London Walks

London calling. London Walks connecting. This… is London. This is London Walks. Streets ahead. Story time. History time. A very good morning to you, London Walkers. Wherever you are. It’s Tuesday, March 3rd, 2026. And here it is. Your daily London fix. Do you ever feel the urge to casually demolish your friends at a quiz night? Not brutally. Not with bad manners. Just… efficiently. A gentle cleari...

Following on from yesterday's podcast about the London place-name "Bayswater", David opens up another front on that field of action: the ancient (it's Anglo-Saxon) place-name suffix "ee" (or "ea" or "ey"). TRANSCRIPT London Calling. David here. “To see London, you have to hear it.” Quoting myself there. That sentence – to see London you have to hear it – is how I opened London Walks, London Storie...

London place-names can often unlock the DNA of a neighbourhood or district. They're an x-ray of the past. Bayswater is a perfect case in point. David "guides" the name Bayswater in this podcast.  

This one's the result of a happy accident. I (David) was doing my Hampstead Walk a couple of Sunday mornings ago and up ahead an artist had set up his easel and was "rapt" (Shakespeare's word). He was in what I later discovered he calls "the zone" – the act of creation. The painting was (is) very beautiful. And, look, myself and my two walkers were a bit forward. We got to him and stood back away...

Up in Hampstead , Memorial Day comes 52 times a year for David . TRANSCRIPT London calling. David here. Today’s Memorial Day in the United States so I thought I’d do a personal –  a David, a London-based, a from London Memorial Day piece for today’s podcast.  As it happens, every Sunday is a memorial day for me. So the where’s and when’s and why’s and what’s and who’s of those weekly acts of remem...

David on tourists' London as opposed to Londoners' London. AKA how to read the London room. Transcript London calling. David here. Somewhere in Shakespeare there’s a scene – this is from memory, alas, I haven’t been able to get a bead on the play, let alone track down the exact scene – anywhere somewhere in Shakespeare-land there’s a passage in which a nobleman, speaking to a fellow nobleman, talk...

A David gallimaufry TRANSCRIPT London calling. David here. Another gallimaufry tonight. Thought I’d start with an addendum to yesterday’s podcast, which was mostly about the British slave trade and in particular my surprise that they were all at it. By “all” I mean household names in the London pantheon. Famous 17th-century Londoners. People that we as guides talk about a fair bit. Because they’re...

David in a reflective mood. This one ranges over the slave trade, the three wise men, the gobsmacking stuff he (David) is finding out about London and some notable Londoners from a book he's reading that's, well, enthralling him.

This is a slice of the pie from David's Hampstead & Hampstead Heath Virtual Tour . The pole star of David's guiding is a remark by John Constable: "we see nothing till we truly understand it." So in this excerpt, you find out, for example, the role topography played in "preserving" Hampstead and Hampstead Heath. You find out about some of the major "players" in the saving of Hampstead Heath –...

David takes a close look at the man behind the name Downing Street. And my goodness, look what he's found. It's like turning over a stone and finding some deeply unpleasant stuff crawling around underneath it. Deeply unpleasant is understating it – it's nasty in the extreme, what the history and biography yields up. So much so it's at least arguable that the name should perhaps be changed. Like to...

This is the start of David's Sights & Secrets of Kensington Virtual Tour . For the record, it's very similar to how his shoe- leather-on-pavement walking tour of Kensington opens. MONEY QUOTE "London specialises in hiding the best of itself"

This is Part II of the route David would take for a feast of a London journey from the Abbey Road Studios (where Richard P.'s Beatles walks end) to Baker Street Station. A car-free journey of discovery and hidden places and water and wildlife and fresh air and Londoners' London and flowers and greenery and breathtaking set-piece architecture. This Part – Part II – is set entirely in Regent's Park....

This is very prescriptive. It's David out walking and talking, walking the route he'd recommend if, at the end of the Beatles walk, you don't want to take the Tube back into central London. It's very detailed, very exact, this – full of practicals, full of advice. David tells you exactly how to do it if you fancy the best way of making your way back into central London from the famous crosswalk an...

