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New Statesman
16-07-2025
- General
- New Statesman
Samuel Pepy's diaries of a somebody
The creation of a national icon in this country is a many-faceted business. Sometimes it happens rapidly, in the midst of crisis – Nelson, Churchill. Sometimes it is a matter of steady, incremental reputation, a figure whose stature has grown unstoppably and is acknowledged even outside national boundaries – Shakespeare, Milton, Dickens. And sometimes it happens almost arbitrarily, when a person is recognised as embodying something that is imagined to be quintessentially British or (more usually) English. Some historical figure captures the imagination; their actual achievement may be small or great, but they somehow encourage the feeling that only here would a character like this emerge – Dr Johnson, perhaps, or Florence Nightingale; the historical equivalent of a national treasure. It is hard to deny Samuel Pepys's role as a minor national icon of this sort. A professional civil servant, holding a highly responsible position in the Admiralty under Charles II and his successor James II, he was also an enthusiastic amateur musician and a passionate collector of books, whose wonderfully eclectic library remains a jewel in the crown of his old Cambridge college, Magdalene. He might have been surprised to be remembered less for his labours as a dedicated and highly effective naval administrator than for the diary he kept between 1660 and 1669; but it is undoubtedly the latter that has established his role as 'treasurable'. What most readers know or think they know about his diary is its charm – quaint period phrases ('Up betimes', 'And so to bed', and all the rest), sparkling vignettes of 'real life' in the 17th century, what it felt like to witness the events of the textbooks as they happened – not least the Great Fire of London. Of course, there is also the rather problematic brand of charm conveyed for a certain kind of male reader in Pepys's knowing salaciousness, the rueful chuckles of a not very successful sensualist and henpecked husband. Kate Loveman's excellent book does not set out to rob Pepys of his charm – but she gives us a range of tools for interrogating it (and our responses to it), so that we can offset the effects of a long history of selective and rather superficial reading. As she shows, some of the most familiar phrases owe their frequency in the diary to the fact that they are very easy to write in the distinctive form of shorthand he employs. But mention of this is a reminder that until 1825 virtually no one had read the diary. Pepys was remembered gratefully at Magdalene; his reputation in the Navy had survived. But what made the difference, and set Pepys on the road to being an icon, was a confluence of factors in the early-19th century: a new interest in first-hand historical testimony, a desire on the part of both the college and the Pepys family to do better justice to his memory in this new climate of antiquarian enthusiasm, and the crucial decision by the Grenville family (the then master of Magdalene was a close relative) to pay for a full transcription of the diary by an expert who identified Pepys's 'code' as based on a pattern in a manual that Pepys had thoughtfully included in his library. The history of subsequent editions in the 19th century is complicated, though Loveman lays it out with great clarity. Initially the Grenville and Neville families retained close control of the publication process, with Richard Neville, Lord Braybrooke, overseeing the first published selection of material. It found a receptive audience, and demand grew for further extracts – especially as rumours began to circulate that what had been omitted in the published version included some material that might not sit too well with the editor's portrait of Pepys as a model of dutiful virtue. Eventually, Henry Wheatley in the 1890s produced nine volumes of selections, which would serve as the received text for many decades; it was an edition that provided far more space to display Pepys as a comic character, including much of the rather Pooterish material about minor domestic troubles and assorted purchases – but not the sexually explicit passages. Loveman stresses that the text from which all 19th-century editors worked was the transcript made by John Smith for the first edition; no one revisited the encoded text until the next major round of interest in the later 20th century. Robert Latham, of Magdalene, and William Matthews, an expert in shorthand, produced the definitive modern edition between 1970 and 1983, working from the originals, correcting earlier errors or amendments and restoring omissions. They decided, with the college's approval (supported, in a letter of rather acerbic common sense, by CS Lewis) that the censorship of Pepys's 'explicit' passages was indefensible; and