Altogether it is a book that I greatly enjoyed and became completely enthralled by and I was so pleased to have the opportunity to read and review it.Īt the beginning of the novel Pepys is involved in a fire in London, where the Great Fire was a recent and painful memory. It is not an all-male adventure story, as it seems that the women of the time have learnt from their past experiences of civil war and social unrest, and have developed a keen sense of practical justice. The characters, including Pepys, his assistant and friend Will, those in authority and those who challenge it all spring to life on these pages. There is a diverse range of characters who contribute to the narrative, and although in the form of recollections, there is much dialogue to enjoy. There are so many little details of people’s appearance, of the food and drink available, of the grimy reality of travel, accommodation and even the use of weapons.

The research into the setting, the real people who inhabit the book, the situations that the characters get themselves into are so well conveyed, the accuracy never slowing the action. Jewers has combined so many elements in this book brilliantly Pepys is a man who has ambitions but is painfully self-aware, who is attracted to women who he treats with respect at least at this stage of his life, irrespective of rank, whose curiosity is matched by his bravery. He does not get it right all the time, he still has his failings and can still be baffled by people and their motives. The voice is of Samuel Pepys, who by 1669 has achieved so much in terms of education, experience and status, an able man and one who has enormous understanding of people. Not that this book is in any way a dry political text rather it is a vivid and sometimes brutal, always moving thriller of sorts, a who and why dunnit, a vibrant personal story.

It manages to capture something of the uneasy peace established after the Restoration of Charles II, a sense of the difficulties in international relations, and just how close certain individuals came to acting for a reversion to a Republic.

Based on the intense and significant diaries that did so much for historians, this novel is a work of fiction which goes some way to explaining why one of the greatest diarists in history may have stopped his daily record at the age of thirty-six, and what he did after the well-known writing ceased. This is a historical thriller with an impeccable sense of time and frequent surprises. The Lost Diary of Samuel Pepys by Jack Jewers

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