Walking Pepys's London

by Jacky Colliss Harvey

Brings to life the world of Samuel Pepys with five walks through London.

Samuel Pepys, the seventeenth century's best-known diarist, walked around London for miles, chronicling these walks in his diary. He made the two-and-a-half-mile trek to Whitehall from his house near the Tower of London on an almost daily basis. These streets, where many of his professional conversations took place while walking, became for him an alternative to his office.

With Walking Pepys’s London, we come to know life in London from the pavement up and see its streets from the perspective of this renowned diarist. The city was a key character in Pepys’s life, and this book draws parallels between his experience of seventeenth-century London and the lives of Londoners today. Bringing together geography, biography, and history, Jacky Colliss Harvey reconstructs the sensory and emotional experience of Pepys’s time. Full of fascinating details, Walking Pepys’s London is a sensitive exploration into the places that made the greatest English diarist of all time.
 

176 pages, Paperback

Published September 20, 2022

About the author

Jacky Colliss Harvey was born in the wilds of Suffolk, and grew up surrounded by farms and animals. She studied English at Cambridge University and art history at the Courtauld Institute, and putting those two together, went on to a career in the museum world as a writer, editor and publisher. At the same time, her red hair also found her an alternative career as a life model and a film extra, playing everything from a society lady in 'Atonement' to a Parisian whore in 'Bel-Ami'.

Her first book, 'Red: A History of the Redhead,' was a New York Times bestseller, and finally convinced her to write full-time. It was followed by a guided journal, 'My Life As A Redhead,' and in 2019 by 'The Animal's Companion' - an exploration of the 26,000 year love story between people and their pets. Her writing has been praised as 'quirky and deeply perceptive', and as 'witty...wide-ranging and throughly enjoyable.' She lives in London with two very spoiled rescue cats, while her partner lives in New York - so a good deal of her writing is done at 30,000 feet. Whatever her altitude, you can find her on Twitter @JCollissHarvey, and on Instagram as jackycollissharvey.

Reviews

[Jason · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this wee book, it is slimmer and taller than a normal book, clothbound and perfectly fits in your pocket when imbibing the odd pint at one of the many old pubs mentioned in these pages. The maps are wonderful, nice full page spreads with the routes clearly marked out and if you don’t get on with paper maps or you don’t want to have to keep flicking through pages there is a QR code at the back where you can download digital copies of the routes…a genius idea that even Pepys would be impressed by.

As for the written part, I really enjoyed what I read, I know very little about Pepys other than he kept a diary like Adrian Mole did. I’ve learnt so much from this book, Pepys was quite a character, his long suffering wife had a lot to put up with, arguments, other women, being abandoned and violence. He was a real man about town, he knew everybody who was worth knowing. The 5 walks in the book follow him on common routes he would take throughout his life and Harvey is always getting you to use your imagination to picture the buildings, the bustling daily activities, the smells and of course the fire! The great fire of London is a big part of the narrative, Pepys account of the scenes and the devastation makes for some interesting reading.

It is difficult to share the areas of Pepys’s time with the reader as a huge amount of the buildings were destroyed by fire or the Blitz or gotten rid of to make way for a modern concrete boring building. Harvey’s writing is impressive and the descriptions help you to picture what was there, modern day events are also shared (buildings used in movies and a certain alleyway in that Potter movie) and there are still an incredible amount of smaller buildings still standing, old pubs and shops going back 100s of years, I hadn’t realised what was still around.

I have enjoyed this book immensely and will one day take a trip to London and do some of these walks…and some of the pubs!

Blog review: https://felcherman.wordpress.com/2021...

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

Samuel Pepys, the well-known diarist of the seventeenth century walked around London for miles to and from work. He lived near the Tower of London and worked in various places, including Whitehall and Greenwich. The walks were chronicled in his diary and became part of his social and professional life with the people that accompanied him while walking.

A substantial amount of the city within the old Roman walls was destroyed in the Great Fire of London. When they came to rebuild it they retained the old street layout, rejecting the new layout that Sir Christopher Wren proposed. So believe it on not. those streets that he walked are still there and you can follow the most likely routes that Pepys took around the city.

In this delightful little book, Jacky Colliss Harvey brings history alive through five planned routes around the City of London. These take us from Westminster to the City, from there to the wonderfully named Seething Lane. One walk takes us on a night out with him and there are two longer routes along to Greenwich and the final walk wends its way through the city to Wapping.

