<p>Samuel Pepys was born in London in 1633 and died in Clapham in 1703. In his life he was Secretary of Naval Affairs and President of the Royal Society mingling with the greatest of the land. He lived through civil war plague and the greatest fire London has suffered outside of the Blitz in World War II. In 1660 at the age of 27 he began a diary chronicling one of the most colorful periods of the Restoration.</p>