The author has performed nearly forensic new translations of Pepys’s diary, drilling down especially on the material in foreign languages ... The resulting book, nearly 400 pages, is a sobering document. De la Bédoyère focuses almost entirely on his subject’s sex life, and he delivers, in Pepys’s own words, sorry account after sorry account. He is as relentless as Inspector Javert. It’s difficult to read ... Movingly, and to his credit, de la Bédoyère works to name, and to humanize, many of the women Pepys abused.
A painstaking transcription and translation of all the 'naughty bits' that previous editors were reluctant to print or keen to gloss over ... Close in spirit to Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Confessions, composed a century after Pepys’s diary ... This is certainly Pepys as never seen before: much more sinister and violent ... Skilled, scholarly.
An extraordinarily detailed snapshot of life seen through the eyes of a man for whom no day was complete unless he had managed to fondle at least one woman’s “mameles” (breasts) on his way to or from work ... While Pepys’s dark side has long been known, it is something else to be confronted with the evidence laid out quite so starkly ... This newly explicit view of Pepys does not negate the continuing value of his diary – which remains a magnificent historical resource – but from now on it will be impossible to go to it in a state of innocence, let alone denial.
Bédoyère’s focus on Pepys’s unsavoury behaviour ultimately does the diarist no favours; his sexual exploits are much easier to stomach in wider-ranging editions, where they form just part of the rich tapestry of his undeniably interesting life. Nevertheless, this portrait of a deeply flawed man enhances our understanding of one of England’s great diarists — even as it forces us to confront the fact that even interesting and extremely likeable people can behave very unpleasantly behind closed doors.
This version of Pepys’s diaries restores many of the passages cut by editors when they were initially published in 1825. De la Bedoyère’s edition feels rough and raw while also retaining the diaries’ profound importance as historical artifact ... Readers may blush while reading passages from Pepys’s unexpurgated diaries but will also gain new insights into the psychology of the man.
De la Bédoyère’s narration often merely summarizes what readers can see for themselves in the excerpts ... The explicit sex scenes in English that are the big selling point quickly become tedious ... As the sole topic, it would be better served by a short article ... More than you want to know.
A darkly fascinating new transcription of the diaries of Samuel Pepys ... Shockingly candid ... This unique work of scholarship conjures from the past a captivating if wretched figure.
