The Diary of Samuel Pepys: Volume I: 1660 - 1663

By: Samuel Pepys

Narrated by: Leighton Pugh, David Timson

The Diary of Samuel Pepys is one of the most entertaining documents in English history. Written between 1660 and 1669, as Pepys was establishing himself as a key administrator in the naval office, it is an intimate portrait of life in 17th-century England covering his professional and personal activities, including, famously, his love of music, theatre, food, wine and his peccadilloes. This Naxos AudioBooks production is the world premiere recording of the diary in its entirety; the result of many years of scholarship by Robert Latham (Magdalene College, Cambridge) and William Matthews (University of California). It has been divided into three volumes. Volume I covers the opening years of the Restoration and introduces us to many of the key characters - family, government and royalty. Pepys was there when Charles II returned to England, and he lived through those opening years of the Stuart monarchy, with its revenge on the regicides. He also recorded the reopening of theaters, and how he relaxed from the Puritan way of life.

©1983 Robert Latham (Magdalene College, Cambridge) and William Matthews (University of California) (P)2014 Naxos AudioBooks

Oh So Long

Any additional comments?

I thought I was being clever, wanting to listen to his diary in its entirety. I thought, "who are those wimps who read little short exceprts? I'm going to learn what it was really like to live then!" I think I made it through about 15 hours. Part 1 (of 4) alone is 35 hours long. Ugh. I can tell you with utmost certainty, that Mr. Pepys had a busy and interesting life, but the repetitive lists were too long for me.

Riveting

Excellently performed by Leighton Pugh. Incredibly interesting to step into 1660s England. It's amazing how much has stayed the same.

Judged for what it is, it's fantastic.

Ever read something from the distant past and wondered, 'did people really think and talk like that?' Mostly that seems very unlikely. Mostly people before the 19th century seem not to have interior lives as we would know them today. But here you have it; and, in the freaking 17th century. Yes, there's tedium. Yes, he says little about the most interesting things. But 42 hours of it (and that's just volume 1)? The very staccato of anodyne events creates a verisimilitude that you rarely get in any other form. More than that, it's a testimony to certain aspects of a universal human nature. He's petty and noble; obsessed and generous, unhinged and level headed. He's telling you about it and often without a lot of self awareness. That lack of artifice is illuminating. Because it is such a unedited testimony, you get all the stuff that anybody in any age would only reluctantly reveal. Shakespeare has only been dead for about 50 years. "The colonies" are still iffy propositions. The "enlightenment' is still off in the distance. To top it off, Pepys witnesses momentous events. He knows and speaks to what are to us historical figures. This is perspective on the distant past in a way that's really hard to find.

Excellent narration

I've been very impressed with the narrator's handling of the material. He makes what could have been a very dry listen come alive and gives Pepys an engaging personality (that is difficult for the listener to separate from the historical person).

This is actually a problem for me. I bought these books because I thought they'd be easy to fall asleep to. Instead, they tend to keep me awake!

can't get enough of this guy

love it. he's a real human being like me no more than me because he writes it all down and is curious and cynical and naive and love the guy from 350 years ago