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Book review – Seething Lane by Jack Jewers

I have just finished reading Seething Lane by Jack Jewers, a novel in which Samuel Pepys is reinvented as a sleuth, swashbuckler and firefighter, acting on behalf of Charles II to investigate the murder of a libertine aristocrat. 

First of all, thanks to the lovely people at Moonflower for sharing this pre-sale copy with me but, having read every single word, I can safely confirm that this is not my genre. I prefer my fact and fiction to be strictly delineated, unless the resulting faction is historically correct. Jewers' characters here are a mix of real people interspersed with fabricated, mostly theatrical players. It's Pepys as TV sleuth with Nell Gwyn as his bawdy Cockney 'I ain't heard nothing' sidekick. 

I'm not seething, just disappointed. I struggled. I kept stopping within the narrative to double-check things that I was convinced couldn't be historically possible. I kept questioning why he/she might have known him/her, why person X would have done something when the history books I'd previously consulted told us something different. 

Also, the story is told in the first person by Samuel Pepys* so I'd rather expected it to be written in the same style of the time as per his real diaries. Instead, we hear characters talking very much as people speak today yet occasionally throwing in random words like perorating, betimes or cods, making it inconsistent. I found the whole thing frustrating and, taking on board that it's said to be "a page-turning crime thriller' (the FT) I kept going, hoping to reach a 'ping' moment when I'd feel that it had been worth the effort. That moment never arrived.

At the end of the book Jewers gives us explanation for his historical mash-up within a 19-page chapter called Historical Notes. Much of this would have been more useful had it been told to us before we started reading the story, perhaps as an introduction, near the character list at the front of the book. Jewers tells us that he felt that some important facts could be left out and other facts could be twisted, adapted or totally omitted to better fit his narrative. This explanation section which includes real information about Pepys and the time he lived is actually the best-written part of the book because Jewers' as historian is much easier to follow than his story-telling and clunky invented conversations. 

Would I recommend this book? Well, it depends how wobbly you like the line between fact and fiction to be. Basically, if you know anything about this period of history, this yarn is not for you. However, if you are a fan of historical whodunnits and all you know about Samuel Pepys is that he wrote a diary and buried a cheese during the Great Fire of London, then you'll love it. 

Oh, and one more thing, it's a chunky book. At over 450 pages, it is unlikely to fit in your handbag or your coat pocket. You'll need a rucksack or a comfy sofa.  

Seething Lane will be available from all good bookstores from 3rd September 2026.

*How do we know that his name was pronounced Peeps? How has this been handed down to us? Why make a single E sound more like two, and then lose the sound of the Y completely?! Why not Peppis? This makes more sense to me. I am not aware of anyone else with the Pepys name, but I do know a family called Pepper, which I wonder comes from the same root. 

A Mayfair manhole cover containing remnants of wood paving

I found another one! I'd just exited Marble Arch station on Park Lane east side and as I crossed North Row I noticed that the man hole within the tarmac still retains some wood block paving within three of its segments.

View looking back towards Marble Arch

Heading eastwards, the first road to the right along North Row is Dunhaven St (previously Norfolk St) which, back in the days of horse-drawn carriages, would surely have been lined in stables that backed onto the expensive houses that faced Hyde Park. The wood blocks would have kept clippity-cloppity street noise to a minimum. 

Two minutes' walk away along Park Lane, there's another unusual example.

You'll find many more of my sightings in the A-Z list here – please let me know if you spot any others. 

Guinness Time again. But this time it's an Intellectual Property issue

I have written before on here about Guinness advertising across London. One of the signs I've photographed most often is the broken Millennium clock on the corner of the Archway Tavern, London N19, announcing GUINNESS TIME with a repair man balancing on the heads of an ostrich and a sea lion. Here's wider view from Google streetview in 2008, which is the same year I took the following photo:

This cropped (and squashed) version was until recently available on my Jane's London Etsy site as a greeting card and in various print formats. It has been available on there for ten years*. However, last week I received an email notification informing me that the listing has been removed for Intellectual Property reasons after Etsy were alerted by 'VP of Enforcement' via DiageoGB/corsearch.com. Etsy's response to this is to immediately remove the listing without discussion. Oh great. Thanks. 