I really liked this, the blend of history set against modern-day London is a reminder of how old the city actually is. It is full of tiny nuggets of history that are still visible provide you know where to look or are lucky enough to have a guide like Harvey to point them out to you. I have walked some of these streets when I have been in London, but there are some that I have not been along. Thankfully there are digital maps available for the walks, so next time I am in London I will be taking this book along with me.

[Florence Ridley · Rating 4 out of 5]

It doesn’t seem fair to properly review this without having walked the walks! I will say that it was funny, well-researched and really interesting. The quality of the directions remains to be seen if I undertake the walks.

Edit: I did walk 2 and it slapped. Got the gnarliest blisters though. Definitely do these walks, and wear good shoes.

[Ken · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've just completed the five walks described in the book and have to say it was a great experience, finishing yesterday at the wonderful Prospect of Whitby pub, which even has a Pepys Room (the author says that's a possible extension at the end, but I'd say it's essential!).

I proposed doing the first walk to my social/walking club
(free plug: COPSE - Croydon Outdoor Pursuits and Social Events, https://www.copsecroydon.co.uk/)
and we did it in a rainy December 2023. It went down so well that we've completed the other four since then.

I led the group each time - highest turnout, I think, 26, which wasn't easy to keep together on a busy Saturday around the West End - book in hand, reading out relevant bits on the way.

Why was it so popular? Well, it's a pleasant stroll through some historic parts of London, seeing places that you may have passed many times without stopping to look, and revealing not only connections to Pepys but lots of other interesting historical, and sometimes modern, information. Moreover, we harnessed the wisdom of crowds - not only our own members but passers-by and residents/workers to reveal more than what's in the book: the security guard who pointed out precisely where Charles I lost his head; the barman who educated us on Judge Jeffries's relish for watching his victims hang; the vicar who took us into St Olaf's and showed us the crypt.

All in all, I recommend the book but I've marked it down a star for the maps not being great quality and some of the directions a little confusing, though nothing you can't work out with a little patience.

[Kimberly · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a five star idea and a three to three and a half star read for me. I'm giving it four stars because it's such a fun concept. There's nothing overtly "wrong" with what Harvey's done here, she just has a different style and focus than I was looking for.

To admit my bias - I was hoping for a book that focused more on the theatre of Pepys's day. This would have made this more relevant to me, but obviously isn't Harvey's responsibility - she's gone for more of a general feel and I think has succeeded in that. I found myself wishing she'd included more detail and spent more effort creating a feel for what London looked and felt like in Pepys's day, as she does this more effectively at some points than others. What Harvey does do well is pull out interesting tidbits of general information on Pepys's personality as a man out and about town. I came away from this book feeling he was much creepier and more of a sexual predator than I'd realized before. Sad, but interesting. Also worth noting is that Harvey's style, while not super-detailed in a historical sense, is readable and you do get a good general feel for what Pepys's London was like through these "walks."

One thing that didn't work for me was her tendency to include contemporary references seemingly meant to contextualize the information in a way that will make sense to readers; these felt forced to me, and most of them took me out of the moment in a disruptive way, although a couple of them created effective parallels or comparisons.

Overall, this was a great idea and a good, but not great read for me.

[Cidney · Rating 3 out of 5]

I came across this when listening to a zoom talk so I ordered it from a second hand book seller. It was advertised by the seller as "as new" condition, but the previous reader had marked virtually every page with a pencil, this made it rather an expensive "as new" pencil smeared book. Some of these sellers aren't accurate in their descriptions, if I had bought this in a bookshop it certainly wouldn't have been described as new!

The author has written up 5 walks around London which would have likely been made by Samuel Pepys on his walks around the city. Although why she kept calling him Sam I don't know, I thought in the books I'd read that his name was always kept to Samuel. Leaving that aside, the walks were described quite well, my only beef was that I've never been to London so I would have appreciated the surrounding streets being named. We are given descriptions of the walk and where it starts and then other street names come in, eg walk down this street and then down an unnamed street somewhere or a named street which aren't on the maps. So more street names would have been nice. That said I did enjoy reading about the different places on the walks.

[Alexandra · Rating 5 out of 5]

Literally on the first page the author told me Pepys's zodiac sign and throughout the book referred to him as Sam, this is the tone I want in all future history reading and what I will be manifesting in my own work

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent, I'd love to do these walks one day.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting, largely because I am familiar with many of the areas of London written about.