Pepys and the Navy - Brief Article - Book Review

Contemporary Review, Dec, 2003

Pepys and the Navy. C.S. Knighton. Sutton Publishing. [pounds sterling]20.00. 218 pages. ISBN 0-7509-2972-3. For most people, Pepys' fame as a diarist has overshadowed his importance in naval history. In this work the author, one of the country's experts not only on Pepys but on the Royal Navy, sets that right.

He traces the history of Pepys' involvement with naval affairs and shows how this was affected by the wider politics of the Restoration and the governments of the Stuart monarchy. Mr Knighton, who has himself worked with Pepys' Library at Magdalene College, gives readers an informative history of the collection and its importance. He argues that it was not only on Pepys' own work for the Navy but on the collection of papers he left behind him that his place in history is based. This is a good piece of corrective history. (R.G.T.)