Walking Pepys's London

Jacky Colliss Harvey

From Shelf: Favourite books I read in 2021

Full of fascinating details and written with extraordinary sensitivity, Pepys's London is an unmissable exploration into the places that made the greatest English diarist of all time.

Samuel Pepys walked round London for miles. The 21/2 miles to Whitehall from his house near the Tower of London was accomplished on an almost daily basis, and so many of his professional conversations took place whilst walking that the streets became for him an alternative to his office. With Pepys's London, the reader will come to know life in London from the pavement up and see its streets from the perspective of this renowned diarist. The city was almost as much a character in Pepys's life as his family or friends, and the book draws many parallels between his experience of 17th-century London and the lives of Londoners today. Colliss Harvey's new book reconstructs the sensory and emotional experience of the past, bringing geography, biography and history into one. Full of fascinating details and written with extraordinary sensitivity, Pepys's London is an unmissable exploration into the places that made the greatest English diarist of all time.

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