Albert – the earnest, intelligent prince who believed civilisation could be improved by plumbing and hard work – and how his death broke her heart so completely she built a temple to him in Kensington Gardens. It’s absurd, magnificent, and completely sincere: London’s grandest love letter.
They’ve already got the money, the houses, the jets – so why the fever when the bidding starts? Why the thrill of the gavel? In this Daily London Fix, we step inside Sotheby’s, where wealth turns to theatre and possession becomes performance. From a Strand bookseller’s auction in 1744 to today’s multimillion-pound spectacles, it’s part ritual, part sport, part confession. And – grace notes before the curtain falls – we discover why it’s called Sotheby’s, and why the man bringing down the hammer is, delightfully, named Barker.
The world’s most famous auction house was born on a quiet London street. From polite Georgian book sales to multi-million-pound bidding wars, Sotheby’s has mirrored the city’s rise from mercantile capital to cultural powerhouse.
October 25th — St Crispin’s Day. On this date in 1400, Geoffrey Chaucer, London’s first great poet, breathed his last. Fifteen years later, on another St Crispin’s Day, Henry V’s tiny army triumphed at Agincourt. Two centuries after that, Shakespeare turned that muddy field into legend with “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers...” This episode of London Calling links those moments – Chaucer’s passing and his London voice, Shakespeare’s stage thunder, and the date that binds them. A tale of bells, battles, and words: how the vintner’s son and the glover’s son together made English – London English – the language of poetry and power.
United Nations Day, a Westminster hall… and a secret Roman flogging and beheading kit. Only in London.
Tapas time on today’s London fix – a double act. We begin in Smithfield with the redoubtable Jonathan, guiding us through London’s old killing ground, where the condemned met gruesome ends. Then David takes up the thread – from the execution ground to the digital gallows. The former Duke of York has been “unduked”; online the dead are “unalived”; the countryside is “UnLondon.” Welcome to the Age of Un – a wry look at our binary, reversible century, where everything can be done, undone, and done again.
Three “newly discovered” chapters of 1066 and All That – on the railways, the internet, and the French – lead to the story of W. C. Sellar, the quiet Scottish schoolmaster who co-wrote one of the funniest books in the English language. From a Gladstone joke in Brent to a trail that runs all the way to Edinburgh, it’s a very London tale of humour, history, and happy accidents.
Brent – the Borough with the oldest name and the youngest spirit. Named for the ancient River Brent – a Celtic word meaning “holy” or “high” – this is a borough where history hums beneath the pavements. From the roar of Wembley to the quiet grace of St Andrew’s Church, from the marble splendour of the Neasden Temple to the laughter spilling out of Kilburn’s Irish pubs, Brent is London in miniature: diverse, layered, endlessly alive. It’s where A. A. Milne met Winnie-the-Pooh, where Gladstone debated the Irish Question, where the Golden Retriever was born, and where the world still comes to play. Short name, long story, big heart.
London runs on rails – and we've got a new tour that explores London's railway stations. Distinguished railway historian Christian Wolmar and elite London guide Sam Jacobs take us on an all-day journey through the city’s iron arteries: from Shoreditch to Paddington, from Victorian grandeur to modern revival. Part history, part adventure, it’s London seen through its railway termini – the people, the power, the ambition, and the steam that made the city move.
Story time, history time – and this one’s about the storytellers themselves. In this episode of Londerful, London Walks introduces Jonathan, the so-called “new boy” who’s been guiding for four years and already won hearts. Warm, witty, and passionate, he’s the kind of guide who turns facts into discoveries.
At the Savoy Hotel, superstition and style sit side by side – and the proof’s in the cat. Meet Kaspar, the sleek black feline carved to save diners from the curse of thirteen at table. Born of tragedy in 1898 and still dining in style more than a century later, Kaspar has shared a table with Churchill, survived a wartime kidnapping, and become the Savoy’s most charming guest. This is London at its best: polished, peculiar, and purring with stories.
Seventh-century saint meets secret London. This episode follows St Etheldreda – or St Audrey – from her royal beginnings in the Fens of Ely to her hidden London church in Ely Place, Holborn. We explore the legend of her incorrupt body, the feast that became tawdry, and the medieval enclave that once stood beyond the City’s law. Shakespeare’s bishops, bombings, beadles, and even a relic of her hand all make an appearance in this vivid talk through holiness, history, and hidden London.