Very simple, really. This podcast began life as an email David sent to a walker who rang up to say she and three friends were going on his Kensington Walk and could we recommend a place where they could get a bite to eat. TRANSCRIPT London calling. David here.  Let’s talk food in Kensington. And chowing down al fresco in Kensington.  And yes, by my standards this one will be fairly brief. But emin...

Hornets is my favourite tiny shop in London. It's extremely high-quality, "previously owned" menswear – Savile Row, Jermyn Street, you get the idea. You'll find it – we find it on my Kensington Walk* – down a tiny, secret little passageway just off Holland Street in Kensington. It's run by one of my all-time favourite characters in London, the actor (and raconteur) William Wilde ("Bill"). I caught...

Subtitle: Two very old photographs and an ancient place name – David  gets back. A rumination about how London changes. And how our understanding and appreciation of it changes. Narrowing the focus, it's about Kensington. And zeroing in even closer, it's about the place name Kensington. David's the narrator (and guide and author). His Sights & Secrets of Kensington Virtual Tour is the jumping-...

This podcast is an out-take from David's Hampstead & Hampstead Heath Virtual Tour. It's got "a wider range" than any other podcast we've done so far. From Hampstead to Italy to Germany to the Alps to Java to Niagara Falls to Madagascar. It's got a jaw-dropping cast of characters and an "almost defies belief" tiara of vignettes.  TRANSCRIPT London Calling.  David here.  It’s out-take time.  Tha...

Exactly what it says on the tin TRANSCRIPT London Calling. David here. Ok, this one’s fairly personal. Personal. And angry. So you’ve been warned. Switch off now – proceed no further – if you’d rather not go where I’m going to take you.  Undecided? Well, if it’s a factor – it’s not long, this podcast. It’s no more than 14 or 15 minute listen. And hey, no way I would ever put up on the London Walks...

For the anniversary of Charles Dickens' birth, David does a pull-together. It's a tale of two manuscript finds, of the Battle of Arnhem, of favourite professors, of a couple of virtual tours, of Harvard and London Universities, of John Keats, of Zoom, of Daphne du Maurier, of personal recollections, of the Victoria & Albert Museum, of academic tenure. TRANSCRIPT London Calling. David here. A c...

David's been diving again. Diving for pearls in London lagoons nobody else knows about . And sure enough, he scored. Found twenty-five of them. Brought them up. And here they are. Never been seen before. Ok, that's a fanciful way of saying I've been doing some primary documents research. London documents. And have made some pretty special finds. Satisfying in so many ways, one of them being this i...

David convincingly makes the case that the best house in London looks out over Hampstead's No. 1 pond What it's got is unique...

This podcast builds on a point Chris made in yesterday's "Today's the second day of Christmas..." This one is by David and, yes, it's called God's Assassin . Transcript:  God’s Assassin God's Assassin. That's what this podcast is called. That's who stars in it. So, yes, London Calling. David here. In yesterday's Twelve Days of Christmas Podcast we learned from Chris that pigeons are actually on th...

David's got a thing about Dickens. Dickens was life-changing for him. Dickens is the reason he's in this country. Indeed, Dickens is the reason David got into London Walks. Ian, who owned London Walks at the time, did not want an American guide. But David knew something about Dickens (University College London Ph. D. on Dickens, publications, etc.). This podcast is a long long way off from all the...

London Walks guides know things about London other people don't know. Two London Walks guides – David and Justin (Justin's the London Walks James Bond expert) – were out "scouting locations" in Mayfair on December 11 with filmmaker Jon Klein. Twenty-fours later Justin was doing a James Bond walk that was going to have along a couple of former Bond girls and Daniel Craig's double. So, naturally, th...

A London miscellany. Something a wee bit different. David's been reading the newspapers (3 December 2020). Here's what caught his eye this morning. Having a good soak in a couple of newspapers – one national, one local – it's a good way to take the pulse of a people, of a country, of a capital city, of a neighbourhood, of a polity. What they're looking at, what they're remembering, how they see th...