Stories and set pieces

Stories from Samuel Pepys's diary

Strands of his life followed through all nine years of the diary, 1660–1669, each told in a dozen or two dated steps and his own words; and the diary's great events, told in full.

Explore every day on the mood grid→

The man

• The failing light From tired eyes by candlelight to the fear of blindness that ended the diary. 182 days across 10 years, 1660–1669
• Elizabeth Nine years of a marriage in his own words: tenderness and quarrels, her loneliness, his jealousy and his violence, her reproaches, and the night she found him embracing Deb Willet. 286 days across 10 years, 1660–1669
• Deb Willet Elizabeth's young companion: his sexual advances in his own house, the discovery, her dismissal, and how he went on pursuing her. 189 days across 3 years, 1667–1669
• Other women The women he made sexual advances to over nine years, many of them dependent on him for a husband's post, a widow's pay or a place in his house. 318 days across 10 years, 1660–1669
• The household Servants hired and dismissed, boys and maids beaten, and Will Hewer, the clerk who stayed. 427 days across 10 years, 1660–1669
• The family A tailor's family, an uncle's estate at Brampton, and the eldest son who ran them both. 374 days across 10 years, 1660–1669

His work

• From £40 to £6,900 How a clerk worth £40 became a rich official, counting his pounds on the way. 298 days across 10 years, 1660–1669
• Patrons Edward Montagu, Earl of Sandwich from 1660, made him; then Coventry and the Duke of York took over, while Sandwich fell from favour, went abroad and came home deep in debt. 413 days across 10 years, 1660–1669
• The Dutch war, from his desk England's war with the Dutch, 1664–67, seen by the man who had to find the ships, the seamen and the money. 411 days across 7 years, 1662–1668
• Making the Navy work How a clerk new to the Navy learned its business, and then had to defend it. 262 days across 10 years, 1660–1669

His pleasures

• Music Singing in parts, the viol and the flageolet, songs of his own: from the diary's first month to its last week. 591 days across 10 years, 1660–1669
• Curiosity Books bound alike, a microscope, a comet, the Royal Society: the reader and collector who wanted to know how things work. 388 days across 10 years, 1660–1669

Set pieces

• The Fire Samuel Pepys's diary of the Great Fire of London, 2–7 September 1666: from the night the maid woke him to the ruins, step by step and in his own words.
• Who he was Samuel Pepys in brief: the clerk who rose to run the Navy, his marriage, his treatment of women, and how his shorthand diary came to be read.
• The plague and the news The great events of the 1660s as the news reached Samuel Pepys, and the plague year of 1665 week by week, with the burials from the bills of mortality and his own words.
• His vows, plays and meals The oaths Samuel Pepys swore and wriggled out of, the plays he loved and hated, and what he ate and drank, from his diary of 1660–1669.
• How it ends Why Samuel Pepys stopped his diary on 31 May 1669, believing he was going blind, and what became of him after.