Plaque of the Week No.12

Not Only, But Also…



Commemorating: Comedian, actor, publisher & writer Peter Cook
Issued by: The City of Westminster
Street: Greek Street
Postcode: W1
Borough: Westminster

“The only good title I ever came up with.” Thus Peter Cook judged the name of his Establishment Club in Greek Street, the satirical comedy club which, from 1961 – 1964 played host not only to Cook’s work, but that of such comedy luminaries as Lenny Bruce. Regarded by many as a genius (Stephen Fry once described him as “The funniest man who ever drew breath.”) Cook was born in Devon and was headed for diplomatic service but was stymied by the fact that, in his own words, “England had run out of colonies” by the time he came down from Cambridge. One quarter of Beyond the Fringe (with Dudley Moore, Jonathan Miller and Alan Bennett), publisher and sometime financial saviour of Private Eye magazine, his comedy influence stretches into the present day. As a lifelong iconoclast one can only speculate as to how he would feel about his plaque, but for his fans it provides his only monument in London – Cook is buried in an unmarked grave at Hampstead. Look out for it next time you're in Soho.

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The Weekly Gallimaufry 08:11:09

I-i-i-i-i-t's Chri-i-i-i-i-ist-ma-a-a-a-a-as! (Well, almost…)


And the Winner Is…



We’ve drawn a winner! Chris Shellard identified the man we were looking for in our competition question – “Who designed the London Underground map?” – as being Harry Beck.

For his trouble he wins a copy of the Dictionary of London Phrase & Fable (published by Chambers and worth £25!)

More LW Blog competitions soon… keep coming back to join in and win!


You Ask the Questions

From time-to-time, London Walkers come up with great queries on London Walks. Such as this one, from an American visitor last month:

“I’ve been on three London Walks this trip and I’ve seen a White Hart pub on each one. Is it a chain?”

(The three London Walks in question were Somewhere Else, Soho and Unknown East End.)



LW Blog replies:

“Great question – and one which we plan to cover soon in a new London Walks Blog series. But to answer: No, the White Hart is not a chain, but I can see why you asked. There are White Harts all over London. The name comes from the emblem of the Plantagenet King Richard II (“hart” being a stag). Richard II confronted the Peasants Revolt at Mile End (site of one of the White Hart pubs encountered on our questioner’s visit). Of all English pub names, The White Hart is fifth most popular (another royal title, The Crown, is number one).”


A Christmas Carol


To St Paul’s last Tuesday (above, lit by searchlights during a live show by Spandau Ballet!) for the switching on of the Christmas lights on the big screen, relayed live from Oxford and Regent Streets. (Thanks again, by the way, to the City of London P.C we met there who agreed to pose for a pic holding our Famous White Leaflet!) A Christmas Carol is the theme of this year’s London Christmas lights, a theme dear to us here at the LW Blog.

Regular readers will recall our poll earlier this year to find London’s Favourite Dickens. The London Walks guides put forward their nominations and from their shortlist London Walkers voted for their favourite. And the winner was, by quite some way, A Christmas Carol.



We’ll return over the course of the Festive Season to the results of our poll and the thoughts of the London Walks guides who nominated A Christmas Carol in the first place. In the meantime, BBC Radio 7 will broadcast a dramatisation of Dickens’s classic on the afternoon of the 20th December. Closer to home for London Walks Jean will be leading her legendary Christmas Walks once more this years. Click HERE for more details.


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Dark Side of the Swinging Sixties

Piccadilly Circus at the dawn of the 1960s. In this colourised shot, vividly red Routemaster buses circle a fountain with suspiciously blue water; the good life promised by the consumer goods vaunted on the world-famous electric hoardings shines even brighter yet. The movie playing at the Pavillion is The Fugitive Kind starring Marlon Brando.

Yet behind this happy tourist postcard scene – quite literally behind, in the streets of Soho – is a scene seething with vice and iniquity. Clubs, drugs, raucous music and sex for sale. All just a heartbeat away from polite society.

