Saints

St.Peter and St. Paul’s Church | Doors from 12.30pm | Tickets £5

Join us for an event steeped in mythological history with author, medieval culture historian and artist, Amy Jeffs. Hear about the history and legends of Saints featured in Amy’s book of the same name, in the setting of St. Peter and St. Paul’s Church where we’ll be surrounded by the famous and rarely preserved medieval wall paintings depicting these stories.

Amy will be in conversation with Alex from Pickering Book Tree, whose background is also in medieval history. It’s set to be a fascinating discussion about Amy’s retellings of the legends and the histories behind them in her book Saints, which is thoroughly researched, thoughtfully compiled and beautifully illustrated with her own black paper cut-outs. On Amy’s website, she says of her work: “All my books are based on primary research. I care about faithfully and rigorously drawing readers into the sources I work with: historical manuscripts, literature, music and art. All my books are invitations to discussion, close-looking and wonder, rooted in real places and lives. My illustrations are made at home, with wood, Lino, ink and paper.”

The Tablet, who chose Saints as their Book of the Year, described it as “a book of remarkable beauty, mystery and originality“ and that “the legends are beautifully told and illustrated . . . The writer’s approach is both imaginative and scholarly”.

About the Book

A rewarding and beguiling collection of legends that are little known, a wide-ranging introduction to medieval saints’ lives — The Literary Review

From the Sunday Times bestselling author of Storyland and Wild, comes a sweeping new legendary of miracles, magic, human frailty and heroic strength. Illustrated with over thirty original paper cutouts by the author.

Saints’ legends suffused medieval European culture. Their heroes’ suffering and wonder-working shaped landscapes, rituals and folk beliefs. Their tales spoke of men raised by wolves, women communing with flocks of birds and severed heads calling from between bristling paws.

In Saints, Amy Jeffs retells legends born of the medieval cult of saints. She draws on ‘official’ lives, vernacular romances, artworks and obscene poetry, all spanning from the fourth to the sixteenth centuries. The legends’ heroes originate from as far east as Turkey and North Africa and as far west as Britain and Ireland. Saints includes such enduring super saints as Brigid, George, Patrick and Michael, as well as some whose legends are less well known (Scoithín, Euphrosyne and Ia) or else couched in prejudice (William of Norwich).

The commentaries following the stories offer a history of each saint and, together, trace the rise and fall of the medieval cult of saints from the first martyrs to the Protestant Reformation. And all this maps onto the passing year: from St Mungo in January to St Thomas Becket in December.

Jeffs guides her readers from images high on the walls of medieval churches, through surviving treasures of the elite and into the shifting silt of the Thames, where lie the lowly image-bearing badges once treasured by pilgrims. She opens manuscripts that hold wondrous stories of the lives and deaths of wayfaring monks, oak-felling missionaries and mighty martyrs. With tales of demons and dragons, with the stubborn skull of a giant, with stories of sleepers in a concealed Greek cave, Saints will enchant and transport readers to other worlds.

Wonderful . . . Each lifestory is a gem . . . It’s beautifully written, evocative, informative, compulsive reading — Scottish Field Magazine

About the Author

Amy Jeffs writes and illustrates her critically acclaimed books from her home in Somerset. Her work engages with Britain’s medieval and early modern storytelling cultures. She has a PhD in Art History from Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.

Her work combines a love of nature and natural history with her academic training as a medievalist and art historian. She takes part in podcasts, Youtube shows and television documentaries and travels widely to speak about medieval and early modern cultures and how they can open our eyes to Britain’s heritage and oldest recorded stories.

Jeffs’ first book, Storyland: A New Mythology of Britain, was a Sunday Times bestseller, shortlisted for Waterstones Book of the Year and named a Times Historical Fiction Book of the Year. Her second book, Wild: Tales from Early Medieval Britain, explores an old idea of the wilderness through medieval stories of outcasts, monsters and the natural world. The audiobook, illustrated with song, was named audiobook of the week by the Times and the Guardian.

Saints: Legends of Heroes, Humans and Magic is her third book, and this was followed by Old Songs: Stories of Love and Death from Traditional Ballads in 2025.

Tickets

£5 from the shop counter (currently cash only) or online at ticketsource.com

Direct link to booking page here

The event will be held in the beautiful setting of St. Peter and St. Paul’s Church in Pickering, which is a perfect venue for this event with its incredible Medieval wall paintings.

£2 from each ticket will be donated towards the Church to help with maintenance and the ongoing restoration project.

Doors will be open from 12.30pm for a 1pm start.