The Unknown Prime Minister

The Lord Mayor’s Show is underway. The tricorne is our Word of the Day. And at 350-year-old Lock & Co., we uncover Jackie Onassis’s head measurements and an ancient ledger recording Admiral Nelson’s final hat order. A treasure trove of London history, some of it quite literally under lock and key.

A little pocket of elsewhere in the heart of West Hampstead. Step inside Bohemia House and you step into another world. Czech beer, Czech hospitality, a generous helping of history, and a wonderfully convivial encounter with Tomas, the man who makes the place tick. Oh, and a little homemade ginger vodka for medicinal purposes.

From the wooded bluffs of the upper Mississippi to a mysterious stretch of canal beneath my old office in Camden Town. A personal journey across the Atlantic, through centuries of London’s industrial history, with a wonderfully unexpected appearance by James Bond. And a final twist involving the Booker Prize.

Five hundred consecutive daily podcasts. Half a million listens. And now a change of gear. London Calling isn’t going away. Far from it. We’re trading seven daily editions for one longer, richer, more varied Saturday programme. The sidecar isn’t being abandoned. I’m simply climbing back onto the motorcycle. Come along for the ride.

Where did London put its dead when the graveyards were full? A journey into a lost world of bones, burial, belief and some of the strangest chapters in the city’s history.

A little red flower. A terrible history. How the poppy became the emblem of remembrance, why we wear it, and how something so fragile came to carry the weight of millions of lives lost in war.

Law, surveying, dispatch riding, art, even a black belt in judo. Brian’s had more lives than a cat. Meet the award-winning London Walks guide who’s done just about everything.

Meet “the Coalbox”, Lady Sibyl Colefax, one of London’s great hostesses. When the King came to dinner, he brought Wallis Simpson. Rubinstein played Chopin. Noël Coward sang.

A book in the dock. A nation on trial. How the 1960 Lady Chatterley obscenity trial became a turning point in British social and cultural history.

An ancient Celtic festival, a Hampstead chapel and the mysterious turning of the year. A journey into Samhain, where summer gives way to winter and the boundary between the living and the dead grows tantalisingly thin.