I’ve always had an interest in the history of medicine and it never ceases to amaze me how anybody ever survived at all! I found these chapters quite boring in comparison to the rest of the book, although I did enjoy learning about a typical day in a 17th century school – and I was fascinated by the description of the operation Pepys had to remove a stone from his bladder. The first few chapters deal with Pepys’ childhood and early life (pre-diary) and understandably we don’t have a lot of information regarding this period of his life – we can only speculate about what Pepys may or may not have done. I wasn’t sure whether not having read the diaries would cause problems with my understanding of the biography, but luckily it didn’t seem to matter – in fact, it might actually be best to read the biography first as it helps to put the diaries in context. I haven’t actually read the diaries of Samuel Pepys yet but would certainly like to read them at some point in the future. Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self is a long and comprehensive biography of an important historical figure, most famous for the diaries he kept during the 17th century. I have heard a lot of praise for Claire Tomalin’s biographies, so I had high hopes for this one. As you may have noticed, I don’t often read non-fiction (a big clue can be found in my blog name) but this is something I’d like to change.
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