Nick Day is an actor who has successfully divided his time between theatre, film and television. He has worked extensively at the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company where he appeared most recently in the Complete Works Festival. In London he has appeared in plays at the Almeida, Donmar Warehouse and Royal Court theatres and several times in the West End. In pantomime, more years ago than he cares to count, he fought a nightly linguistic duel with Mary Tucker in improvised rhyming couplets. They became firm friends and Nick became one more of Mary’s fellow actors that she has pressed into service over the years.
Angela Down was born and brought up in London. When not walking the streets, she is an actress. No change there, then.
Kevin Flude is a museum curator and lecturer. He runs the Old Operating Theatre Museum near London Bridge, and lectures for the University of the Arts, London and for Elderhostel. He has a lifelong interest in the history and archaeology of London. He is a member of the Institute of Field Archaeologists and a former archaeologist at the Museum of London.
Peter Glancy like those other great Londoners Shakespeare, Dr Johnson and Dickens, does not hail from the metropolis. He was bred and born in Nelson, Lancashire, but came to London in 1974 to study at the Drama Centre. After an intermittently average acting career he has fallen literally on his feet with the wonderful London Walks®. Guiding the public through the streets of London combines his three great loves: architecture, history and showing off.
Ed Glinert was born in Dalston, London, and read Classical Hebrew at Manchester University. He set up the Manchester’s listings magazine City Life in 1983 and has since worked as a journalist for Radio Times, Mojo and Private Eye. His books include The Literary Guide to London (2000), The London Compendium (2003), East End Chronicles (2005), West End Chronicles (2007), London’s Dead (2008) and The Manchester Compendium (2008). He has also edited The Diary of a Nobody by George and Weedon Grossmith, and collections of the Sherlock Holmes stories and the Gilbert & Sullivan operettas for Penguin Classics.
Jean Haynes is a Londoner born and bred. A qualified teacher, having taught for over thirty-five years, she joined London Walks® as a City of London Guide with a wide range of tours, some in costume. As an actor, her leading roles have ranged from Greek drama and Shakespeare to music hall and pantomime. She lectures and writes on London, history, genealogy and literature, is a member of the Society of Genealogists and the Dickens Fellowship, and is on the committee of the Friends of Keats House.
Jean’s chapter is dedicated to the memory of June Street, a great guide and a good friend.
Brian Hicks trained as a lawyer, became office manager for a courier company, was director of an art gallery, and in between was an assistant surveyor, catering manager and motorcycle courier. He has lectured on everything from the Anglo-Saxons to the English legal system, has served on the Executive Council of the Guild of Registered Tourist Guides and on the Board of the Institute of Tourist Guiding, and has been involved in guide training in various capacities. He won a guiding prize for his ‘On Site’ guiding. He has also written various articles and pieces on London. His chief pleasure is motorcycling and he relaxes with gardening and travel.
Tom Hooper is a barrister, Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, Examiner for the Blue Badge Guides Course, travel writer and a professionally qualified Blue Badge Guide (he’s the Chairman of the Guild of Guides Association). Follically challenged but motorcyclingly virile, his graceful wit, classic elegance of mind, infectious giggle, and gentle and generous heart make him the delight of all who know him.
Sue Jackson has a background in publishing but had been taking guided walks alongside her full-time job for a very long time before deciding, ten years ago, to make guiding her priority. She completed the Blue Badge qualification, and today guides, takes tours all over the country and gives lectures. These are mainly delivered to the National Trust or the National Association of Decorative and Fine Arts Societies, but she also runs courses for the City Literary Institute on aspects of power and politics and the development of London.
John Mahoney was born in South London and bred in North London, and has lived the great majority of his life in the metropolis. He worked for a number of years as a London Walks® guide following his retirement from forty years in journalism, working mainly as Foreign Editor for Independent Television News and later at BBC News and Newsnight. In between ITN and the BBC, he was for a time News Editor at London’s commercial local news programme Thames News. In the recent past he has been concentrating on voluntary press work for two national charities.
Judy Pulley was born in Warwickshire but has lived in London for thirty years, working as a teacher and in the media before becoming a full-time guide in 1995. Judy is a London Blue Badge guide and a City of London guide, conducting tours in all areas of London, with particular interest in East London where she lives. She has written a book on the City of London – Streets of the City – which was published in 2006. Her interests include photography, industrial heritage, architecture and stone carving.
Hilary Ratcliffe read history at Bristol University and taught in high schools before training as a City of London guide in 1991. She trained as a Blue Badge guide in 1998 and now works full-time as a tourist guide. She recently completed the St Albans city-guide course. In addition Hilary is a Soroptimist – a member of an international business and professional women’s service organisation which works to improve the lives of women and girls worldwide. In her spare time she enjoys theatre, walking, reading and travelling.
Richard Roques trained as an actor at the Central School of Speech and Drama. He works full-time as a guide with London Walks® with a repertoire of over forty different walks. He has written seven full-length plays for the stage and a number of short stories and radio plays. Of his first play, Looks Like Freedom, Bonnie Greer wrote in Time Out: ‘His insights … are compassionate and often hilarious … this play, with its honesty and willingness to engage the world, is worth all the well-crafted, directed to death but essentially tiny plays currently in fashion.’ Richard won the 2006 Windsor Fringe Festival award for his short play Don’t Open the Door. His comedy The History of London Until it Got Burnt Down had a successful run in the West End in 2008 and is set to return. His latest play Get Rich Quick will also be premiering in 2009.
Donald Rumbelow is internationally recognised as the leading authority on Jack the Ripper. Britain’s most distinguished crime historian, he is the author of the pre-eminent book on the Ripper, the bestselling The Complete Jack the Ripper. A former Curator of the City of London Police Crime Museum and a two-time Chairman of the Crime Writers Association, he is a Freeman of the City of London and a professionally qualified Blue Badge and City of London Guide.
Adam Scott is an author, columnist, critic and blogger who moved to London from his native Edinburgh ‘just to see what all the fuss was about’. That was eighteen years ago. He’s still here. He has covered theatre for the Independent, bars for Time Out and has written about London from every angle, from the Button Queen shop in Marylebone to Dulwich Hamlet Football Club. He counts it a privilege to shout his head off in the street about the world’s greatest city and dedicates his chapters to his wife Karen (a former Blue Badge Guide of the Year) and his baby daughter Isobella.
Shaughan Seymour has worked as a London Walks® guide for eighteen years and has trained as a City of London and Blue Badge Guide. He has followed other London tale-tellers and scribbled in their wake, picking up what scraps he can, rummaging in the archives, and visiting as many second-hand bookshops as possible. He also works as an actor, mostly in television and film, and occasionally serenades his groups with a song or two.
David Tucker is the seigneur of this favoured realm (London Walks), broods over words, breeds enthusiasms, and is generally ‘unmanageable’. A balterer, literary historian, university lecturer and lifelong thanatophobe, he’s also the London Walks® ‘pen’ – he writes the leaflet and website.