This sponsored walk was held in London, England on Sunday October 24th 1999. The following are the directions for the route followed, including notes about the famous stammerers around whom the route was based.
Proceeds of the walk went towards the information and support service operated by the British Stammering Association . This service offers callers the opportunity to talk about whatever concerns them in a safe and non-judgemental environment, as well as providing information on therapy and events.
The walk is about five miles long so that unfit people like me can do it. It goes via various places in London linked with famous stammerers. The route is described below. People in italics are famous stammerers.
We meet at 11.00 am in the large pedestrian square outside the entrance to the Tower of London. (The Tower of London ticket offices are on the east side of the square.) There are loos, stalls selling tea, coffee and snacks, and a McDonalds. We gather at the walled circle of seats under the tree between the two refreshment kiosks.
To get there from Tower Hill tube station, go down the long flight of steps towards the Tower (passing a statue of Trajan and some of the original Roman wall on your left). At the bottom is an underpass with a large sign "Welcome to HM Tower of London". Go through the underpass and turn right, following the signs for the Tower of London. Carry on straight past any queues waiting to get into the Tower. This will bring you out to the pedestrian square where we meet.
The Tower of London is associated with Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727), who lived and worked here as a while as warden and then master of the mint, becoming a scourge of counterfeiters . He was an outstanding scientist, most famous for his discovery of gravity. His book Principia Mathematica is often regarded as the greatest single work in the history of science. His demonstration that apparently diverse physical phenomena, ranging from an apple falling from a tree to the planets orbiting the sun, can be explained in terms of simple universally applicable laws remains to this day a cornerstone of science and indeed of our general world view. Further links: Newton.org.uk, some quotes, and a more technical article.
We go along Great Tower Street, turn left down Fish Street Hill and cross over London Bridge to the South Bank.
The first London bridge was probably built in wood by the Romans, who under the emperor Claudius (10BC-54AD) invaded Britain in 43 AD. We don't know, but the first bridge here may have carried Claudius and his elephants over the Thames to lead the victory march to Colchester. Further links: his character, career, and personal life.
We walk along the south bank of the Thames as far as Blackfriars Bridge, and cross the bridge to Blackfriars.
We walk past the reconstructed Globe Theatre, near the site of the original Globe in which Shakespeare's plays were performed from 1599 onwards. One of his plays performed here would likely have been Henry IV Part 2, in which Hotspur may have a stammer.
Over the bridge, Blackfriars is named after the Dominican monastery that used to stand here, whose monks wore black robes. A bit of a weak link but this could remind us of the monk Notker the Stammerer (ca 840-912), Notker Balbulus in Latin, who was a monk at the important St Gall monastery in Switzerland. Author, poet, theorist, and composer, he is an important name in the development of Church music and wrote a famous life of Charlemagne still published in Penguin Classics. He was described by one writer as "delicate of body but not of mind, stuttering of tongue but not of intellect, pushing boldly forward in things Divine, a vessel of the Holy Spirit without equal in his time". Links: The Catholic Encyclopedia and Notker Balbulus and the Sequence
We go along Fleet Street. We plan to stop at The Knights Templar, a JD Wetherspoons pub just up Chancery Lane, which also does hot drinks and food (though people may prefer to wait till the pub at the end for a meal). There are also cafes very nearby if anyone prefers that.
In Fleet Street, just at the junction with Chancery Lane, is the gate to Temple (closed on Sundays). There in Crown Office Row, Charles Lamb (1775-1834) was born, the son of a clerk to a lawyer of the Inner Temple. Lamb is famous as an essayist and critic, and particularly for the essays he wrote as "Elia" for London Magazine, which are reproduced here. See what he says on his stammer . Quotes here and here. Also, Lamb was a school fellow of writer Leigh Hunt (1784-1859); see some of his poetry here, and quotes.
We continue along the Strand to Trafalgar Square and on to Jermyn Street.
As we pass Trafalgar Square we can nod to the equestrian statue of Charles I - see further below.
