A review by avrilhj
The Diary of Samuel Pepys by Samuel Pepys

5.0

Samuel Pepys sexually assaulted every woman he could - and wrote about his attempts in his diary, though he did put them into a code of French, Spanish and Italian words. When his wife caught him fondling one of their servants and sent her away, Pepys wrote that he wished he could take ‘her maidenhead’ and in fact tried to arrange meetings with her, despite the fact that his wife refused to allow him to roam London alone and did her best to make sure he was always accompanied. He’s just dreadful, and yet after reading over 1000 pages of his diary I feel a great deal of affection for him. If he lived today I’d want him to be arrested and imprisoned, but I never wanted to put his diary down in disgust. I can’t explain it. Maybe it’s because reading the diary I have been forced to see the world through his eyes? At any rate, I’ve had so much fun reading it.