Penguin’s Little Black Classic volumes celebrate a huge range and diversity, with books from around the world and across many centuries. This volume holds Samuel Pepys' famous contemporary account of the Great Fire of London, taken from his startlingly vivid and candid diaries. 

Pepys’s experience of the fire was as a homeowner and London resident, but also as a Government employee working at Whitehall Palace; it was he who reported the start of the fire to Charles II. His preoccupations with saving his ‘treasure’ (which included not only bottles of wine but also cheese), takes up much of his time however, and this is a very personal account. His diary for this period is valued as one of the most comprehensive eyewitness accounts of the Great Fire of London.