Tucker - London walks London stories: discover the citys hidden gems with the original walking tour company

C ONTENTS

About the Book

On the surface a buzzing twenty-first century metropolis, London is a city bursting with history, heritage and culture. Look beyond the black cabs and blue plaques, and the myriad irresistible and surprising stories that have shaped London suddenly come to life.

London Walks is the award-winning original walking tour company. Written by the expert and knowledgeable guides who lead the walks, London Walks, London Stories is the perfect way to discover the citys rich history and hidden gems.

Explore Londons literary life, from Shakespeare to Dickens. Tread cautiously through dark alleyways to Jack the Rippers haunts, and uncover Londons more sinister secrets. Enjoy a pint in a Soho pub, and prop up the bar with Dylan Thomas or Karl Marx. Take a trip down Londons historic Thames from Westminster to Greenwich, the home of time itself.

London Walks, London Stories offers a fascinating glimpse of the capitals rich history for those who love London, by those who know it best.

For Mary (Poppins):

Practically perfect, she made it home

F OREWORD

By Rick Steves, author of Europe Through the Back Door and thirty other European travel guidebooks

The best way to see a city is not just on foot but on foot with a good guide. A local person who lives in a great city can shine a light on its soul. Where I come from, you can wander lanes and parks, and gaze at balconies and street signs, and theres little to say. But in a city like London, movers and shakers of Western Civilisation walked the cobbles, sipped beer in snugs, and shaped our past.

London lends itself to walks as well as any city in Europe. Its a city of towns and villages which grew together while maintaining their personality quirks. Its a city still roamed by the spirits of Romans and the proud Celts they put down. Its a city that inspired literary greats. Its a city that stood up to a battering in the darkness of the Second World War and refused to break. And, its a city that confounds tourists without a guide.

For twenty years, as a visiting and curious and sometimes overwhelmed traveller, I have enjoyed David Tucker and his band of London guides. Each has a passion that carbonates the slice of London they share. And they have helped me appreciate the many facets of their city.

Now, with this collection of essays, these guides take their gift to travellers and amplify it so that we can all, wherever we are, sit back and enjoy a little slice of one of our worlds great cities.

I NTRODUCTION

DAVID TUCKER

London still has thank heavens some 2,000 gas lamps. And even in the 1980s there was still one gas-lamp lighter at work! His beat was the Temple area, part of the lawyers quarter. He made his rounds every evening at dusk. He carried a long pole his lighter. With it hed reach up and catch and open a turncock of sorts. That would release the gas. Then hed turn the implement in his fingers and apply a lighted taper to the newly released gas, which blossomed into flame. Then hed be around again, first thing in the morning, implement in hand, to extinguish the flame. Purely by chance I happened to be in the Temple area that day in the mid-1980s when the work crews were going through there, fitting out each of the gas lamps with a timer, a clock, which would do the job automatically. I was strangely moved. The thought being: a hundred years ago there would have been hundreds if not thousands of gas-lamp lighters in London, earning their livelihoods, supporting their families. And here we were in the middle of the ninth decade of the twentieth century and it had come down to one last gas-lamp lighter. He was the last of the Mohicans. And he was about to be made extinct.

We dont have gas-lamp lighters any more but we do still have gas-lamp clock winders. They wind the clocks and adjust the lighting-up and extinguishing times for Londons remaining gas lamps. And theres one gas lamp in London where we the public can be, however momentarily, a gas-lamp lighter. We can turn it on and off. But youll have to go on Angelas walk to find it!

Now all of this is by way of saying that London Walks guides are, after a fashion, latter-day gas-lamp lighters. Picture it: the lamplighters figure moving along a London street in the gloaming and one by one the street lamps coming out like stars. And you think theres no romance to London? So thats what we do light things up for people. Both out on the streets of London when were guiding, and here, in these pages.

Local knowledge, knowing where to go when you cant beat it. How did the thirteenth-century poet Rumi put it? Whoever travels without a guide needs two hundred years for a two-day journey.

W HERE TO READ THIS

No question about it: the wonderful Caf in the Crypt at St Martin-in-the-Fields, the old church in Trafalgar Square.

London Walks is the oldest urban-walking tour company in the world. It is by common consent the best urban-walking tour company in the world.

A great walk is accretional in the sense that a guides understanding of a neighbourhood grows, develops, gets richer and richer over time. It takes years this is England, after all but in time a guide will become part of the furniture of a given neighbourhood, will become accepted and trusted by the locals. And thats when the magic really starts to happen. Because the locals will then open up to the guide, sharing fascinating titbits with him or her about the neighbourhood. Its that sort of connectedness that sets London Walks apart.

When it came to thinking about a book based on all the accrued knowledge and feel for the city, we wanted something different from the bog-standard walking-tour guidebook. What we wanted was it to be a great read. In short, we wanted it to be an armchair read as well as a useful on-the-street guide. This is why each chapter has a little side bar suggesting where you might read that particular section. The idea being for readers who are in London at any rate you can read the chapter while seated comfortably in, say, the Founders Arms or in front of the great fourth-floor windows of Tate Modern with their wonderful panoramic view out over the Thames and across to the City skyline (those are the two recommended reading spots for my chapter on the Thames that opens the book), and then go out and do some exploring on your own. The French have the word for this sort of thing: flnerie. We wanted the London Walks book to be one that would allow for some flneuring. Read and then explore on your own. Flneuring allows for happy accidents, for discoveries.

We also wanted the guides individual voices to come through. London Walks is like a symphony orchestra: a team of great people that works together brilliantly. But within that orchestra every guide is also a solo and we wanted a range of voices, because that is London Walks, the result of a richness and indeed collegiality you get when you have a team of seventy or so world-class guides simultaneously tilling their own rows and working together.

And we wanted the thing to shine with intelligence. Another contributing factor to London Walks reputation is the intellectual audacity of the guides. Some of that, of course, is attested to by their professional qualifications, the guides comprising authors, a barrister, a physician, a roll-call of award-winning Blue Badge guides (not to mention Chief Examiner of the Blue Badge course), PhDs, distinguished London historians, archaeologists, journalists, broadcasters and more. And they are experts in the tours they lead. As the New York Times unerringly put it many years ago, London Walks puts you into the hands of an expert on the particular area and topic of a tour. Thats what weve done on the pavement for nearly half a century. And its what weve done here on the page. Among the contributions, our Jack the Ripper chapter by the distinguished criminologist (and London Walks Ripper guide