Confessions of Samuel Pepys. His Private Revelations (2025)

For the 200th anniversary of the first publication of Samuel Pepys's diary, news of my new book, The Confessions of Samuel Pepys. His Private Revelations (on Amazon at https://shorturl.at/GshDx). During the diary period Pepys (1633-1703) was Clerk of the Acts at the Navy Office, and he rose to be Secretary of the Admiralty later. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society and subsequently its President.

This covers all the passages concerning Pepys's tempestuous private life and chronic infidelities which have been in the past either been omitted from the diary or glossed over, creating a falsified image of the diarist's own testimony of his life. The passaeges are all newly transcribed by myself from the original shorthand diary text, the first for half a century and provide the first ever full publication, analysis, and translation of the polyglot sections ever produced since Pepys wrote the diary in the 1660s. The book features a detailed Introduction and Epilogue, ongoing commentary throughout the nine years and five months of the diary (1660-9), and Glossaries of People and Places, and the Polyglot.

I did make a mistake in the video: the 1623 Spanish dictionary Pepys owned was by Richard Percivale, not John. I used to know someone of that name at university, hence the slip.