The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Volume I

[Editors' Note: The following is a combined review of THE DIARY OF SAMUEL PEPYS, Vols. 1-3.]--Not many listeners are so thrilled by the minutiae of seventeenth-century English life that they will want to devote more than 115 hours to listening to this classic journal--but those who stick it out will be well rewarded. Narrator Leighton Pugh's portrayal of Pepys is sometimes confiding, sometimes whiny, sometimes meditative about religion and politics, but always human. For 10 years, while Pepys was on the margins of the great actions of his time, he recorded every day's events. From the discovery of a new public toilet to the restoration of King Charles II and the Great Fire of London, Pepys wrote down what he saw, and Pugh keeps it all lively. David Timson ably reads the historical introductions to each year. D.M.H. © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine


Pepys's candid diaries are important for what they tell us about life in Restoration London, AND delightful reading, for the author had a lively mind, a keen eye, and a strong personality. Abridger Pearson Phillips has chosen the excerpts well for this volume. With admirable vigor, narrator Michael Maloney tries to give a sense of Pepys's development over the tumultuous decade that the secret journals cover. But he seems distracted, as if struggling with the seventeenth-century diction, and comes off a bit flat and awkward. Y.R. (c) AudioFile 2003, Portland, Maine