When I was at school I received at least one diary each year as a Christmas present. By breakfast-time on Christmas Day I had read through all the Information pages, until I could tell anyone what it cost to send a 2 oz. letter to Paraguay or at what age a puppy had to have a dog licence. I had also decided that I would make a New Year's resolution to write up the diary every day for the whole of the next year. By the middle of January, there had already been one or two gaps that I had filled only with difficulty; and by the end of January I had thankfully mislaid the wretched thing. How many of you began a diary at the beginning of this year? And how many of you are still keeping it? We are very grateful to some people who have kept diaries. From them we have learnt a great deal that has made the history of their times come alive. Probably the best-known diary of all times is that of Samuel Pepys. From it we have wonderful eye-witness accounts of the Great Plague of 1665 and the Fire of London of the following year.

The Fire of 1666 was the greatest calamity London had until the Blitz in the Second World War. It lasted four and a half days. It destroyed about four-fifths of the city where over 300,000 people lived. It burned 13,000 buildings—houses, shops, churches and public buildings.

Pepys saw the fire first when one of his maids woke him early one Sunday morning to tell him of a great fire in the City. He thought it a far-off negligible little blaze, and went to sleep again.

At seven, as he was dressing, he looked again at the fire. It seemed to have died down and was farther off. Soon the maid came in with news of the fire. She had heard‘ that above 300 houses had been burned down tonight by the fire we saw, and that it is now burning down all Fish Street by London Bridge’. To find out if the rumour was true, he walked to the Tower and climbed ‘upon one of the high places’. In the south-west along the river was ‘ an infinite great fire’.