St Olave Lecture: Bringing Samuel Pepys and Restoration London to Life

Jack Jewers is at St Olave Hart Street on Tuesday 10 November, bringing Samuel Pepys and Restoration London to life. He's a writer and filmmaker, and the talk comes from his research for The Lost Diary of Samuel Pepys and his new novel, Seething Lane. He'll be exploring the world Pepys inhabited and how he's portrayed, so it's as much about the man and his time as it is about the books.

The venue itself is a big part of the evening. St Olave Hart Street is a medieval church in the eastern City, dedicated to Olaf, the Viking warrior king turned saint. John Betjeman once described it as a country church in the world of Seething Lane, and it was Samuel Pepys's own church and his burial place. The St Olave Lectures run monthly on Tuesday evenings here, and they draw on the building's history alongside the church's traditional carol services by candlelight. This particular talk fits right into that, with Pepys's life and the Restoration era as the focus.

It's not a standalone event, either. The lecture series has hosted other talks on the diary's strange history and on fashion and femininity in Pepys's age, so this is one more piece of a larger look at the man and his world. Jewers's talk sits within that, pulling from both his research and his fiction.

The evening starts with Choral Evensong at 5.30pm, and the talk follows at 6.30pm. Tickets are £5, and the church is at 8 Hart Street, London, EC3R 7NB.