Guy de la Bédoyère is a historian and archaeologist with numerous books to his credit. His specialist field is Roman Britain but he has published three books for Boydell on the 'other' seventeenth-century diarist, John Evelyn (1620-1706), including the widely-acclaimed Particular Friends. The Correspondence of Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn which features all the letters exchanged by the two men over a period of 38 years. He is well-known in the United Kingdom for his frequent television appearances on a variety of different subjects, and has copresented live archaeology programmes for both Channel 5 and Channel 4, and a family history series for UKTV History. Guy has degrees in History and Archaeology from Durham and London universities, and University College, London. He is married with four sons and lives in Lincolnshire.

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It surprises people when they learn that your book is the only edition of Pepys’s letters in print, and that it’s the first such collection for around 70 years. Why has his correspondence been so neglected in the past?

A very good question, and I have been wondering the same myself. It does seem that the scurrilous element of the Diary plus its references to the Great Fire have dominated interest in Pepys’s life. They have also taken a huge amount of work. The Latham and Matthews’ edition of the Diary is the work of a lifetime. Unlike the Diary though, the letters are widely dispersed and I don’t think that has helped.

Considering the extent of his correspondence, what were your criteria in selecting letters for the book?

I could easily have chosen three times as many letters, or created a completely different selection which would have been just as useful. I looked out letters that would cover as much of Pepys’s life as possible, as well as all his interests and reflect the range of correspondents he had, from pleading widows to the King. Wherever possible I included sequences in that correspondence. I also included a number of letters that have never been published before which I think have a special interest.

Do you have a particular favourite among the letters? Can you tell if Pepys had a favourite correspondent? Perhaps John Evelyn?

Two of my favourites are the letter from Pepys to William Bagwell and Captain John Tyrrell. The Bagwell letter of 7 January 1687 asks Bagwell to stop his wife hanging around Pepys’s office in the hope of securing her husband favours. Mrs Bagwell is known to Diary readers as one of Pepys’s amours, who had offered him sexual favours in return for her husband’s promotion. Twenty years on the middle-aged Pepys is embarrassed and ashamed by this reminder of his youthful indiscretions, and his attitude to a woman still trying to humiliate herself in her own middle years is revealing. The letter also led me to modern-day genealogical resources which have revealed Mrs Bagwell’s probable name.
The Tyrell letter of January 1684 is a wonderful window on the problems of debauched naval officers, as well as Pepys’s interest in his nephew’s own career. It’s both professional and personal.
Evelyn undoubtedly was one of Pepys’s favourite correspondents, but he had others like his friend Sir James Houblon. I’m especially tantalised by the letters to ‘Mrs Steward’ and Julia Shallcross. The latter I found mentioned in a 1930s sale catalogue and finally tracked down recently. They’re the only survivors of what was once a much more significant body of letters.

Tell us about the thirty previously unpublished letters that you have included – what is their history and why have they not appeared before?

The thirty extra letters come from a variety of sources. Some have been quoted from in books because they survive in one of the many Pepys archives. Others have been in private hands for generations, perhaps centuries, and have popped up in sale catalogues. One is a shorthand letter illustrated in an auction catalogue and I learned Pepys’s shorthand to transcribe it.

What do Pepys’s letters tell us about him – and his times – that his famous Diary does not?

The Diary covers only 9 years and 5 months of Pepys’s life. The letters cover 45 years, so by definition they include all sorts of events, personalities, experiences and interests that aren’t featured in the Diary. The style of the letters, and the study I have made of the Diary’s shorthand also show that the shorthand is responsible for much of the Diary’s written style, rather than Pepys’s personal literary idiosyncrasies.

A seemingly tireless worker, Pepys had a variety of interests and seems to have known all the great men of the period. Now known chiefly for his Diary, what do you think were his greatest achievements and can you imagine how he would like to have been remembered?

Pepys’s great achievement in his own time was as an administrator. For us his greatest achievement is as a witness to his own times. I think he would have been pleased to be remembered for the latter more than anything else. By which I mean I think he would be fascinated to know that his personality is more vivid to us than anyone else in the second half of the seventeenth century, a time in which the foundations of the modern world were established.

Pepys died in 1703, which means we are reading his letters well over 300 years after he wrote them – what would he have made of that?

Since Pepys was an inveterate accumulator of old documents, I think he would have appreciated it!

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