The website has been moved
24 August 2017
Update: If you can read this the site has been successfully moved and everything should be working again.
Site News
News about this site and other Pepys-related events.
The BBC's 'A Concert For Samuel Pepys'
20 January 2017
BBC Radio 4 are putting on a concert of songs composed for Samuel Pepys by Cesare Morelli, the musician who joined Pepys’ household in the 1670s. The concert is at Pepys’ local church, St Olave’s, on 15 February 2017, and is free to attend, although you must reserve tickets (see below). The concert will be recorded for a feature on Radio 4 in the future.
Here are the details:
Diary search and word frequency charts
17 May 2016
John Goldin got in touch as he’s put together a page that quickly searches the diary and shows charts of the frequency of words throughout the text.
New exhibition: Samuel Pepys: Plague, Fire, Revolution
2 November 2015
London’s National Maritime Museum has a new exhibition opening soon, Samuel Pepys: Plague, Fire, Revolution. It runs from 20th November to 28th March 2016. Their blurb:
Photos of St Olave's
24 September 2015
The blog Spitalfields Life has a nice post about Pepys’s local church, St Olave’s, with many good photos, including of Samuel’s own prayer book. Worth a look.
Paul Chapin, 1938-2015
5 July 2015
With great sadness, I must pass on the news that Paul Chapin, one of the members of this site’s community through the diary’s first “go round” passed away on 1 July 2015.
Family Tree updated
20 June 2015
In case anyone likes to keep a copy of the latest Pepys family tree, I’ve just updated it. The latest addition is that of the Angier brothers (Percival and John), who were distant cousins by marriage of Samuel, Percival being married to a daughter of Thomas Pepys “The Red”.
Moved to a new server
17 May 2015
UPDATE: If you can read this, the site has moved to a new server, and you should be able to log in and post annotations again. There may well be things which are broken or slow or unusually strange… if you spot something, do let me know. Thanks.
Wikipedia content returns
25 March 2015
Back on the previous site, more than two years ago, some of the topic pages in the Encyclopedia included relevant text and images from Wikipedia. This was reduced to links to Wikipedia when I rebuilt the site. But now, it’s all back.
New search feature
1 March 2015
Those of you who were familiar with the old site may remember it had a search function that disappeared when I rebuilt the site for the start of 2013 (or, the return of 1660). It was more complicated to recreate that with the new technology, and so it had to disappear. I’ve now added a search box back to the top of every page.
A new design
17 January 2015
When I rebuilt this site at the beginning of 2013, ready for the second cycle of the diary, I didn’t have time to finish the design of the pages. While all the behind-the-scenes code had been built from scratch, the visible parts didn’t get much attention. The monochrome look was functional but didn’t give the impression a website about a 17th century character should.
Viz's Samuel L. Pepys
11 January 2015
Viz comic has created a (Not Safe For Work) strip of the adventures of “Samuel L. Pepys” which readers may find amusing. I’m not sure the joke really sustains itself for twelve panels but still, worth a look!
New unabridged diary audiobook in 2015
18 December 2014
Those of you who like audiobooks but have had to make do with abridged versions of Samuel Pepys’ diary will be pleased to hear about a new release from Naxos of the entire diary. Quite an undertaking!
Pepys Family Tree updated
28 July 2014
For those of you who like to have the latest version to hand, I’ve updated the family tree.
Samuel Pepys' Playlist on BBC Radio 4
7 July 2014
BBC Radio 4 has an episode of their Playlist Series focused on the music that Pepys enjoyed. Here’s the blurb:
Maps are working again
5 May 2014
The maps in the Encyclopedia are back now.
Maps not working temporarily
2 May 2014
Maps in the Encyclopedia section currently aren’t displaying due to some confusion with Mapbox that provides them. Hopefully they’ll be back in the next day or two.
'Great Fire of London' TV drama
5 March 2014
Via Terry Foreman in the discussion group comes the news that the ITV channel in the UK is going to make a drama called The Great Fire of London, to be broadcast on four consecutive days.
Pepys marriage event at St Olave's
6 October 2013
St Olave’s church, the Pepys’ local church during the diary period, is hosting an event run by Unity Arts on the evening of Thursday. 10th October 2013, focused around Samuel and Elizabeth’s marriage:
Pepys Diary erasure project
27 July 2013
Diary readers might find these blog posts intriguing.