One night. One storm. Winds near a hundred miles an hour. London wrecked, trees flattened, Britain humbled. The Great Storm of ’87 – the night we all remember.
Camden’s not just a postcode – it’s a state of mind. From the quiet grace of Bloomsbury’s squares to the glorious bedlam of Camden Market; from the high wildness of Hampstead Heath to the learned hush of Museum Mile – this is the borough that can keep you busy for a lifetime. In this episode, we go exploring: parks, markets, music, museums, canals, cafés, and everything in between.
From the barristers of Holborn to the buskers of Camden Lock and the poets of Hampstead, this episode climbs right through London’s social landscape. Along the way we meet the borough that built better homes for its people, raised its rates for beauty’s sake, and made “progressive” a point of civic pride. Radical politics, visionary housing, the ghosts of railways and revolution – Camden’s story is London’s story, all packed into eight and a half square miles.
In the inaugural Get to Know Your London episode, we land in Camden – and David takes us on a visual decoding of the borough’s logo. You’ve seen it a hundred times on street signs – that little green circular symbol above the word Camden. Most people assume it’s a recycling logo. It isn’t. Look closer. It’s actually four pairs of hands, thumbs almost touching, arranged in a circle. They’re meant to symbolise connection – the borough and its community linked hand in hand. The official line says they stand for unity, giving, receiving, and voting. But of course, there’s the droll, alternative reading – that it looks like a green elephant’s foot. Or perhaps the footprint of the Abominable Snowman. A bit of wry humour tagged onto a municipal design – classic London.
A Sunday snapshot of London in 1975 – Harold Wilson in Downing Street, inflation roaring, Bowie on the airwaves, and a bomb that failed to explode in Westminster. From the smell of petrol and vinegar on the streets to Routemasters, Reliant Robins, and 25p fish-and-chips, this is the city as it really was: battered, brave, and brilliantly alive.
In this episode, Dr Ann Gandhi introduces us to Mahatma Gandhi as we’ve never met him before – in Tavistock Square, in words that bring him vividly to life. David steps in with his reflections, Adam stirs things up with a seasonal tipple, and together they serve a heady mix of history, humanity, and the best eggnog recipe in London.
Today’s London Calling is a double treat. First up, Adam tears into the London Calling Book Club Corner with a book so gripping you’ll be ordering it before he’s finished talking. Then Dr Ann takes the baton for a taster from her brand-new walk, Nooks & Crannies – Unseen Covent Garden. Books, ghosts, hidden corners – London doesn’t get better than this.
Dr Ann's What's the Big Idea Walk takes you through Bloomsbury's squares – the cradle of modern thought. Where ideas were born, challenged, took shape, and still reverberate. A walk as stimulating as the minds that inspired it.
An October evening City of London excursion that begins at the 17th-century Monument and winds through Philpot Lane (where it takes in London's tiniest sculptures) and then on to Leadenhall Market’s Victorian splendour before arriving at the modern marvel of the Leadenhall Building – the “Cheesegrater.” The piece tells the story of the building’s design, nickname, height, and views, blending history and anecdote with the experience of going up to its soaring upper floors. It’s a love-letter to London’s layers – from Wren’s column to Rogers’ skyscraper – all encountered in one golden City evening.
A lively, anecdotal wander through the creamy world of stucco — the material that gave London’s grand western terraces their smooth Italianate glamour. From its humble mix of lime and sand to its starring role in John Nash’s Regent’s Park and Little Venice, this is the story of how plaster and paint pulled off one of the greatest visual conjuring tricks in urban history: turning brick into marble, speculation into splendour, and Paddington into “Venice.”
Gazumped. London Calling's on the case. Sniffs out one of the great London words – gazump! From its East End Yiddish roots to its 1970s rebirth in the city’s cut-throat property market, this is the story of how a market-stall cry for “don’t get swindled!” became the headline-grabbing curse of London homebuyers.It’s a word that sounds like what it means – half comedy, half cruelty – and it could only have been born in London. Pointer David’s on the scent again, and he’s tracked down a linguistic gem that’s equal parts etymology, history, and sheer London mischief.