Here's one of the montages from my listing showing the formats available with my accompanying description for that listing in italics underneath:

My photo of the Guinness promotional clock on the corner of the Archway Tavern public house on Navigator Square, N19, taken in May 2008 when the sign was still complete. Sadly, today it's in a sorry state as many of the letters have fallen off. Let's hope the new owners fix it.

It's rather ironic that the sign depicts a repair man because, during the subsequent years, it started to literally fall apart. There is hardly anything left of it now. 

Back in April 2017 it looked like this with almost half the letters already missing and others hanging on for dear life:

The Archway Tavern, 8th April 2017 ©JaneAmeliaParker/Janeslondon

In September of that year, I was talking about it to a lady I know who works at a shop near the Archway Tavern. She told me that she had rescued one of the fallen letters having found it on the pavement. At that time the pub was completely closed and in a state of flux. We discussed how surely it was possible for someone with a tall ladder or access to a cherry picker to repair the sign and replace or reinstate the missing parts. Getting the mechanism to work would be a bonus. Keen to get it fixed, I wrote a blog post – Save the Guinness Sign and sent a link to that within an email to Guinness' brand management at Diageo.com. 

I was pleased to get a fairly swift response from Josh Spooner who said that they were glad I had brought it to their attention and they'd look into it, but he said they didn't have the budget to repair it. He asked if I knew who might undertake the repair work (er, if I knew that I wouldn't be having this email exchange, duh!). 

The matter was then passed on to someone called Francesca Hillman at freuds.com (who? more info about this company is needed). She followed up with this email on 28th Sept 2017, saying that the sign is the responsibility of the landlord:

Eh? From this we glean that Guinness are more than happy with the free advertising but they don't want to have anything to do with the upkeep of their own installation. I am befuddled as to why their brand people are now getting their knickers in a twist about a sign they have shown no interest in for decades. 

It's worth pointing out that my cards and prints were available on Etsy during this email exchange yet Diageo and Freuds didn't flag up any infringement back then. 

I let the matter drop and hoped that when the pub finally reopened that the new owner would repair the  sign. But no, the sign continued to fall apart as is shown here:

The Archway Tavern, open again, 15 July 2022 ©JaneAmeliaParker/Janeslondon

I've just wandered up there to take some pics of how it looks today:

The Archway Tavern, 26 August 2026 ©JaneAmeliaParker/Janeslondon

As you can see only one letter now remains – the I from GUINNESS at the very top. 

It's evident that nobody cares but me. I'm going down the garden to eat worms.

Re the removal of my Etsy listing, there is no facility for me to make a counter claim or provide any explanation or back story. Etsy have simply acted in this way because a corporate giant has roared. Ooh scary!  I wonder if the Archway Tavern has been told to remove what's left of the sign for the same reasons?! I doubt it.

The removal notice included the name and email the person at Corsearch/Diageo so I wrote to him including a condensed version of the sign's history. I also made a point that the internet is awash with fake Guinness products and perhaps they ought to go after those plagiarists rather than pick on someone who truly cares about their historic advertising, signage that Guinness themselves admit is not their property or responsibility! If I get a response I will add it here.

The Archway Tavern, 26 August 2026 ©JaneAmeliaParker/Janeslondon

This is not the first time I have trodden on toes re Intellectual Property – in October 2018 had another image removed from my Etsy site because it was said to infringe London Transport's rules. The joke is that this was also an image of part of the Archway Tavern – one of the tiled doorway thresholds that depicts a toucan and a pint of the black stuff on a roundel – yet, in all these years, Guinness don't seem to have been bothered by that one. 

Actually, whilst I'm on the subject of IP... on the flip side, I have myself reported some sellers on Etsy for blatantly copying my clay pipe jewellery. Some of these 'designers' even had the cheek to also copy and paste my written descriptions.  I messaged these people directly and asked where they got their inspiration from. Most didn't have the nouse to realise who I was. One woman told me she'd come up with her ideas quite recently yet she couldn't explain why her necklaces were almost direct copies of mine, even down to the way they were photographed. Worth noting that she had nothing similar or original for sale. Many of the other copyists didn't have the nouse to work out who I was until I included a link to my own work. 

