How do we know what life was like in the past? Hundreds of years ago, there were no smart phones or cameras. Many people couldn't read or write because they didn't go to school. Back then, only ...

A fair amount of what the world knows of 17th century London was captured by one man. For 10 years, Samuel Pepys made daily entries in a shorthand common to scholars of the day. He was a keen observer ...

We track Pepys’s astronomical rise from impoverished young hopeful to the most influential mandarin in the navy bureaucracy (Getty) One’s book of a lifetime should become a total obsession – a work ...

In 1703 a retired widower named Samuel Pepys died in a London suburb. He had risen from humble beginnings to occupy naval positions of immense power. For a time, as Secretary to the Admiralty, he had ...

Memorial to Samuel Pepys in his local church, St Olave Hart St near the Tower of London Anyone can find something in Samuel Pepys's diary that speaks directly to them. Often the everyday details of ...

The author of the greatest diary in the English language is hard to compete with, but since Pepys kept his diary for only 10 years (eye trouble ended it), Coote is otherwise on his own. Although he ...