Pepys in Real Time

Samuel Pepys kept a diary in shorthand for nine years and meant nobody to read it. 1666 is its great year. The plague is ending as it opens, the navy fights the Dutch through the summer, and on the second of September a baker's oven in Pudding Lane sets the City of London alight. Pepys watches it from a boat on the Thames and buries his wine and his parmesan in the garden. Around all of that are his dinners, his quarrels with his wife, his money, his music and his wandering eye, written down the night they happened. One entry a day for the whole year, each on the date he wrote it.

Read one big book alongside other readers, a day at a time. Cohorts set off on the date above.