Samuel Pepys

Claire Tomalin has worked in publishing and journalism all her life, becoming literary editor first of the New Statesman and then of the Sunday Times. She is the author of six highly acclaimed biographies and has won the Whitbread First Book Prize, the Hawthornden Prize, the NCR Book Award and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Biography. Claire Tomalin lives in Camden Town, London with her husband Michael Frayn.

Part 1 1633-1660: the elected son; a schoolboy's war - Huntingdon and St Paul's; Cambridge and clerking; love and pain; a house in Axe Yard; a diary. Part 2 1660-1669: changing sides; families; work; jealousy; death and plague; war; marriage; the king; the fire; three Janes; the secret scientist; speeches and stories; surprise and disorder. Part 3 1669-1703: after the diary; public and private life; plots; travels for the Stuarts; whirligigs; the Jacobite; a journey to be made.