From Jermyn Street we go on into Piccadilly.
On the left at no 187 Piccadilly we pass the bookshop Hatchards of which the novelist, playwrite and short-story writer Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) was a regular customer. He was apparently the highest paid author in the world in the 1930s. One of his greatest works is his autobiographical novel Of Human Bondage (etext here or here), in which his stammer becomes the clubfoot of the protagonist Philip. See also these quotes.
On the right we pass Burlington House. This is now the Royal Academy of Art but from 1857 to 1967 was also home to the Royal Society. A prominent and controversial member early in this period was Charles Darwin (1809-1882), who published the Origin of the Species in 1859. In intensely evangelical England, Darwin's ideas on evolution by natural selection were radical and even blasphemous. His ideas of the living world being governed by laws just like the physical world (see Newton above) were inconsistent with a literal interpretation of Genesis, and left no place for divine intervention, nor for the superiority of mankind over the "animals". See also these quotes and etexts.
Other stammering members of the Royal Society have included Robert Boyle (1627-1691), best known for "Boyle's law" on gases, and the multifaceted Joseph Priestley (1773-1804), one of the discoverers of oxygen (quotes here). Newton (see above) was a president of the Society.
From Piccadilly we turn into Green Park, at the far side of which is Buckingham Palace. (Note: the time slot for us to go through the Royal Parks, ie from the entry to Green Park to the far end of Birdcage Walk, has had to be agreed in advance with the Royal Parks. Our time slot is 1.30 to 3.30 pm, to allow time for the pub stop in the middle.)
Buckingham Palace was home to George VI (1895-1952), who came to the throne unexpectedly when his brother Edward VIII abdicated to marry Mrs Simpson. His stammer sometimes gave him severe problems when making speeches. He was father to the present Queen: his wife was the Queen Mother.
We cross St James Park to Birdcage Walk, and continue along that and straight on to Parliament Square.
100 yards to the left (though we unfortunately can't walk to them) are the Cabinet War Rooms, and just across the road in Parliament Square is a statue of the great wartime leader Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965). Remarkably, though both stammerers, Churchill and his political opponent Aneurin Bevan (see below) were considered the best orators in Parliament. Churchill went to great trouble to avoid stammering, writing out speeches or arguments way in advance and memorising them "forwards and backwards". He wrote: "Not many people guessed how little spontaneity of conception, fullness of knowledge, or flow of language there was behind this fairly imposing facade." Before speaking he would also hum discreetly to get his vocal chords vibrating. Further links: The Churchill Society educational pages (including speeches), and quotes.
In Parliament Square we have the Houses of Parliament itself, home of various MPs past and present with a stammer such as Aneurin Bevan (1897-1960). As Minister of Health in Clement Attlee's Labour government after the war, Bevan was the architect of the National Health Service, providing free healthcare for the population. Bevan seems to have spoken fluently when passionate, but otherwise developed a large vocabulary through substituting for words he couldn't say. He was a brilliant spontaneous debater but could also be rude; Churchill once called him a "merchant of discourtesy". Quotes here. A current stammering MP is the BSA's patron John McAllion, Scottish Labour MP for Dundee East.
We walk along Whitehall to the The Lord Moon of the Mall (next to the Whitehall Theatre) where we finish. This is a JD Wetherspoons pub which serves food and where we can have a late lunch.
On the way we pass King Charles Street and also on the right the Banqueting House, outside which Charles I (1600-1649) was beheaded on a scaffold. Charles believed firmly in the divine right of| Kings, and his disputes with Parliament led to the Civil War. He was tried in Westminster Hall which we have just passed, where despite his speech impediment he is said to have spoken fluently, clearly and strongly almost throughout. At his execution he restated his position: "'I must tell you that the liberty and freedom [of the people] consists in having of Government, those laws by which their life and their goods may be most their own. It is not for having share in Government, Sir, that is nothing pertaining to them. A subject and a sovereign are clean different things". Further links: Official British Monarchy Website and the trial and execution.
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