Daily entries from the 17th century London diary
Unfortunately, some people don’t know when to shut up. I’ve decided to ban “Hhomeboy” from posting on this site. I’m reluctant to do so, especially as he obviously has a great deal of knowledge to contribute. He has refused to restrict his relentless pomposity and snarkiness masquerading as advice. I’ve lost count of the number of people who’ve asked me to ban him before now and so I hope this doesn’t seem overly vindictive or authoritarian. He’ll no doubt take this as more “evidence” of my inability to take criticism, something that I hope will be news to all those whose welcome comments have benefited the site.
No method of banning is foolproof, but if he fails to keep away I will do my best to delete his annotations. For the record, no one else has come remotely close to being banned, so I hope this won’t make anyone else worried! And, please, do not post any gloating or personal comments below; we’ve had enough of unpleasant behaviour and I’d like to move on. Thanks.
| Tuesday 6 May 2003 | Housekeeping
Already this year we’ve had three Pepys exhibitions in London. Now the British Library has an exhibition running until 15 June. Their site has a brief blurb:
Samuel Pepys died on 26 May 1703.
To mark this tercentenary, there is a small exhibition of books and manuscripts relating to Pepys from its collections, focussing on Pepys as a naval administrator, on his close friendship with his fellow diarist, John Evelyn, and on the means by which both these famous diaries which transformed our knowledge of Stuart England first came to be published.
In the Entrance Hall, St Pancras building.
And in fact I’ve just noticed that the Samuel Pepys Club has a page listing more events.
7 comments | Permalink | Wednesday 7 May 2003 | Events
A while back Languagehat sent me a link to a site about handwriting in the 16th and 17th centuries. I set up a Background Info page for handwriting, but thought the site was interesting enough to point out here too.
Be the first to comment | Permalink | Tuesday 13 May 2003 | Housekeeping
Yesterday I altered the way the fonts on the site are defined, and wondered if anyone would notice. Todd did, so I thought I’d mention it here in case anyone else wonders why something’s different. Most people shouldn’t notice much difference, a few should notice some improvement, especially on small text and with browsers set to display text smaller than usual. I’ve tested it on most browsers on Windows and Mac OS X, but let me know if you have any problems.
5 comments | Permalink | Thursday 15 May 2003 | Housekeeping
Ed emailed me and wanted to ask everyone about their experiences of audio recordings of the diary. As this is currently the only place to discuss this kind of thing, it’s over to Ed:
I’d like to ask what people think about the recently released 4-CD set of selections from the Diary read by Michel Maloney (Amazon UK) as compared with the earlier 6 audio cassette set by Kenneth Branagh (Amazon US, UK). I find the Maloney reading to be (among other things) devoid of any sense of humanity whatsoever — and if SP was anything he was human. Branagh has plenty to answer for to be sure, but his reading of Pepys is not one of them. I don’t know who Maloney is but to me they picked the wrong guy. Too bad, as I had been looking forward to it since it was annouced late last year.
So, has anyone else heard these, or any other recordings? Any thoughts?
8 comments | Permalink | Monday 19 May 2003 | Pepys in the media
Keith kindly pointed out an article in the Times Literary Supplement by Ferdinand Mount, author of Jem (and Sam) (Amazon US, UK). It is mainly a review of London’s National Portrait Gallery Pepys exhibition but also has interesting things to say about Pepys and some of his associates. I fear the link may only work until Thursday though, so be quick…
2 comments | Permalink | Tuesday 27 May 2003 | Pepys in the media