London told through the creatures that know it best: the rat in the tunnel and the dog on the lead. From the sewers to the parks, from Herbert’s scuttling hordes to Ann’s faithful pack, this is the secret animal history of the capital – cheeky, vivid, and unmistakably alive.
When Alison leads her Old Palace Quarter Walk into Pickering Place – that exquisite little centuries-old courtyard off St James’s Street – a sharp-eyed walker spots a mysterious oval plaque numbered 8100. What is it? Not a relic, not a door number, but a clue to one of London’s best-kept secrets: the city’s living network of gas lamps.
October 1956: the Bolshoi Ballet lands in London with 80 tons of scenery, KGB minders in tow, and a troupe led by Galina Ulanova and Maya Plisetskaya. Covent Garden reels at their scale and power – 45 minutes of applause, queues in the rain, a stage too small for their vast sets. Meanwhile, across Europe, the Hungarian Uprising explodes. Ballet, politics, glamour, tanks — three weeks that shook London and rewrote the story of British ballet.
October 2nd, 1925: four covered-top double-deckers debut on the Elephant to Epping route, drawing queues of curious Londoners. A century later, their descendants — 8,800 buses, 6,000 of them double-deckers — knit the capital together with 5 million journeys a day and 300 million miles a year. From four pioneers at the Elephant to a red fleet that could lap the Earth 12,000 times or reach the Sun in four months — London’s buses aren’t just transport. They’re a solar-system-sized lifeline, a cosmic commute.
On section 13 you get the best view in London from here on earth...it's unrivalled, it's very high, it's an amazing view
September 30 twice marked history. In 1938, Chamberlain promised “peace for our time.” Eight years later, in 1946, the Nuremberg judges delivered guilty verdicts on Nazi leaders. Hope and reckoning – two dates, one day, history’s cruel symmetry.
An exploration of what “Georgian” really means — the look, the feel, and the deeper story behind London’s calm, symmetrical 18th-century architecture.
Michaelmas Eve – when the year tips into the dark. The last geese sizzle, the last debts get squared, and the devil, they say, is out spitting on the blackberries. It’s a night for charms, for peering into bowls of water to see who you’ll marry – or if you’ll die – and for hoping St. Michael, sword flashing, is on duty. Because after tonight, the dark takes over.
Dan’s taking London’s Spymasters out for a spin this afternoon – so we couldn’t resist giving you a sneak preview. Picture him in Horse Guards Parade, spinning the yarn of Operation Mincemeat, weaving in the James Bond connection, and – just for good measure – putting us tantalisingly close to unmasking the real 007.Pull up a chair, lean in. Here’s Dan.
A night of fire. A very grand historic old house in ruins. And an image that came to define the Blitz
September 25, 1818 – the day London made medical history. Guy’s Hospital. A patient is bleeding out. London surgeon James Blundell rolls the dice on an untested idea: take blood from one person, inject it into another. No blood typing, no antiseptic, just urgency, ingenuity, and a syringe. Against the odds, the patient lives. We’ll meet Dr. Blundell, part mad-scientist, part visionary, who turned a desperate gamble into the first successful human-to-human blood transfusion. It’s a story of risk, luck, science, and the moment London learned life could be borrowed.
The wind howls, the candles gutter… London, 1717: a child is born beneath a sky that seems to know it’s witnessing trouble. He will grow up to conjure castles full of ghosts, corridors thick with secrets, and gossip sharp enough to draw blood.
On a hushed September morning in 1939, as war loomed over London, Sigmund Freud drew his last breath in Hampstead. This is the story of that extraordinary passing.
Right, gather round — this one’s a bit of a lucky dip. Here’s what’s rattling about in the bag:📚 A cracking book recommendation from one of our celebrity guides — proper page-turner stuff.🚶 A London Walk so good it’s gone — yep, Sold Out (but all is not lost).🍜 A delicious little amuse-bouche from a Chef’s Tour in Kuala Lumpur — have a sniff, have a taste.🇮🇹 An Italian guest’s rave review — bellissimo!🌊 And to top it off, a message in a bottle — chucked into the sea and washing up here, on your earbuds.It’s a short one, a tasty one, perfect for holiday listening. Go on, have a listen — see what you fish out.