so at last readers were able to make their own judgements on the author's morality. Loveman persuasively shows that the Pepys of popular imagination between 1825 and 1970 was, to a significant extent, a creation of his editors, who in turn depended not on the primary text but on a transcription that they at times felt free to tinker with in the cause of clarity or decency (as in Pepys's account of his almighty hangover the morning after Charles II's coronation). This is the Pepys of popular imagination, extracted in assorted books, summarised in schoolbooks, dramatised on stage (JB Fagan's And So to Bed of 1926 is still occasionally revived as a musical) and, later, television screens. And Loveman has a brilliant chapter on the popularity of Pepys, and of pastiche Pepysian diaries in the press, during the Second World War. The picture of the Ordinary Englishman – going about his business in times of upheaval and crisis, often absurd but essentially decent, brave and amusingly stoical – rang a good many bells. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe The publication of the full text did not by any means overturn this picture, but it lit a slow fuse. It is harder now to see Pepys's sexual adventures as a bit of high-spirited naughtiness. He was clearly a pest and at worst a predator. Loveman reminds us that the female servants who had to put up with his groping were what we should unequivocally call children, just on the edge of puberty. Some of his accounts of escapades with adult women amount to admissions of rape, and his willingness to grant professional favours in return for the sexual compliance of other men's spouses is a nasty strand in several bits of the text. Loveman does not demonise Pepys, but she asks us to notice what icon construction can encourage us not to see, and to remember not only a bright, lively, sometimes slightly absurd social companion, but a series of young women, bewildered, frightened, resentful, for whom their employer's 'kindness' – Pepys's own term for his unwanted attentions – was not a matter for jocularity. Predictably, Pepys's involvement with enslaved persons also comes into focus here. The number of public figures and national institutions not in some way complicit in enslavement in the late-17th century is vanishingly small. And while Pepys was not a major profiteer from the trade, the evidence makes it plain that in the 1670s he had at least one enslaved young man in his service. Loveman discusses with care and insight what Pepys has to say about such persons, noting how the 'ownership' of an enslaved person had become a very clear marker of social status. The presence in a household even of a non-enslaved black person made an unmissable statement, and Pepys was obviously very happy to make use on occasion of other people's black servants, enslaved or otherwise, to reinforce his social capital. Nothing suggests that he had any qualms at all about the trade and its effects. Loveman is not inviting us to judge and cancel, but rather to follow through consistently what she sees as explaining the popularity of the diary's earliest editions. People were beginning to do history differently in the 1820s; they were more interested than hitherto in what it had felt like to be alive in another age. And Pepys himself, in leaving his diary alongside his other literary bequests, seems, so Loveman suggests, to have anticipated this. He records things, he tells us, as evidence of what people were talking about, enjoying, or fearing. The abiding significance of what he writes turns out to be just that. Reading the diary with the challenges of Loveman's closing chapter in mind is to be forced to imagine a world and a sensibility in which a moderately generous and easy-going man could instinctively have seen the slave trade first in terms of its contribution to luxury and assured social leverage – a world in which sexual consent could be assumed or ignored by a partner of higher status. Pepys, in other words, succeeds brilliantly in doing just what he says he is doing, offering a sense of 'what it's like', the irony being that the success is in proportion to the unselfconsciousness of what is written. And we also learn what his editors were unselfconsciously assuming about what was needed in a reassuring national icon – and what they either failed to see as flaws, or did see and persuaded themselves to pretend they hadn't. The problem with the past is not that it is a foreign country. It is that it is both strange and all too recognisable. A book like Pepys's diary is significant not because it provides a consoling idyll about salt-of-the-earth Ordinary Englishmen getting on with things in much the same way as the ordinary English Reader of today; nor because it uncovers a vicious pre-modern barbarism about women and racial others that we have learned to reject. It is because it reminds us that