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Rick Jones lives in Catford, South East London, near where he was born. He is a trout who has returned to his spawning ground after years of globe-trotting. He has a degree in Modern Languages and Music from the University of East Anglia. He subsequently trained in voice and lute at the Royal College of Music and sang for many years with the Southwark Cathedral Choir, London's south bank Anglican cathedral which has strong Shakespeare connections.

Rick became a Blue Badge guide in 2018 and has a growing client base for his London walking tours. He devotes some time to performing, listening to and writing about music for the BBC Music Magazine and maintains a position in journalism as Secretary of the Critics’ Circle. 

As a Blue Badge Guide, Rick Jones devises themed tours. His speciality is William Shakespeare and during the pandemic, he revisited the annual Shakespeare Birthday Lectures which he gave with comedian Arthur Smith between 2000 and 2019 and delivered them as virtual tours. Each was re-written in blank verse and accompanied by detailed visual images.

In 2016, on the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death, Rick danced in Tudor costume 108 miles from London to Norwich as Shakespeare's clown Will Kemp had done in 1600. The route of the dance makes a splendid coach tour which Rick is keen to lead. Rick is a musician and many of his tours contain a musical element. He is a performer on Shakespeare's instrument the lute and Haydn's instrument the piano. His Jack the Ripper Piano Tour, which he has so far not mentioned, finishes at an East London pub where Rick plays the upright in the bar. 



London

London has been my home since I was born here 65 years ago. The borough of Lewisham was my birthplace and I remember my mother pushing the pram uphill to our home laden with vegetables bought from a market stall belonging to Henry Cooper's twin brother. Centuries before Lewisham was given as a gift to the abbey of St Peter in Ghent, Belgium. It was mentioned in the Domesday Book. The church of St Mary has Saxon origins and the old rectory on the corner of Ladywell Road is a Georgian house of grade II listed status. John Wesley stayed at the Limes in Limes Grove and the poet Ernest Dowson was born and spent his whole life here. He wrote, They are not long the days of wine and roses / out of a misty dream / our path emerges for a while then closes / within a dream.

We moved to Sutton later where I spent my teenage years. I went to school at Whitgift in Croydon and attended the University of East Anglia where I scraped a degree in Modern Languages and Literature. I studied singing and lute-playing as a postgraduate at the Royal College of Music. When I got married in 1989 on my 33rd birthday, Mrs Jones and I lived first at Camberwell, then Nunhead and finally Catford not half a mile from where I was born and so I feel like a salmon returning to his spawning grounds. After a long career as a journalist and music critic, I am nearing retirement and content to show visitors the city where I have lived and the countryside around it. Please be my guest.