Samuel Pepys: diarist, administrator … budding fashionista
Brief letters
John Lennon wasn’t joking about Jesus
September 2023
Museum of London identifies man who raised alarm over Great Fire
Exhibition at museum’s new site will focus on Thomas Dagger and other ordinary Londoners caught up in 1666 inferno
April 2023
Document that made Charles II king to be auctioned for £600k
Signed copy of 1660 Declaration of Breda, which restored monarchy in Britain after Cromwell’s rule, goes on sale in May
October 2022
Brief letters
And so to bed with Samuel Pepys
Brief letters: A literary cure for insomnia | Arts and health privatisation | Heffalump traps | Effects of Librium | Must-see theatre
November 2021
Neat enough for Pepys: Magdalene college Cambridge’s inventive new library
The famous diarist’s dedicated building, left to his Cambridge alma mater, could not be altered. So architect Níall McLaughlin created a magical solution
September 2021
Books that made me
Joshua Ferris: ‘ A House for Mr Biswas is as near to perfect as a book gets’
The author on reading John Gray at a time of grief, the joy of Samuel Pepys and and his favourite Thomas Pynchon
April 2021
Steven Poole's word of the week
It’s all about chums, not crones: a short history of ‘cronyism’
Samuel Pepys had one. Today’s government ministers seem to have lots. But what is a crony?
May 2020
Reading group
Beyond Daniel Defoe: the real journals of the plague year
For all its power, Defoe’s account of the great plague was not firsthand, and there’s much to be learned from genuine witnesses
October 2019
Silver plate found to belong to 17th century diarist Samuel Pepys
Item marked by literary figure’s coat of arms – and fork scratches, says Museum of London
September 2018
17c review – a ponderous evening with Mrs Pepys
The London diarist’s long-suffering wife, Bess, takes centre stage in this laboriously well-intentioned piece
17c review – rollicking 21st-century take on Samuel Pepys
Pepys’s celebrated diaries come under feminist scrutiny in Big Dance Theater’s postmodern mashup
Dancing to the diary of Samuel Pepys – in pictures
New York City-based company Big Dance Theater makes its UK premiere at the Old Vic in London with 17c, a feminist contemporary dance-theatre presentation of the diarist’s life
December 2017
The Curious World of Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn by Margaret Willes review – in pursuit of knowledge
A lavishly illustrated ‘cabinet of curiosities’ opens up the life of unlikely companions who shared an unquenchable thirst for the new
November 2017
100 best nonfiction books of all time
The 100 Best Nonfiction Books of All Time: No 92 – The Diary of Samuel Pepys (1660)
A portrait of an extraordinary Englishman, whose scintillating first-hand accounts of Restoration England are reported alongside his rampant sexual exploits
September 2017
The 10 best non-fiction books about London
From Pepys’s Diary to Ben Judah’s impressionistic survey, the city has provided a wealth of material for writers
December 2016
Music blog
Tromba marina: the instrument that gave Pepys a real buzz
Immortalised in Samuel Pepys’s diaries, strangely favoured by nuns, but today a curiosity – meet the mysterious and magical tromba marina
October 2016
On my radar
On my radar: Matt Berry’s cultural highlights
The Maypoles musician and Mighty Boosh and IT Crowd actor on Miles Davis, the great fire of London, a Charles Manson documentary and adventurous seafood
September 2016
Books blog
How the Great Fire of London spawned a great literature of loss – and renewal
Pepys and Evelyn were the most famous chroniclers of the fire, but it also inspired a few amateurs and hacks...
January 2016
On the Thames towpath with Samuel Pepys
Glowing plate-glass towers now cover the marshland and mudflats of Samuel Pepys’s London. Will Self sets out along the Thames to rediscover the city chronicled by the famous diarist
