Reimagining the Restoration

  • About
  • Author interviews
  • Creative Writing
  • Reading Pepys’s shorthand
  • Schools
  • Who discovered the Great Fire?
  • Contacts

Samuel Pepys’s diary & popular history

Portrait of Samuel Pepys in 1666. Wearing a brown periwig, Pepys looks out at the viewer, holding a sheet of music he composed himself.

Samuel Pepys’s secret diary of the 1660s was first published almost 200 years ago, in 1825.

This research project, ‘Reimagining the Restoration’. explores the diary’s impact since its first publication, looking at how we can use it to investigate the past and imaginatively engage with our history.

Find out more

Image: Samuel Pepys, by John Hayls (1666), National Portrait Gallery, London