Everyone knows Pepys — but how many have actually read him? The magnificent edition of the full diary will probably cost £50 when it is complete. But Mr Hearsey's book enables the reader `to make the delightful acquaintance of Pepys on terms that he can afford. The first two chapters introduce the diarist (who was born in 1633 and died in 1703) and the last covers the years after 1669, when the diary ends. The rest of the book, leaning heavily on the words of the diary itself, covers the momentous decade of the 1660s —— the Restoration of Charles ll, the activities of his pleasure—living court, the Plague, the Great Fire of London, the arrival of a hostile Dutch fleet in the very mouth of the River Medway, and the recurring national financial crises. In 1660 Pepys was made Clerk of the Acts to the Navy Board, and made a great success of his position by his vigour and energy — he was often at his desk at 4 a.m. His zeal for reform was conspicuous when he was appointed, no system for the organisation of the Navy existed: before he died, he had laid the foundations for the Civil Service itself. But beyond this, there is-the way in which the diary reveals feelings ’which most people conceal from themselves, and nearly all men from others’. His illicit loves, his mild satisfaction at the progress of his career, even the after effects of his drinking bouts — he himself records all these more effectively than any outsider could hope to do. Above all, the diary is natural and spontaneous; there is no striving after the right word; and it is this simplicity, combined with the absorbing interest of the events of the period, that gives Mr Hearsey’s distillation of Pepys' story its great interest and appeal.

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