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 Friday, September 19th, 2025. Our warm up act, as always, the London Calling Book Club Corner. In the Chair today, London Walks’ Knight errant, Richard […]
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 Monday, September 8th, 2025. London Calling Book Club Corner first. Recovering lawyer Tom Hooper’s second day in the Chair. If this were Ascot Tom would […]
What it was about this hugely different cup of tea – The Ultimate London Walk – that caught their eye
Postcodes are the city in miniature: eccentric, irregular, a little chaotic — but if you know how to read them, they reveal patterns, layers, history.
the corpse said he felt a lot better and would skip his funeral, said he was off to the wine shop
“they told us to look out for bones, we should expect to find a lot of them. And we have.”
London calling. London Walks connecting. This… is London. This is London Walks. Streets ahead. Story time. History time. A very good evening to you London Walkers. Wherever you are. It’s Wednesday, July 30th, 2025. All work and no play makes David a dull dude. That’ll never do. So let’s have a bit of play. But […]
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 Tuesday, July 29th, 2025. And here’s the spin of the roulette wheel. Where’s the ball – aka the pill – coming to stop? Ah, there […]
But she’s also eternally young and in London, just over the way from Royal Opera House where she was a royal ballerina.
Every cat owner secretly knows if it were big enough their treasured companion would have them for lunch
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 May 1st, 2025. We’re going to do a death today. An exodus that took place 325 years ago. May 1st, 1700. But not just […]
"Be the first – in the billions of journeys across the capital no-one has ever done this one"
Every time I go by there the thought crosses my mind, do the people who live here know the history of this place?
"the system of Dutch finance ended in the degradation of a miserable and burdened population"
a biting insect or tick, that transmits a pathogen, disease or parasite from an infected animal to a human
"Henry Jermyn, 341 years ago today, is surmising the Horses’ heads are toward Eternity"
London calling. London Walks connecting. This… is London. This is London Walks. Streets ahead. Story time. History time. ————————————— And a very good afternoon to you, London Walkers. Wherever you are. It’s Tuesday, December 31st, 2024. Yes, New Year’s Eve. Ok, having gone AWOL for a couple of weeks London Calling – the London Walks […]
"Anything that is written that sheds light on how society regards any crime against women focuses my attention"
“what struck me forcibly as showing the extraordinary unselfishness of the man was the poor quality of the pictures on the walls of his own home"
"a morsel of Lamb, a sprig of Shakespeare, a close reading of London from the land of Cleopatra"
London calling. London Walks connecting. This… is London. This is London Walks. Streets ahead. Story time. History time. ————————————— Good morning, London Walkers. Wherever you are. It’s Monday, November 4th, 2024. Let’s get the week underway by letting you in on a London secret. Every clock in London is a cuckoo clock. The cuckoo is […]
The august American travel magazine Travel & Leisure crowned her 'the world's greatest guide'
"He’d regularly back as many as 20 horses in a race for a big handicap and still miss the winner."
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 August 20th, 2024. Today’s pin…I have to ‘fess up. I missed one. This past week, August 12th to August 18th was Afternoon Tea […]
London calling. London Walks connecting. This… is London. This is London Walks. Streets ahead. Story time. History time. And from London – a very good evening to you. It’s August 15th, 2024. Today’s pin, this one’s a feel-good. Beavers have been beavering away. It’s a British beaver baby boom. The beaver is making a comeback […]
London calling. London Walks connecting. This… is London. This is London Walks. Streets ahead. Story time. History time. Top of the morning to you. From London. It’s August 14th, 2024. Today’s pin, Banksy’s on a London roll. A street art extravaganza. A graffiti spree. Nine animal artworks a-leaping in nine days in the capital. This […]
London calling. London Walks connecting. This… is London. This is London Walks. Streets ahead. Story time. History time. And a top of the morning to you. From London. It’s August 9th, 2024. Today’s pin – Infinite accumulation, that’s not a bad descriptor for what London’s all about, be it the generating and amassing of pounds, […]
The Great Famine in Ireland in 1845 was the greatest loss of life anywhere in Europe since the Black Death
"the lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime"
"how hard is it to train a cat to act, to do what you want it to not what it wants to do"
"Let's not make them bit part players – expendable pawns – barely glimpsed through the red mist of that psychopath"