we look at the past – of a culture or an individual – and really recognise and warm to some things, and then encounter an absolute moral brick wall with others. Pepys's geniality and gossipy vigour, the evident liking and indulgence of his contemporaries, do not remove the shadows. Shadows are what happens in a three-dimensional world – not everything is clear and continuous. Theologically speaking, icons are meant not to be three-dimensional (they have to open up to a depth that is not human). Non-theological icons are a problem because of what they encourage us not to see in terms of shadows, literal and metaphorical. If we shrink the three-dimensionality of the past for the sake of an iconic smoothness, we may shrink the present too. We are still not out of the shadows. That is why we both recognise – even like – Pepys and also worry about his blind spots. We too may still be in the process of moral maturing. If one were to read an unselfconscious diary of 2025 a century from now, it would be every bit as uncomfortable (if we are still reading by that point). Kate Loveman has written a book that knows exactly what it is about. It is written with complete clarity, it is organised intelligibly, and it keeps us turning the pages with its skilful and thorough storytelling, while leaving us with some searching unfinished business. At Magdalene College, we still drink to the Immortal Memory of Samuel Pepys once a year. I don't think Loveman would want this to stop, but she would want us to remember a rather less two-dimensional figure than we have sometimes become used to. The Strange History of Samuel Pepys's Diary Kate Loveman Cambridge University Press, 254pp, £22 Related
Sky News AU
17-06-2025
- Sky News AU
About 796 dead babies expected to be found hidden in septic tank at unwed mothers' home run by nuns in Tuam, Ireland
Excavation has begun on a septic tank at a site in Ireland that authorities believe contains the remains of nearly 800 dead babies and children who died at a home for unwed mothers run by Catholic nuns. Many of the infant remains are feared to have been dumped in the cesspool known as 'the pit' at the former institution in the small town of Tuam, County Galway, local historian Catherine Corless told Sky News. In total, 798 children died at the home between 1925 and its closure in 1961, of which just two were buried in a nearby cemetery, Corless' research found. The other 796 children's remains are believed to be under the site of the Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home, which was demolished in 1971 and is now surrounded by a modern apartment complex. Bon Secours, known locally as The Home, was a maternity home for unmarried mothers and their children, run by a religious order of Catholic nuns. Unmarried pregnant women would be sent to the home to give birth and would be interned for a year to do unpaid work. They were separated from their newborn children, who would be raised by the nuns until they were adopted, often without the consent of their families. The full scale of the tragedy at Bon Secours was only uncovered in 2014 thanks to Corless's findings. Now, finally, more than a decade on, a team of investigators began their forensic investigation this week. It is expected to take up to two years to identify the remains of the infants and give them a dignified reburial and offer some degree of closure to survivors. 'I don't care if it's a thimbleful, as they tell me there wouldn't be much remains left; at six months old, it's mainly cartilage more than bone,' Annette McKay, whose sister is believed to be one of the 798 victims, told Sky News. Her mother, Margaret 'Maggie' O'Connor gave birth to a baby, Mary Margaret, at the home after she was raped at the age of 17. The girl died six months later, and her mother only found out when a nun told her. 'She was pegging washing out and a nun came up behind her and said 'the child of your sin is dead,'' said Annette, who now lives in the UK. Bon Secours was just one institution that made up a network of oppression in Ireland, the true extent of which has only been revealed in recent years. Mothers at Bon Secours who 'reoffended' by having more children out of wedlock would be sent to Magdalene laundries, the infamous Irish institutions for so-called 'fallen women,' usually run by Catholic orders but quietly supported by the state. Originally the term 'fallen women' was applied mostly to sex workers, but the Magdalene laundries would come to take in 'seduced' women, victims of rape and incest, and female orphans or children abandoned or abused by their families. The last of the Magdalene laundries only closed their doors in the 1990s. Ireland's government issued a formal state apology in 2014 and, in 2022, a compensation scheme was set up which has so far paid out the equivalent of $32.7 million to 814 survivors. The religious orders that operated many of the laundries have rejected appeals from victims and Ireland's Justice Minister to contribute to the program. Originally published as About 796 dead babies expected to be found hidden in septic tank at unwed mothers' home run by nuns in Tuam, Ireland
