The 1660s represent a turning point in English history, and for the main events - the Restoration, the Dutch war, the Great Plague and the Fire of London - Pepys provided a definitive eyewitness account. As well as recording public and historic events, Pepys paints a vivid picture of his personal life, from his socialising and amorous entanglements, to his theatre-going and his work at the Navy Board. Unequalled for its frankness, high spirits and sharp observations, the diary is both a literary masterpiece and a marvellous portrait of seventeenth-century life.
