the Restoration
The traitor who gives Downing Street a bad name
Even by 17th-century standards, George Downing’s duplicity in serving both Oliver Cromell and Charles II was exceptional and set new standards for unscrupulousness
Friends fall out in the English civil war
Bulstrode Whitelocke and Edward Hyde, close colleagues in the 1630s, find themselves on opposite sides in the bitter conflict a decade later
Pleasure palaces and hidden gems
Theatre buildings are seriously interesting – as I ought to have appreciated sooner in the course of 25 years writing…
![Portrait of Pepys, after John Hayls. The Diary for 17 March 1666 reads: ‘This day I begin to sit [for Hayls], and he will make me, I think, a very fine picture.... I sit to have it full of shadows, and do almost break my neck looking over my shoulder to make the posture for him to work by.’](https://www.spectator.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/pepys1.jpg?w=410&h=275&crop=1)
Lust for life
We all know about Samuel Pepys witnessing the Great Fire in his Diaries, but how many have read the definitive…
It takes a thief…
In the words of one of his contemporaries ‘a man of down look, lean-faced and full of pock holes’, the…
