The Time Traveller's Guide to Restoration Britain 1660-1700

The past is a foreign country: this is your guidebook.

If you could travel back into the past, the period from 1660 to 1700 would make one of the most exciting destinations in history. Samuel Pepys and the Great Fire of London; bawdy comedy and the libertine court of Charles II; Christopher Wren in architecture, Henry Purcell in music and Isaac Newton in science — The Civil War is over and a magnificent new era has begun.

But what was life really like in Restoration Britain? What would you wear, where would you stay and what would you eat? How much should you pay for one of those elaborate wigs? Should you trust a physician who advises you to drink fresh cow’s urine to cure your gout? And why are you unlikely to get a fair trial in court?

Although the Restoration set out to return peace and order to Britain after the upheaval created by the civil wars and Cromwell’s Commonwealth, these were truly revolutionary decades. Rapid change in all areas of life made people question long-held views and beliefs. Most of all, this is a time when religion and superstition were beginning to give way to a rational and scientific outlook on the world.

This third volume in the bestselling series of Time Traveller’s Guides tells you everything you’d need to know as a prospective traveller to seventeenth-century Britain.