London Walks

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...

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 wh...

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 p...

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 il...

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...

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 r...

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 h...

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 curt...

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...

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 street...

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 st...

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...

"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 a...

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...

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 entendre...

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...

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 roya...

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...

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...

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 t...