The most intimate portrait of Restoration England ever committed to paper. In this volume, Pepys records the small anxieties and great dramas of early 1662: his fretting over household expenses, his delight at theatrical performances, his navigation of the treacherous politics of the Navy Office. Here is a man utterly obsessed with money, status, and women, yet somehow impossible to condemn. He lectures himself on his wasteful spending, then heads to the theater. He admires the Queen at court, then returns home to argue with his wife. What makes Pepys eternal is not his historical importance but his relatability. He is vain, insecure, and constantly scheming, yet he records it all with such frankness that four centuries later we recognize him completely. This is history from inside a human heart.
