Think you know the famous diarist? Try your luck at this quiz.
Round 1
Round 2: Pepys the man
1. Multiple choice: Where did Pepys live during the years he wrote his diary?
(a) Oozing Street, (b) Simmer Lane, (c) Coddlefroth Street, (d) Seething Lane
2. In which famous London church was Pepys baptised?
3. What personal anniversary did Pepys celebrate on 26 March each year?
4. How many children did Pepys have?
5. Pepys was an avid collector of books. Soon after his death, his meticulously ordered library, including the diaries, was transferred to which city, where it remains to this day in the original book cases?
Round 3: Pepys’s diary
1. Multiple Choice: Pepys wrote his diary for his own eyes only. How did he ensure that anyone stumbling across the diary would be unlikely to understand it?
(a) It was written in ‘mirror writing’, like Da Vinci’s notebooks, (b) It was written in Dutch, (c) it was written in a complicated shorthand, (d) it was written in Klingon
2. The diary lasts for almost ten years of Pepys’s life. In what year was the last entry made?
3. Multiple choice: what were the final words of Pepys’s final diary entry?
(a) The good God prepare me; (b) my dear wife, she calleth; (c) fancy Nan distracts me with her sauce; (d) And so to bed.
4. In that final entry, why did Pepys tell us he would stop writing his diary?
5. Multiple choice. Which of the following words does NOT appear anywhere in the diary?
(a) Boobies , (b) Buttocks, (c) Fart, (d) Cock
Round 4: 17th century London
1. An equestrian statue of which king can be found at Charing Cross, marking the official centre of London?
2. Which religious group took a good deal of blame for the Great Fire, including a reference on the Monument to the Great Fire?
3. Around the time of Pepys’s birth, architect Inigo Jones began laying out the first of the West End’s many squares. Which one?
4. What high-profile crime did the splendidly named Colonel Blood attempt in 1671?
5. Which monarch died the year before Pepys after his horse stumbled on a molehill, throwing the king to the ground?
Round 5
Round 6: Pot luck
1. What was the occupation of Samuel Pepys’s father, John?
2. Multiple Choice: According to IMDB, the character of Samuel Pepys has appeared on screen in 22 different films or TV shows. Which of the following four actors has never played the great diarist?
(a) Steve Coogan, (b) Peter Sallis, (c) Hugh Bonneville, (d) Imelda Staunton
3. Pepys lived through, and chronicled, the Great Plague of 1665. What proportion of Londoners are thought to have died in that epidemic?
4. Easy one: on which street did the Great Fire of London begin?
5. Not so easy one. Following the destruction of old St Paul’s Cathedral by the Great Fire, what building briefly became the tallest in London?
Background images in Round 1 by M@. Pictures of cheeses reproduced under creative commons licence via Dominik Hundhammer, François Trazzi, Wittylama, Richard North and Jon Sullivan.
Answers
Round 1
1. Winston Churchill
2. St Paul's Cathedral
3. Tate Britain
4. BT Tower
5. Shakespeare's Globe
Round 2
1. (d) Seething Lane
2. St Bride's Church
3. The successful removal of a kidney or bladder stone
4. None (as far as anyone knows)
5. Cambridge
Round 3
1. (c) Shorthand
2. 1669
3. (a) The good God prepare me
4. Failing eyesight
5. (a) Boobies
Round 4
1. Charles I
2. Catholics
3. Covent Garden
4. Theft of the Crown Jewels
5. William III
Round 5
1. Hanged, Drawn, Quartered
2. Midsummer Night’s Dream
3. Women
4. Saluted
5. Bed Round
Round 6
1. Tailor
2. (d) Imelda Staunton
3. A quarter
4. Pudding Lane
5. Southwark Cathedral (St Mary Overie as it was then known)