Did the Puritans ban Christmas dinner?
The History of Parliament blog has a new post today about how Christmas was celebrated, or not, in the mid-17th century, which users Pepys’ diary’s one of its examples:
Site News
News about this site and other Pepys-related events.
A paper about Pepys's eye problems
David James Harries recently got in touch to mention a paper he wrote for The Journal of Dry Eye and Ocular Surface Disease, entitled ‘Pepys’s Eyes: A Modern Answer to an Old Conundrum?’. Here’s the abstract:
Maps are working again
The maps in the Encyclopedia should be working again, after a few days of being blank.
Maps aren't working
The maps in the Encyclopedia aren’t working at the moment – none of the graphical “tiles” that make up the maps are loading. I can’t tell exactly why and don’t have much time right now to look into it. Hopefully Mapbox (who provide the free tiles) will get back to me, or else I’ll find the time to rewrite the map-generating code. I’m not sure how long this will take, sorry!
'The Closet' by Danielle Bobker
Readers of this site may be interested in a new book, The Closet: The Eighteenth-Century Architecture of Intimacy by Danielle Bobker, which looks at this room as it was written about by various authors, including Samuel Pepys. Given how interested Pepys was in improving and enjoying his closet, it sounds interesting.
Podcast episode about the site's technical aspects
If you’re at all interested about the technical aspects behind this site then here’s just the thing for you… I was interviewed for an episode of the Running in Production podcast. I talk about the code that runs the site and how it’s served.
Pepys: the Covid Diaries
A couple of months ago I mentioned a couple of modern versions of Samuel Pepys recounting their experiences of living through the age of the coronavirus. If you’re looking for more, here’s Samuel Pepys: The Covid Diaries.
Full Samuel Pepys Club interview
I recently mentioned an interview with me about this site in the Samuel Pepys Club newsletter. Although the newsletter is only available to members the interviewer and club secretary, Lucie Skeaping, has kindly offered the full interview to read for anyone interested.
Samuel Pepys and the virus
There’s been a parody Samuel Pepys twitter account running for a while at @Pepys_Diaries. It’s a modern-day take on Pepys, imagining him writing in the modern world. Unfortunately one of the account’s recent tweets, drawing parallels between the Plague and 2020’s coronavirus, has been quoted out of context and spread around as if it’s a real excerpt from the diary. The tweet:
Interview in the Samuel Pepys Club newsletter
The Samuel Pepys Club has a newsletter and the March 2020 issue contains an interview with me about this site, aimed at people who don’t know much about it. The interview is a little out of date — it’s from nearly two years ago — but, er, if you’re one of the club’s 140 members then you can read it.