"There is no evidence that he regarded himself as a standard bearer of the Trans-Cats Movement"
London calling. London Walks connecting. This… is London. This is London Walks. Streets ahead. Story time. History time. ————————————— Good morning, London. It’s June 25th, 2024. Today’s pin – today’s London news – Summer has arrived. It was hot yesterday. It’s going to be hot today. 27 degrees. That’s low 80s Farhenheit. Feels, well, Mediterranean. […]
"Every Walworth person had the right to keep two cows or one horse on the commons land"
"we had the daughter of a spy, the granddaughter of a man who hired a spy, and an expert on Orwell"
London calling. London Walks connecting. This… is London. This is London Walks. Streets ahead. Story time. History time. ————————————— Good morning, London. And points beyond, far-flung, near flung, it doesn’t matter, you’re listening to this you’re answering the call of London. You’re one of us. Welcome aboard. Now for anyone stopping by for the first […]
London calling. London Walks connecting. This… is London. This is London Walks. Streets ahead. Story time. History time. ————————————— Brevity is the soul of it today, February 29th, 2024. The pin for the day – the news story that gets the show on the road – is the announcement that the Fitzrovia landmark, the BT […]
"the quarterdeck, where Nelson was standing, was the most dangerous spot on the HMS Victory"
Poor William Wilkins. You really hope the London News wasn’t on his breakfast table that Sunday morning.
And so we embark on our journey of discovery, crack the code, reveal the meaning behind this strange, engimatic and erotic painting.
"both naked...engaged in a very erotic embrace...what is clearly an incestuous encounter"
There’s been one of those periodic bursts of creativity on the part of Team London Walks.
You’ll never again be able to go into the National Gallery and look at a Reubens without thinking of bird shit.
London calling. London Walks connecting. This… is London. Story time. History time. Yes, London Walks. AKA Streets Ahead. It’s January 27th, 2024. Quick one today. The pin is another barmy Britain item. Last time it was potty-mouthed parrots. This time it’s Olympic-standard criminal incompetence. The story ran last month in the York Press. It caught […]
If we were the British Museum Ruth’s urban geology walks would be the equivalent of the Egyptian mummies
"a slaughterhouse stood directly over the way from where Polly Nichols was slaughtered"
the friends of the abolition of slavery – some 130 of them – have gathered at the tavern to celebrate the event
the Mews house was where the Duke of York got himself photographed with his arm around the waist of a 17-year-old American girl
Minutes later eleven men – hard men, some of them drunk – come into that basement room...
"on hearing his height was eight feet four inches, I expected to see a deformed monster"
A Jewish troublemaker and an Anglo-Saxon goddess of spring and fertility. What's not to like about that combo?
It was the walking tour equivalent of baseball's greatest rarity – an unassisted triple play.
the British young mastered this “childishly simple” system in no time at all but British adults...
Turner at last run Dun so far in the brain at the eye, that he fell Down presently stone dead;
"from private information I have little doubt that his own family believed him to be the murderer"
January 18, 1486 – the wedding day of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York. This London History Bulletin tells the tale. TRANSCRIPT London calling. London Walks connecting. London Walks here with your daily London fix. Story time. History time. It’s January 18th, 1486 and it’s wedding bells. Westminster Abbey wedding bells. Royal wedding bells. The […]
On January 10th, 1863 the Metropolitan Line (the section from Paddington to Farringdon) debuts. It’s the first underground railway system in the world. This London History Bulletin tells the tale. TRANSCRIPT London calling. London Walks connecting. London Walks here with your daily London fix. Story time. History time. Ok, this is the London History Bulletin […]
calling him rogue, and Son of a whore, they knockt him down and dangerously wounded him
The 26th Baron de Clifford was the last peer to be tried in the House of Lords. The trial took place on December 12th, 1935. This Today in London History podcast tells the tale. TRANSCRIPT London calling. London Walks connecting. London Walks here with your daily London fix. Story time. History time. Here’s one for […]
"eyewitness evidence is unreliable...such devastating mistakes by eyewitnesses are not rare"
"flocks of chicken prostitutes which he observed before Somerset House, and which he mistook for the pupils of a large boarding school"
"he was principally distinguished for mischief, deceitfulness, and a lack of serious application"
"the elderly lady of the shawl, who seemed to renew her youth as the struggle proceeded, had to be arrested"
They may be 450 years old but they're called 'baby books' – the oldest printed books are baby books!
