Explore the diary · 1660–1669
Nine years in the life of Samuel Pepys
From 1660 to 1669 Samuel Pepys, a naval official in London, kept a diary of nearly everything he saw and did, the bad with the good. Each square below is one of his days: pick one, follow a story, or let chance choose. New to him? Start with who he was.
Every day · 1 January 1660 – 31 May 1669
One square a day, coloured by his mood
Tap any square to read what happened that day, and his best line from it.
Moods, summaries and “best lines” were written by an AI model (Claude) reading Wheatley's text and checked by further AI passes. They are interpretations: tap “Read the entry” to judge for yourself. How we did it ↓
A small corner square marks a day Wheatley's 1893 edition cut. A dashed outline marks a day with no entry. A ring marks the five days to start with, listed further down. On a keyboard, the arrow keys move between days, Page Up and Page Down jump a year, and Home and End go to the ends of a month.
The grid as a table
The diary in numbers
Today in his diary
What he wrote on this day
The entry for today's date in each year of the diary, from 1660 to 1669.
His dates are Old Style: England still kept the Julian calendar, ten days behind ours, so “today” is matched by the day and month as he wrote them.
His London
The places he went
Where his days took him, from Westminster to the Tower and further afield: home and office, taverns, theatres, churches and the river, each place sized by how often he was there.
Set pieces
Five stories, told in full
The diary's great events, and the man who wrote it, each told at length with his own words. Open one, or read straight on.
- The FireSeptember 1666 on a map of the City, step by step as he saw it.
- Who he wasHis job, his marriage, his treatment of women, and how his shorthand was first read.
- The plague and the newsThe great events as the news reached him, and the plague year week by week.
- His vows, plays and mealsThe oaths he swore and wriggled out of, the plays he ranked, what he ate.
- How it endsWhy he stopped on 31 May 1669, and what came after.
Set piece · The Fire · Sunday 2 September 1666, about 3 a.m.
The night the maid woke him to see a fire
A thirty-three-year-old naval official, Samuel Pepys, looked out of a window of his house at the Navy Office in Seething Lane, decided the fire was “far enough off”, and went back to bed. Over the next three days he watched it eat the City and wrote down almost everything he saw.
Set piece · Who he was
A clerk on the way up, writing in code
Set piece · The plague and the news
He was in the room, or the boat, or the street
Pepys was not a historian. He was a man with a job at the centre of things, and he wrote the news down as it reached him, before anyone knew how it would end.
The plague year, week by week
Set piece · His vows, plays and meals
Oaths, plays and dinners
The public events make the diary useful. These make it human, for better and worse.
The vow tracker
Again and again he swore off wine, plays, buying books and spending money, kept a book of his oaths, paid fines into the poor box, and found ingenious ways round them.
His theatre verdicts, ranked
What he ate
Set piece · How it ends · Monday 31 May 1669
He stopped because he thought he was going blind
The diary's last fortnight, 18–31 May 1669, one square a day: