Samuel Pepys with Claire Tomalin - 32 Londoners

Claire Tomalin on SAMUEL PEPYS - Diarist, b.1633, Fleet Street

On May the 1st 2014, the EDF Energy London Eye hosted a unique event where each of its 32 capsules was given over to a talk by a well-known authority on a famous Londoner. To commemorate the occasion, this podcast series has been made of all the talks.

Samuel Pepys wrote the most famous diary ever penned for nine years, 1660 to 1669, when he was a young Londoner living through dramatic times. He chronicled the last days of the commonwealth, the restoration of Charles II, the Dutch wars with their raid on the Medway, the plague and the Fire. He describes his own rapid rise working for the Navy Board. He shows us London as it was then, river, streets, buildings. He also lays out his private and domestic life in great detail, and reveals himself to his readers as few have ever been able to do. It is an extraordinary piece of writing.'

Claire Tomalin was born in London in 1933 of a French father and English mother. Educated at Newnham College, Cambridge. Worked in publishing, then journalism, becoming Literary Editor of the New Statesman and the Sunday Times. Has written historical and literary biographies of many Londoners including Mary Wollstonecraft, Charles Dickens and Samuel Pepys - her Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self won the Whitbread prize in 2003 and is available in paperback. It has just been translated into French.