Find the real fugitive kind – from the Rolling Stones to the 1st Duke of Monmouth – on the NEW London Walk Street Fightin’Men – Bad Boys in Soho 1660’s to 1960s, tomorrow morning (8th November) at 10.45a.m. Meet by Wyndham’s Theatre outside Leicester Sqaure tube station.

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The London List No.16

Five Defunct London newspapers.

(Following on from David's post yesterday, we're still in the Fleet Street of yore…) Last month, in a landmark event for newspaper publishing in the UK, the London Evening Standard became a “freesheet” – 600,000 copies are circulated daily in the capital. Since 1827 the Standard has seen off the following rivals…

1. thelondonpaper
A free evening newspaper published by News International from 4th September 2006 to 18th September 2009.
2. The London Daily News
Robert Maxwell’s short-lived title (published from February to July 1987) was seen off in a price-war with Associated Newspapers and their Evening News. In the last days of the “war”, the LDN was sold for 10p, with the EN going for 5p.
3. The Pall Mall Gazette
From 1865 the Pall Mall Gazette was a London evening title – George Bernard Shaw found his first journalism work in this paper. In 1923 it was subsumed into – what else? – the Evening Standard. References to the PMG are dotted throughout Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories and in H.G Wells’s The Time Machine.
4. The Evening News
Taken over by the Evening Standard in 1980, it was brought out of mothballs to fight off competition from Robert Maxwell in 1987 (see no.2, above). The Standard’s principal rival for 99 years between 1881 and 1980.
5. The Illustrated London News
The world’s first illustrated news title was published weekly from 1842 to 1971.

Find Fleet Street in the London Walks book London Stories and on the Hidden Pubs of Old London Town walk every Tuesday night.


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Fleet Street: This Word Just In…

David –famous in London Walks circles for “brooding on words” – turns his etymological attention to Fleet Street.

“London's like a magician that pulls a rabbit out of – no, not a hat – a pencil sharpener. A seriously good magician. Because just when you're nodding your head in appreciation, saying to your sidekick, ‘Jeez did you see that rabbit, that was a pretty neat trick’, out comes – Out. Of. The. Same. Pencil. Sharpener... a hippo.

Case in point. Extramural London in a westerly direction. i.e., the district outside the wall but inside the City ‘limit’. In short, Fleet Street and its environs. In ‘the good old days’ Fleet Street and co. was often called Alsatia. Alsatia because like the Alsace-Lorraine region – that broken zipper running along the French-German border (and, as long as we're at it, what a lot of trouble that neck of the woods has caused in its time!) – Fleet Street and its outriders have always been in a sort of no-man's land. Not quite Westminster, but also ‘not quite our sort, darling’ as far as ‘London proper’ goes. I mean, after all, outside the wall is, well, beyond the pale. So, Alsatia. Raffish. The black sheep. Well, you get the idea.

That's the rabbit. Here comes the hippo. Turns out that the second half of the Alsace-Lorraine sobriquet – Lorraine – means, literally, Land of the Loud Army. The name comes from the inspired marriage of the Old High German word hlutha, which means loud, famous and the OHG word haria, which means army, folk. So, as if the Tobasco sauce of Alsatia isn't good enough, we also get the Habanero of Land of the Loud Army. Braying journalists lurching from watering hole to watering hole; newspapers on a Sherman's Scorched Earth march through the latest government policy endeavour; the excited cries of legal vultures hovering in an air tactical support capacity.

Land of the Loud Army indeed.

Hand on heart time: I've been in this town for something like 15,000 days – and there's a not one a single one of them when this place hasn't astonished me.”

Find Fleet Street on the Hidden Pubs of Old London Town walk every Tuesday night at 7.00p.m (meet at Temple tube). You can also “read all about it” in the London Walks book London Stories.


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