My complaints about this to Etsy fell on deaf ears. They as good as ignored me and did not remove those sellers or their products. I do not have the weight of a corporate giant. 

These people continue to trade on their site. Add to this that most of those sellers are also contravening the PLA's strict rules about mudlarking, specifically making money form items made from Thames foreshore finds – you need a special Creative Permit to do this, and I have one.

*I've not sold many of this image, except to Archway local residents. Please get in touch with me direct via jane@janeslondon.com if you are interested.  

1979, the International Year of the Child

There's always something new to discover in London, even if it takes over 45 years to find it...

I'm sure that I have mentioned before that I am one of the small team of volunteer guides who leads tours in The Royal Parks, specifically in Kensington Gardens and St James's Park. See more here. We report to staff within the Learning Centre building in Hyde Park, AKA The Lookout. I'm mentioning this because had I not been helping out as a steward* for a small 5km run last week I would still be none the wiser about what I am about to share with you.

As I left the Learning Centre, hi-vis in hand, I glanced sideways at the toilet block and pondered that I'd never had cause to use these facilities. This is probably why, until this particular day, I had never noticed the free-standing sculpture that faces the building. With time to spare before the runners set off, I went to take a closer look. 

Well, blow me down, the artwork is marvellous. 

I looked closer and saw that it is festooned with toys and some well-worn buttons. Turns out it's a drinking fountain. 

I pressed one of the buttons and strong jet of water jetted across my left shoulder. I repositioned myself and tried again but didn't manage to catch anything in my mouth. I tried another button which produced the same strong squirt effect but only managed to splash my face – but, oh, what fun!

I assumed it was a fairly new installation. But no. Who made this, when, and why? I could see no information panel on the plinth or at the base. I made a few circumnavigations to investigate the details and the other buttons and found some crudely-carved lettering around the bottom edges that show this artwork commemorates a huge event that happened here in 1979. It was hard to see very well so I took lots of snaps to be able to decipher it later.

"This fountain was made to commemorate the great children's party during the International Year of the Child 1979 when two hundred thousand children came to Hyde Park on two days in June"

Blimey! First I knew about it!  

I did a bit of googlywooglysleuthing and discovered that the event was organised by The United Nations. However, there are a couple of errors in that inscription in the sculpture – the event actually happened in May that year, not June, specifically on the weekend of May 5th & 6th, and other info such as here states that "over 160,000" children attended, which is short of 200K. 

There's a pic of the event on Alamy, but I haven't as yet found any newspaper reports. Surely it must have been covered on Nationwide? Thanks to David at London Inheritance for finding this filmed footage on YouTube. It's likely that similar gatherings happened in other major cities around the world. 

At that time I would have been 16 going on 17 and in the first year of Sixth Form. My Romford school was within OLEA (Outer London Education Authority) so surely this mass gathering must've been known to all schools? May 5th was/is my mate Gill's birthday and she confirms that she had a party at her home that Saturday. None of us who are still in touch from that time can recall hearing about the Hyde Park event at all. Hmm. Perhaps it was only the Inner London schools that got the memo.

Back to the whimsical sculpture. It was created/installed two years after the event in 1981 and I'm delighted to discover that it was designed by Theo Crosby, sculpted by Polly Hope. I've not seen anything similar except, perhaps, The Elfin Oak in Kensington Gardens, but that doesn't have interactive capabilities such as water spouts.  

Imho, Theo Crosby was one of the most important and innovative designer/architects of the 1980s. He was responsible for the revamp of Unilever foyer where his marvellous geometrical Retro-Deco panels and lighting were installed into any area that had, post-WW2, been stripped of its 1930's features. But his efforts were subsequently removed – a sad loss because, these days it appears that much of the innovative eighties is being dismantled, being not old enough yet to be revered. However, fans of alternative architecture clamour to see the MDF creations within Jencks' The Cosmic House, which I have visited (twice) and now realise that I haven't written about or shared my photos, so here's a montage:

That's it. Please get in touch if you have any personal memories of or info about the Hyde Park event, either in the comments or via jane@janeslondon.com

*This basically entailed wearing hi-vis polyester (ugh!) and pointing 'this way' whilst standing aside a post that had an arrow on it. It was actually a very pleasant ways to pass an hour or so because not only were the runners very jolly and thankful as they passed me, park users also came up to me and asked for directions.

