London Walks

and auld lang syne

I'm going to do a piece on London Walks at home. Or, more precisely, a piece on my home patch, my London.

Possibly the most civilised retail space in Britain.

And plonked right in the middle of it all: the Acropolis.

London declaring itself heir not just to empire, but to spectacle itself.

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.

"sets you up nicely should that come up as a question in a pub quiz"

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.

A double dose of goodness for you this evening...

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.

A birthday bash that's yet another chapter in the Literary London Saga.

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.

The year London got its Christmas back.

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.