Lord Lucan went to the family home to murder his wife. He killed the children’s nanny instead. Or so goes the story. This Today in London History podcast tells the tale. TRANSCRIPT London calling. London Walks connecting. London Walks here with your daily London fix. Story time. History time. It’s 9.45 pm on the night […]
“Of the many initiatives of the British government in the First World War, it cast the longest shadow.”
"whoever the killer was he had to avoid being noticed by three different police officers"
Like gorged, albino leeches, sunning themselves on the slopes of that swarthy, unshaven face.
“journalism largely consists of saying ‘Lord Jones dead’ to people who never knew that Lord Jones was alive”
"In his book Martin Fido describes her as 'a drab little woman who drank her husband's wages'"
On October 10, 1677 a 12-year-old heiress married a 20-year-old baronet. That wedding shaped the feature of London. This Today in London History podcast tells the tale. TRANSCRIPT London calling. London Walks connecting. London Walks here with your daily London fix. Story time. History time. Five points. 1. The bride was 12 years old. 2. […]
"their foul-mouthed advertising of their wares was so hilarious that Nell was taken on as a professional performer"
“an Englishman cannot open his mouth without making another Englishman either hate or despise him"
Events and historically important men and women are like radionuclides. They each have their own particular half-life.
The jeep that sailed across the Atlantic ocean took to the road and drove up to London on August 26, 1951. This Today in London History podcast tells the tale. TRANSCRIPT London calling. London Walks connecting. London Walks here with your daily London fix. Story time. History time. We’ve seen it before, we’ll see it […]
The conception moment for Romanticism took place on this day, August 24th, 1770. This Today in London History podcast tells the tale. TRANSCRIPT London calling. London Walks connecting. London Walks here with your daily London fix. Story time. History time. It’s one of the great sob stories in English Literature. But it ain’t true. I’m […]
“Kray brothers, criminals, became icons of a very British form of criminality inextricably linked with memories of the 1960s."
" Landseer has made Nelson like a Daniel in the lions’ den, with the advantage only of being out of the lions’ reach"
"the three of them ambled over to the boundary wall of the service station and reconditioned it"
King Edward VII opened the Victoria and Albert Museum on June 26, 1909. That event (occasion) is the subject of today’s Today in London History podcast. TRANSCRIPT London calling. London Walks connecting. London Walks here with your daily London fix. Story time. History time. It happened. I knew it would. My conscience got the better […]
The great actor David Garrick gave his farewell performance on June 10, 1776. This Today in London History podcast takes us there. TRANSCRIPT London calling. London Walks connecting. London Walks here with your daily London fix. Story time. History time. It’s June 10th. And talk about spoiled for choice. Working back, 22 years ago today […]
"those blood-red coats, that riot of colour – that just didn't feel right for that time"
London calling. London Walks here with the Saturday Special. Yes, that’s right, just like that the Friday Special’s morphed into the Saturday Special. For this week at any rate. And this Saturday Special means today’s the day we put out two podcasts: the daily Today in London History podcast. And a special, a wild card. […]
"the creepiest, most interesting and indeed most spectacular side is the West cemetery"
I want a consultant neurosurgeon – not some schlubber with a scalpel and a copy of Gray’s Anatomy.
"Henry VIII was marrying too many women, executing too many men, and persecuting everyone else..."
