Samuel Pepys was born on 23 February 1633, near Fleet Street in London, and died on 26 May 1703, in Clapham.
	He attended Huntingdon Grammar school, where Oliver Cromwell had been a pupil before him.
	Although known worldwide and the main reason for Pepys’s lasting renown, his famous Diary only covers ten years of his life, from 1660 to 1669, when he gave it up for fear of losing his sight.
	The first edition of the Diary was published in 1825, after the Rev. John Smith worked for three years to transcribe Pepys’s shorthand, unaware that a full key to it was filed in the Pepys collection.
	A lifelong bibliophile, Pepys collected more than 3,000 books, which were later bequeathed to his old college, Magdalene, Cambridge, by his heir John Jackson. A catalogue of this material is published by Boydell & Brewer
	Aside from a hectic and full private life, in the twenty years between 1670 and 1690 Pepys was: Appointed Secretary for the Affairs of the Navy In charge of naval organisation during the Dutch War of 1672-74 Responsible for several key reforms that helped lay the foundations for the professional Royal Navy Elected MP for Castle Rising in Norfolk Made Master of the Clothworkers’ Company Made Master of Trinity House Elected MP for Harwich, Essex Accused of selling naval secrets to the French and sent to the Tower of London Made President of the Royal Society Appointed Secretary of the Admiralty Arrested a second time, on suspicion of ‘Jacobite tendencies’ Somehow able to find time to publish his memoirs

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