Diary of Samuel Pepys — Volume 47: November 1666
1651
November 1666. London is still smoldering from the Great Fire that consumed it two months ago, and Samuel Pepys records his days with the frantic energy of a man watching his world remade. As a clerk at the Admiralty, he worries over warships and naval budgets while navigating the treacherous currents of Restoration court politics. In the evenings, he scribbles in his shorthand code: what he ate, who he kissed (and who kissed him), his terror of blindness, his satisfaction with a well-cooked meal, the endless gossip of coffeehouses. This is not history written from a distance. It is one man's attempt to make sense of a city in ashes and a nation grasping for normalcy. Pepys is vain, anxious, occasionally cruel, and startlingly honest. Four centuries later, his diary remains the most intimate portrait we have of everyday life during England's most turbulent decade.
