Samuel Pepys: Plague, Fire, Revolution

Pepys (1633-1703) remains Britain’s most famous diarist and while his colourful, candid account covered only nine years – he stopped because he feared incorrectly that it was driving him to blindness – it remains an extraordinary document, mixing the everyday and the momentous, the worldly, public affairs of a successful civil servant set alongside his personal life, pleasures and dreams. It was Pepys who remarked (9 March 1665): ‘my business… is neglected by my following my pleasure. However, musique and women I cannot but give way to.’ His diary gives powerful, unusual insight into the everyday life of restoration London.

Pepys lived until he was 70 and this exhibition does not just accompany the nine years of his diary. It seeks to both show the full range of his interests and his life and to broaden our understanding of Pepys by bringing alive the tumultuous period of British history in which he lived, when London grew to become a world city and England became a leading naval power. At 16, Pepys played truant from school to witness the execution of King Charles I in 1649, while in 1660 he was part of the team that carried Charles II from exile to assume the crown.

A rich range of objects ranging from paintings to books and contemporary documents tell the story of the history that Pepys lived through and help to illustrate the perspicacity of his own comments on events: the terrible Plague of 1665; the Great Fire of London in 1666 – Pepys sensibly buried his wine and cheese in his back garden – and at the end of his working career, the Glorious Revolution of 1688, which saw the Protestant William Prince of Orange depose Pepys’s patron and supporter, James II of England in a bloodless coup d’état.

Not forgotten are Pepys’s many interests and achievements. Professionally, his great achievement was the creation of a world-class navy, amply illustrated in the exhibition, and in many ways he remains the model of a diligent Admiralty civil servant.

His retirement in 1688 – after the deposition of James II – saw his long-standing interest in science lead to his becoming President of the Royal Society. This exhibition will send you back to Pepys’s diary with renewed knowledge and illumination.

Until 28 March at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London SE10: 020-8312 6608, www.rmg.co.uk/nationalmaritime-museum