All pics: Jane Amelia Parker / Janeslondon

A visit to Harrow School

Let's try and keep this mostly pictoral. A tour of Harrow School buildings with The London Appreciation Society. 

Arrive Harrow-on-the-Hill station, turn right, buy a Tesco meal deal, pass 1970s shop with moulded cement brick façade on upper floor. 

There are few examples of these across London, such as in Portobello Road market which is now a Tesco store.

Up Petersborough Rd. Literally 'up' – it's a hill. The hill. Harrow Hill. Sat on a bench for a lunch munch and admired the view. Near the top, on the left, there's an in-wall GR post box. 

Most in-wall boxes I've spotted are Victorian era and much smaller in size. I wonder if this one was replaced because it wasn't big enough to cope with all the letters sent home by the boys who boarded here. At the junction with the high street there's a Capital Ring signpost and, round the corner, on the school side there's a milestone set within the wall. Love a milestone.

Opposite the milestone there is an acanthus pillar box:

As per the mark at the base, this is a replica. Nice though.

Joined the tour. We were first taken to the old schoolroom and I noticed that the naughty boys had carved their names into the exterior. 

Much of it is very well rendered. But this was merely a taster to the interior which is slathered in carvings, these having become a sort of rites of passage such that every boy in attendance here, including some very well known names such as Churchill and Byyon have literally made their mark here. Much of it is beautifully achieved, but other works are poorly-planned where the lads hadn't realised that their long name wouldn't fit into that space.

Almost every little space has been used, with some names running along edges and reveals:

Into the other buildings. I do love site-specific toilet signs. 

Then into the Speech Room...

The organist's shoes

... and across to Sir George Gilbert Scott's gorgeous multi-faith chapel:

An example of ensample, above, and a wall of memorial commemorating children who died whilst at school here, below, looking like a patchwork quilt or an oversized stonemason's swatch book

Stunning views back to central London from the gardens at the rear, hard to capture, better viewed in person.

By the time I returned to the main street the tour group dispersed so I went to investigate the village where West Street meets High Street near the old Kings Head Hotel. There are some wonderful old Georgian houses here giving it a very out-of-town countryside feel. Many shops retain their old façades shop fittings such as this one shown below, which used to be reTouch lighting store. I wonder what it was in the past – with the fittings and mirrored display areas I'd guess it was originally a drapery store or a tailors.

A bus came along with South Harrow on its blind so I headed back to Holloway the long way via the Piccadilly line. 

Update on the Imperial Hotel renovation at Russell Square

Let's cut the chase*  – oh dear, it's as I feared. Here is an update about the renovation of this marvellous example of 1960's architecture.

It used to look like this, giving luxury airport vibes:

In my previous post I had written that I had been told that the orange letters (Eurostile/Microgramma with gilded outlines and recessed centres) would be reinstated. Er. No. 

A few weeks ago I noticed that much of the scaffolding had been removed. I snapped this image:

Here we can see that he orange letters have been replaced with some boring blocky letters that I'm pretty sure are from a typeface, a font, created for web use. The twelve letters (inc wd #) is now crammed into a panel that before contained just five letters.

It's just THE IMPERIAL now. The word HOTEL has been dropped. Hello cabbie, take me to The Imperial. Perhaps they then get driven to the war museum or the college, ha ha!

A closer look:

Check out the strange choice of letterform here, especially that ugly letter M which is overly wide and has a truncated centre. Unless this M is being used as a feature, some kind of impish design device on logos and branding, I see no reason to choose a 'font' that has such a bizarre quirk which is echoed only once here, at the top of the letter A. To add to this, some of the other letters have very slight angles on the ends of verticals and horizontals, such as the Es which have what I can only describe as italicised ends.  Ditto the very the top of the I (shudder). These quirks further highlight that the letters haven't been installed properly – some of them aren't straight – I mean, how is that possible when there's a simple golden grid to follow?!

