In this and previous guides, historian Ian Mortimer’s delightful conceit is that the reader is a time traveller in need of advice about a particular period, from where to stay and what to eat, to tips about entertainment and how to stay healthy.
The four “tumultuous” decades from 1660 to 1700 saw the end of “the most religious decade Britain has seen since the Middle Ages” and the restoration of the monarchy. With it came “a unifying spirit of licentiousness” and the dawn of the age of individualism and rationality, as the values of science and the Enlightenment took hold.
But it’s in the details of daily life that Mortimer’s book excels. This wonderfully human history captures the experiences of Restoration Britain, including insults (“you white-livered son of a Fleet Street bumsitter”), street food (pies are fine “if you don’t mind the gristle inside the pastry and the flies on the outside”), personal hygiene (“Pepys does not immerse himself in water for the whole 10‑year period of his diary”), and how to post a letter (envelopes had not yet been invented but a letter to France will cost you one shilling). History at its most entertaining.
