A book talk with prize-winning author Joseph O’Neill, a sponsored walk on the Heath in aid of animal rescue centres and a concert by the Royal Free Music Society are just some of the things featured in our top five this week.

1. Sunday - Wetnose Animal Aid

A sponsored walk on Hampstead Heath gets underway to raise money for animal rescue centres across the country. Wetnose Animal Aid, organisers of the event, help pay-off vet bills, buy equipment and provide animal feed to counter what it says is a downturn in donations to animal rescue centres. It follows the annual Wetnose Funday on Friday.

Meet at East Heath Road car park, Hampstead Heath. Starts 11am. Wearable noses cost £5.

2. Friday - Joseph O’Neill

Prize-winning author Joseph O’Neill comes to Hampstead to talk about his latest novel. The Dog, longlisted for the Man Booker prize, has received rave reviews and is described as a “comic and philosophically profound exploration of what has become of humankind’s moral progress”. The Irish novelist and non-fiction writer’s first book was the bestseller Netherland, and he has also written This is the Life and The Breezes.

Held at Waterstones book shop in Hampstead High Street. Starts at 7pm. Tickets £5 (£3 concs.) available from the shop. Wine provided.

3. Saturday - Sinfonietta

The Royal Free Music Society joins the Zemel Choir and the Hampstead Sinfonietta in a concert at St Mark’s Church in St Mark’s Square, Primrose Hill. The society was formed in 1999 from staff at the hospital in Pond Street and performs four concerts a year with its sister orchestra the Hampstead Sinfonietta. This concert will see them joined by Jewish group the Zemel Choir to perform Mendelssohn’s Elijah.

Starts 7.30pm. Tickets £15 on the door.

4. Wednesday - Nina Stibbe

Author Nina Stibbe comes to West Hampstead to talk about her debut novel A Man at the Helm.

It charts the “horrors of being an attractive divorcee in an English village in the 1970s” and follows the success of Love, Nina – a book that reproduces letters Ms Stibbe sent home to her sister in Leicester while a nanny in Primrose Hill.

Love, Nina explores Ms Stibbe’s dinnertime conversations with playwright Alan Bennett during her time in Primrose Hill.

The talk will be held at West End Lane Books, at 7.30pm.

For more information, visit welbooks.co.uk.

5. Sunday - War Walk

A free guided tour exploring Hampstead’s role during the First World War. Led by museum curator and lecturer Marilyn Greene, the tour visits sites used for military training, auxiliary hospitals and more. During the war, the Heath was transformed into a military training ground and Kenwood House into a hospital and a home for a mobile anti-aircraft brigade.

Meet at Burgh House in New End Square, Hampstead, at midday. Call 020 7431 0144 to book.