About this Event
Join us on Thursday 15th October at 7pm when we welcome historian & writer, Peter Jones to West Kirby, to celebrate the publication of his book, Self-Help From the Middle Ages .
Described as 'accessibly erudite and infectiously entertaining' by the Telegraph, 'exhilarating, funny, informative' by the Financial Times, and an 'enthralling book' by the Times Literary Supplement, Self-Help From the Middle Ages is one of our non-fiction books of the year, offering an informative, incredibly readable examination of the Middle Ages, using art, mysticism and literature to show how the Seven Deadly Sins were used as a roadmap for a happier and healthier life.
Peter will be in conversation with Jordan from the bookshop, before answering questions from the audience and signing copies of the book. Tickets are £6 standard admission or £23 including a copy of the book.
Tickets are non-refundable but if you can't attend and would like to request a signed & dedicated copy of the book, do get in touch!
We look forward to seeing you there.
About Self- Help From the Middle Ages:
What can a twelfth-century monk teach us about burnout, envy, or despair? Far more than we might imagine. In Self-Help from the Middle Ages, historian Peter Jones travels through Europe’s archives and libraries to uncover a lost psychology: a world where confession was therapy, sin was diagnosis, and the Seven Deadly Sins served as a map of the human mind.
From the deserts of Egypt to the Vatican Library, from Dante’s Florence to Catherine of Siena’s cell, Jones introduces the thinkers, mystics and rebels who wrestled with the same questions that preoccupy us now: how to live with our flaws, forgive ourselves, and find meaning amid confusion.
Medieval lives and landscapes come vividly alive: Siberian winters and Parisian manuscripts, lustful saints and anxious scholars, candlelit abbeys and vaults of forgotten books. Wise, surprising, and deeply humane, Self-Help from the Middle Ages reveals that the remedies we seek for our 21st-century anxieties may have been with us all along—written in brown Gothic ink on lambskin seven hundred years ago.
About Peter Jones:
Peter Jones is a writer and historian who first fell under the spell of the Middle Ages at the age of 9, while visiting the National Portrait Gallery in London. After growing up in the circle of towns around Heathrow Airport he moved to New York in his early twenties, and received a PhD in Medieval History from NYU. Over his career he has taught at the University of Toronto, University College London, and Complutense University of Madrid. Peter also spent several years working at the School of Advanced Studies in Tyumen, Siberia, and his experiences there — especially the class he taught on the Seven Deadly Sins — inspired his book, Self-Help From the Middle Ages.
Event venue & nearby stays
The West Kirby Bookshop, 20 Grange Road, West Kirby, United Kingdom
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