Pepys's Progress [audio 11min]

Samuel Pepys started keeping his famous diary on January 1st, 1660, and over the course of nine years he captured a fascinating picture of London life during the Restoration. But Pepys was also one of the 17th century’s greatest naval administrators, and so he spent much of his life working, and walking, alongside the Thames. It’s said he went almost everywhere on foot, from London Bridge to Greenwich and back, his nose in a book as he walked along a meadow path next to the river. Writer Claire Tomalin, Pepys' biographer, traced Pepys’s progress with Jennifer Chevalier. The featured walk can be found in Volume 2 of Time Out Book of London Walks, Volume 2, edited by Andrew White (Penguin).