I'm disappointed. People are often telling me I moan about things. That's not the case. I'm often merely disillusioned or saddened after hoping for a good outcome, made worse when things could have been better achieved so simply. Also, with my eye for typography and design I can often see that things haven't actually be designed or thought through properly.

Many logos on our high streets today are created as scalable vector files using web-based fonts designed for emails, and on-screen applications. Everything is becoming super-simplified, thus losing an sense of design. Logos or brand names are kept simple so that they can be scaled down small for use on an app icon or a web bar. Back in the day we would design a suite of logos for a client – a small logo for pens and business cards, a mid-sized version for print and press ads, and a larger more detailed one for shops signs, billboards and vehicles. Today, many logos that are simply typed out, often with no regard for letter-spacing. Ah well. This is progress. But I digress.

Here at the The Imperial (hotel) I suggest the letters are based on, probably pulled directly from, a modern scalable font designed for web use because sharp points on A, M, N, V, W, and Z do not scale or render very well on-screen, hence many new fonts designed specifically for computer use have been been pruned. Verdana, created in 1996 and shown below, is fast becoming one of the most ubiquitous typefaces, clearly outstripping Gill Sans, the Sans Serif favourite of the 1930s (British Rail, Penguin Books, BBC, Tommy Hilfger etc). 

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ 

I'm also not a fan of Verdana's topped and tailed capital 'I' – there is another similar typeface being used a lot lately that also employs this same device – it implements even wider bars making short words like PIN, HIT and BIO and look very strange indeed (ugh!) – if you can identify it, please let me know.

Thanks for getting this far – I had intended this post to be just a quick update with a couple of pictures and captions, but I got a bit carried away!

*Cut to the chase – surely this should be 'cut out the chase'? Do we not get straight to the point after saying this and miss out the journey?

The "restoration" of an Art Deco era Burton's store

Montague Burton, the tailor of taste. But, imho, not so tasteful these days on Long Eaton High Street.

I have just been alerted to the "restoration" of a Burton's store in Derbyshire. I know this isn't in London, but I fear this type of thing is likely to happen on similar sites here in the capital. Ugh – paint it black strikes again!

I'm here stealing/copying the pics from the link above to show the before and after, though the first pic looks to be from Google streetview anyway:

Hmmm... me no likey – Burton’s 1930's façade had survived, complete with the Burton logo at the top, for almost 100 years. Yet, rather than remove a layer of stone-coloured paint (see close-up below) and give it the Portland stonework a gentle clean, they've instead sloshed black and white paint all over it. I am not sure where the £10,000 has been spent. I notice that their second pic is captioned 'Burtons building revamped' which better describes what's happened here. 

OK, so they’ve installed some [fake?] windows, but it would never have looked like this back in the 1920s – hence, this is not a ‘restoration’.

They say that the building looked messy before – I say this was exacerbated by the mix of shops at street level, two of which had with ugly modern signage which, we can see, haven't been upgraded since the renovation. 

This next pic is Google streetview from 2022:

It shows that the building at that time retained a reduced but empty Burton store with serif letters on a red panel. Look closely to see that there's also a ghostly repeat of the 1920's logo within the black fascia above the phone shop, echoing the carved company logo at the very top of the building which would have been red. Here's a close up which also shows peeling paint and boarded windows, now revealed (or rendered?):

An alternative view shows that some lovely architectural details were also in place 2022, specifically, a branded metal ventilation grille at the curved end...

...and a foundation stone at the left corner showing that Stanley Howard Burton was one of the family present at the opening ceremony in 1935:

Burton made sure that family members personally attended the opening of each new store. Three more foundation stones can be found at this site – one at centre front next to the door to the phone shop showing Arnold James Burton was also in attendance and two more round the side flanking the entrance to Chalkie's snooker hall – one shows Lady Montague Burton, but the parked car obscures the one on the left side of the door and, possibly, another metal ventilation grille. 

I’m interested to see how much of the old Burton’s store is still in place today – perhaps, some tiles, mosaics or terrazzo are also to be found.

Back to the black – I’m befuddled how/why the decision was made to paint the building such a stark shade – it surely now stands out like a funereal eyesore rather than an elegant reminder of a bygone age…?

More about Burtons here.