![Portrait of Pepys, after John Hayls. The Diary for 17 March 1666 reads: ‘This day I begin to sit [for Hayls], and he will make me, I think, a very fine picture.... I sit to have it full of shadows, and do almost break my neck looking over my shoulder to make the posture for him to work by.’](https://www.spectator.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/pepys1.jpg?w=410&h=275&crop=1)
Lust for life
We all know about Samuel Pepys witnessing the Great Fire in his Diaries, but how many have read the definitive…
What a saga!
Hugh Walpole, now almost forgotten, was a literary giant. Descended from the younger brother of the 18th-century prime minister Robert…
In dialogue with the novel
This year marks the fourth Granta ‘Best of Young British novelists’, begun in 1983, but it is the first time…
