Richard Ollard

Listing page content here The title of this well edited and interesting book is misleading. First it suggests a complete collection, which would, if it were ever accomplished, require several volumes. Second, the letters, though mostly written by Pepys, include a considerable number of those written to him and even occasional papers which are not letters at all but throw light on incidents that were important to his career. These are all well chosen and their annotation makes their significance clear to the reader who is not already a knowledgeable Pepysian.Pepys’s letters, though always characteristic and generally well expressed, have not the piercing quality of the Diary.

The subtitle of this large history, ‘How the British Navy Shaped the Modern World’, is a generous tribute from the American professor who wrote it. Based on very wide reading of secondary sources, the author has little new to say in a book which opens with Drake and closes with the Falklands campaign. He has, however, very much his own point of view and he supports it by notable narrative gifts. Ready always to give individuals credit and to disclose their personal idiosyncrasies, he does not hesitate to record the shortcomings or to criticise the misjudgments of those whom he admires.

It is hard to overpraise this admirable - indeed one would have thought impossible - account of the history of England, Scotland and Ireland from the accession of Charles I to the restoration of his son Charles II. The great masters of English 17th-century historiography, S. R. Gardiner and Sir Charles Firth, between them took nearly 30 volumes and even then did not quite make it to the finish.