I spent the last couple of days in London, mainly with a view to attending the Clarke Award ceremony, but also just to do some tourism in the city. In particular, I wanted to do the self-guided tour of Samuel Pepys’ London, a different way of looking at the city; and this turned out to be a great way to spend the middle of the day on Thursday.

It starts at Samuel Pepys’ birthplace on Salisbury Court, just off Fleet Street – I walked over there after a meeting at Parliament, which took me through the courts area which I don’t think I have previously had reason to explore. Of course, the house where he was born was destroyed in the Great Fire and would not have survived the centuries anyway, but there is a plaque.

It’s very close to the church of St Bride’s, which I had been to once before (I went to see the film Bohemian Rhapsody with the vicar back in 2018). This is where Pepys was baptised, and where his brother was buried; it was also destroyed in the Great Fire and badly damaged in the Blitz, but the German bombing revealed its medieval and Roman foundations which you can see in the crypt.

There are also plenty of memorials to other parishioners apart from Pepys. I found this one particularly moving, because of the eloquence with which it doesn’t say the thing that we all know.

I was intrigued by the use of the word “lobbyist” in this memorial, but in fact is seems to mean that Sir Alfred Robbins was a parliamentary correspondent.

I wandered slowly along the Pepys walking route. I didn’t go into St Paul’s Cathedral, as I had a good look around it in 2014 – but around the corner from St Paul’s, I looked at the mysterious plaque of the Panyer Boy, who frankly looks to me like he is doing a poo on the top of Ludgate Hill, reputedly the highest point in the City.

The walk doubles back a bit to Christchurch Greyfriars, which I don’t think I had seen before; badly damaged in the Blitz and not rebuilt, and with a monument to Christ’s Hospital school, where Samuel Pepys helped set up what is now the mathematics department.

There isn’t a particular Pepys connection to the church of St Mary-le-Bow, but the Norman crypt does a really excellent lunch. The Norman arches were an innovation for 11th-century England, and gave their name not only to the church (arch = bow) but also to the Church of England’s judicial arm, the Court of Arches, which still meets there.

It’s a bit of a walk from there to the Monument, which I photographed from both east and west.

The depiction of King Charles II distributing relief to the citizens of London is very silly.

Across the road is a plaque marking the site of the bakery on Pudding Lane where the Fire broke out; though I felt that the Worshipful Company of Bakers could have added some comment like, “Er… sorry!”

Having got there from Westminster on foot, I must say I had a new appreciation of the extent of the Great Fire which devastated London from more or less the Monument to the Temple, a half hour’s brisk walk (I had taken a lot longer over it). I also have a new appreciation of the extent to which Christopher Wren shaped and continues to shape the urban landscape of London. It’s one thing to know the fact that he built over 50 churches in the City, about half of which are still standing; it’s another to wander around the streets and find that there’s another Wren church around almost every corner.

One that Wren didn’t need to touch was All Hallows by the Tower, known to Pepys as Barking Church, protected during the Fire by Sir William Penn who blew up neighbouring buildings to create a firebreak. This was the tower that Pepys climbed on the fourth day of the Great Fire, 5 September 1666, “and there saw the saddest sight of desolation that I ever saw”. (Though again, the tower was badly damaged in the Blitz and has been reconstructed.) Incidentally this is where John Quincy Adams married Louisa Johnson 131 years later, in 1797.

All Hallows is at the bottom of Seething Lane where Pepys lived and worked; half way up the street there is a lovely memorial garden to him with a bust by Karin Jonzen, which a kind passer-by captured for me.

And at the top of the lane is St Olave’s church, where he worshipped and was buried. I was utterly delighted that I happened to wander in just as the Belarusian pianist Olga Stezhko was starting a performance of Debussy’s Estampes. Not Pepys’ type of music, and yet I think he would have approved.

On the right hand wall is a memorial to Pepys erected in 1883 by his Victorian fans.

But actually the point where you feel closest to Pepys isn’t either of the memorials to him inside or outside St Olave’s; it’s the monument to his wife Elizabeth. They married two weeks before her fifteenth birthday in 1655; their marriage was not always happy, and he had another long relationship after Elizabeth died, but this is how he wanted their love to be remembered. She died of an unspecified fever in 1669, just after they had returned from a holiday in France, where she had grown up. She leans out of the wall, turning her head to look at the gallery (now demolished) where he continued to worship for another third of a century without her, until he in turn died in 1703.

She was also appreciated by none other than the Third Doctor.

One other thing struck me about the beginning and end of the journey through Pepys’ life. The church where Pepys was baptised is St Bride’s, named for the semi-mythical Irish Saint Brigid of Kildare, one of the patron saints of Ireland; the church where he is buried is St Olave’s, named for the Norwegian king who helped the Saxon dynasty regain London from the Danes in 1014 and is the patron saint of Norway. These are two cults which originated not in England but in neighbouring countries. London has always been defined by its links with the outside world.

This is quite a long enough entry as it is, but I just want to call out two museums that I went to on Wednesday before the Clarke ceremony. Believe it or not, I had never before been to the permanent collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum (I went to the Pink Floyd retrospective there in 2017). I had no expectations at all, but was blown away by the two Cast Courts, which assemble replicas of great sculptures.

I was particularly delighted to find a copy of Eleanor of Aquitaine’s funeral monument from Fontevrault – I don’t know if I will ever see the real thing.

The other museum I went to was one flagged up to me by the Discovering Tudor London guide, the Museum of the Order of St John at St John’s Gate in Clerkenwell. This tracks the story of the Knights of Malta in their various guises since the 11th century. The Knights are strong on branding.

I also liked the model of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, which apparently you can take apart to look inside.

Unfortunately I didn’t get organised to join one of the guided tours of the old priory; but there will be a next time.