The Time Traveller’s Guide to Restoration Britain

by Ian Mortimer 464pp, Bodley Head, £20, ebook £9.99

Mortimer composes his vivid mosaic of life between 1660 and 1700 through the fancied experience of a time traveller, as he did in his guides to the medieval and Elizabethan periods. He doesn’t press too relentlessly the plight of the poor traveller from our times to those, but from the moment of waking on a chilly morn (during the Little Ice Age of the 17th century, when the Thames froze for two months) the whole day is full of questions: how to dress, how to get around, what time breakfast is.