"Wigs and fur-lined gowns and capes and swords and halberds and buckled shoes and stockings and flaring garters of lace"
"He was lantern-jawed. Five o’clock shadowed. Double-chinned. Broad-shouldered. Deep-voiced. Hirsute hands"
"when it lacks the heat shield of lots of time between us and what happened, history can be vile"
"it's worth pointing out that at that time many ladies were not accustomed to wearing underwear"
More London Walks heading round to the dark side of the London moon. Today – February 11th – is the anniversary of the acquittal of Cynthia Payne. Cynthia Payne is richly deserving of a place in the Today in London History Pantheon. This podcast tells the tale. TRANSCRIPT February 11th. Another one of those cup […]
“Dress suitably in short skirts and strong boots, leave your jewels in the bank and buy a revolver"
"Given that the ninth Earl was George II’s Groom of the Stool, he was probably glad to get out in the fresh air at every opportunity"
"within one week of the fire Christopher not only had a plan for the rebuilding of St Paul's, he also had a plan for the rebuilding of the City"
"I'll be sharing images using Apple's incredible Retina Display and the maximum group size will be 10"
"Violetta is a celebrity photographer...she's recently photographed the Oscar nominees"
Yeah Yeah Yeah. Richard’s got a new book on the Beatles coming out (publication date: October 11). It’s titled The Beatles Fab Four Cities: Liverpool, Hamburg, London and New York. He’s co-authored it with the chap who does Beatles tours in Liverpool and the gal who does them in New York. Book’s about the Beatles’ […]
This is the fifth and final part of Helena’s series on Caravaggio’s masterpiece, The Taking of Christ. At one point Helena speaks of “the beauty and quality of this work.” That phrase is equally applicable to her work – her art criticism/appreciation/history. I’ve said it before but it bears repeating, I am, without fail, spellbound […]
"199 riverboats that have this rather bohemian, trendy existence...it used to be a really cheap living option"
"we're going to concentrate on the pilgrims and what they tell us about mediaeval life"
"the reason that they didn't use women actors was...Shakespeare uses this gender confusion to maximum effect"
"the internal structure of the house – the wattle and daub – they've exposed it, so you can actually see it"
"we're going to go to Paris very briefly and we're going to go to The Cotswolds – very briefly"
"his breaking down of the barrier between the picture plane and the viewer's space in such a dramatic and intense way the viewer feels they are as much of a participant as a spectator to what is going on"
"who's going to call the Queen 'Cabbage' now?"..."the question he asked us was, 'how much do you earn?'"
"you direct people's attention in the way that a film director chooses a particular shot"
"in one street there were so many spies it was difficult to fit them all into the walk"
"I got two years probation for running the toughest gang in the neighbourhood and causing chaos"
Into this stew i'm going to throw as many ingredients as I can as quickly as I can "I'll do my Dracula impression"
"before Montmartre was the principal red-light district of Paris it was one of the holiest places in France"
"the idea was to put Drake's ship Golden Hinde on top of old St. Paul's – wouldn't that have been fantastic"
"he designed the building so we could look out and see London performing in front of us"
"if Michaelangelo can create the Pietà which is two figures out of marble, I can create three"
"when he heard her singing his morale went down – he called her 'Hitler's secret weapon'"
"whenever you see Benedict Cumberbatch (or the actor who plays me, Martin Freeman) enter or leave their house, they were actually filmed exactly here"
"London Walks has been handed down to us" Noel Coward and guide Shaughan Seymour team up
"he was unwashed, shabby, shabbily, dressed, boorish, philistine, uncouth, miserly, misogynistic, crude"
"When you were tugging on their udders were you talking to your cows in that fruity accent?"
"from the top of the wheel you could gaze out and see Windsor Castle, 20 miles away, upside-down"
"he changed his name on the top deck of a red London bus as it went by Bart's hospital"
"It becomes a place of entertainment, theatre, prostitution, boxing – basically Las Vegas"
"Dad came to me and said 'I've got the chance of buying the Cavern, what do you think?'...they just exploded onto the stage, their energy was absolutely palpable"
"they thought Roman mortar was so strong because it was made of bull's blood...in fact it was crushed tile"
"it was the only part of Queen Elizabeth II's coronation ceremony that was not televised – because of its sacred nature"
"the sun, blood-red on the eastern marshes behind dark masts and yards, seemed filled with the ruins of a forest it had set on fire"
"you'll notice that the lights are all hanging vertically from the tree – that's because that's the Norwegian tradition"
"we may be looking up at modern buildings but we're walking along a street plan that hasn't changed very much at all in 2,000 years"
"So, this preposterous, vulgar, outlandish, outrageous, bombastic prince sets about rebuilding the centre of London in his image"
"I was looking for something different...I've learnt lots of things that I didn't know before"
"but at the end of the story it's revealed as a castle in the air...it's impossible to read that story without a lump coming into the throat..."
"you get a huge amount of extra material on your screen that you don't get on the walking tour"
"tonight Simon and Christopher will take us to a slightly less reputable establishment"