Claire Tomalin's book is the first full-scale biography of Pepys using original research for many years. Pepys led a long and varied life - he was present as a boy at the execution of Charles I, and lived to experience the political complexities of the end of the century. He was responsible for building up the Navy that defeated the Dutch, and he wrote a classic first-hand account of the Fire of London. He lived with his French wife whilst clandestinely having many sexual adventures, then afterher death lived with another woman for over thirty years. He was a writer, a civil servant, a connoisseur - and through his diaries he has some claim to be the first voice of modern man.
