The Samuel Pepys Award

The Samuel Pepys Award is a biennial prize established by the Club in 2001. It is given for a publication that, in the opinion of the judges, makes the greatest contribution to the understanding of Samuel Pepys, his times or his contemporaries in the interest of encouraging scholarship in this area and advancing the education of the public in his works.

It was first presented in 2003 to mark the centenary of the Club and the tercentenary of Pepys’s death. Winners are presented with £2,000 and a specially commissioned medal in memory of Robert Latham, co-editor of the definitive 11 volume edition of Pepys's diary.

Bronze medal or plaque featuring a portrait of a man with long curly hair and period clothing, holding a quill.

The Robert Latham Medal

We welcome submissions from publishers and authors whose publications fit the criteria above.

The next Award will be made in 2027 for works published between 1 July 2025 and 30 June 2027. Please contact Professor Will Pettigrew for further information: w.pettigrew@lancaster.ac.uk

Book cover titled 'The Strange History of Samuel Pepys's Diary' by Kate Loveman, featuring a dark blue background with faint writing and a silhouette of a man's face in the background.

THE 2025 AWARD WINNER

The Professor of Early Modern Literature and Culture and Pepys expert, Kate Loveman, has won the 2025 Samuel Pepys Award for her book, The Strange History of Samuel Pepys's Diary (Cambridge University Press, 2025).

The judges also listed the following two entries as highly commended:

Alice Hunt: Republic: Britain's Revolutionary Decade (Faber & Faber, 2024)

Henry Reece: The Fall. The Last Days of the English Republic (Yale University Press, 2024)

Previous winners

2023 Simon Thurley: Palaces of Revolution: Life, Death and Art at the Stuart Court
2021 Hugh Aldersey-Williams: Dutch Light: Christiaan Huygens and the Making of Science in Europe
2019 David Como: Radical Parliamentarians and the English Civil War
2017 John Walter: Covenanting Citizens: The Protestant Oath and Popular Political Culture in the English Revolution
2015 Paul Slack: The Invention of Improvement: Information and Material Progress in Seventeenth-Century England
2013 Henry Reece: The Army in Cromwellian England 1649 – 1660
2011 Michael Hunter: Boyle: Between God and Science
2009 David Davies: Pepys’s Navy: Ships, Men and Warfare 1649-1689
2007 John Adamson: The Noble Revolt
2005 Frances Harris: Transformations of Love
2003 Claire Tomalin: Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self

Judges:

Professor Eamon Duffy
Professor John Walter
Lady (Caroline) Sandwich
Sir David Latham
Margaret Willes

Trustees:

Paul Gray (Chairman & Secretary)
Paul Campion (Treasurer)
Sir David Latham
Robin O’Neill

Samuel Pepys Award Trust, Registered Charity no 1089570