Samuel Pepys Award Trust

The Samuel Pepys Award was established by the Club in 2001 as a biennial prize 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 designed by Philip Nathan in memory of Robert Latham, the co-editor of the definitive 11 volume edition of Pepys’s diary.

We welcome submissions from publishers and authors whose publications fit the criteria above.  The next Award will be made in 2025 for works published between 1 July 2023 and 30 June 2025.  Please contact Professor Will Pettigrew for further information: w.pettigrew@lancaster.ac.uk

The Award winner 2023:

The historian and heritage expert, Simon Thurley, has won the 2023 Samuel Pepys Award for his book, Palaces of Revolution: Life, Death, & Art at the Stuart Court (William Collins, 2021).

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

Jessie Childs, The Siege of Loyalty House: A Civil War Story, (Bodley Head, 2022)
Frank Kelsall and Timothy Walker, Nicholas Barbon: Developing London, 1667-1698, (London Topographical Society, 2022)
Tessa Murdoch, Europe Divided: Huguenot Refugee Art and Culture, (V&A, 2021)

Previous winners

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

Trustees

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

Judges

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

Samuel Pepys Award Trust, Registered Charity no 1089570