The Irish Sun
03-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Irish Sun
‘Heartbreaking to watch' – RTE viewers left stunned by ‘powerful' Housewife of the Year documentary
RTE viewers were left stunned after watching the "powerful" and "heartbreaking" Housewife of the Year documentary. The documentary, directed by award-winning filmmaker Ciaran Cassidy, had its Irish TV premiere on 2 Housewife of the Year had its Irish TV premiere on RTE One last night Credit: Instagram 2 The documentary sparked a strong reaction from RTE viewers Credit: Instagram It looked back at the "shocking" Housewife of the Year competition, which ran from 1968 to 1995. The annual contest saw women from across the country compete for the title live on national television. The competition celebrated "cookery, nurturing, and basic household management skills" - but what was shown on screens didn't always reflect the reality of life for Irish women at the time. The read more on RTE Former contestants told the story of a resilient generation of women and how they changed a country. Many recalled their direct experiences of marriage bars, lack of contraception, Magdalene laundries, financial vulnerability, boredom and shame, all while being contestants in the competition. From 1982 onwards, the competition aired on RTE and featured not just the contest itself but also footage of the women at home. The documentary has sparked a strong reaction from RTE viewers as many took to READ MORE ON THE IRISH SUN Sylvia said: "It's sad and frustrating, upsetting, limiting, suppressive for a generation who had to stay at home and look after the family." Keith wrote: "What an awful country we lived in back then, shocking." 'That's when panic set in' - Watch Camogie ace & gold medallist's scary cliff moment on Death Road in RTE's Uncharted Marc commented: "Watching Housewife of the Year. Incredibly well put together Irish documentary. Is it shocking? I'd say infuriating." 'INCREDIBLE WOMEN' Grace said: "Housewife of the Year was a masterpiece of contextualisation - such a clever way to present Ireland of the time. "These diverse women's stories a microcosm of Irish society. So glad they got the opportunity to share their lived experiences since." Joanne wrote: "Had the privilege of seeing this at the Toronto Irish Film Festival this winter. "Such a powerful, sobering, film. More power to these incredible women. To all women." Another added: "Heartbreaking to watch these stories being told. What some of these women have been put through."
Global News
30-04-2025
- Global News
Neighbours worry after Vancouver assault suspect released to their building
Residents of a South Vancouver housing co-op say they're concerned the suspect in the random attack of a tourist on the city's seawall is being released to live in their building. Meanwhile, others, including the suspect's family, are wondering why he was released from custody following an alleged domestic violence incident two days before the assault, when they say he needed help for his mental illness. 'If he can't go home to his wife and children, why can he come here where there are children?' asked housing co-op resident Roxanne Sukhan. 2:09 Family of man accused in Downtown Vancouver stranger attack speaks Sukhan lives on the same floor of the building as assault suspect Peterhans Nungu's mother, Nungu Magdalene. Story continues below advertisement Magdalene has mobility challenges, and Sukhan is concerned she will not be supported in the court-ordered decision for her 34-year-old son to live with her under strict conditions, including 24/7 house arrest. 'I get the balance, you don't want to lock everyone up,' said Sukhan. 'If he decided to stop taking his medications and he became belligerent, how will she manage that? How is she going to make him do anything?' Magdalene told Global News that on April 13, Nungu, who was being treated in the community as an outpatient after experiencing a mental health crisis a year earlier, was agitated and off his medications while at home with his wife and three children. She said his family called police for help. Get breaking National news For news impacting Canada and around the world, sign up for breaking news alerts delivered directly to you when they happen. Sign up for breaking National newsletter Sign Up By providing your email address, you have read and agree to Global News' Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy The Surrey Police Service said the RCMP Surrey Provincial Operations Support Unit attended a residence regarding threats between a man and a woman. Nungu was arrested and charged with uttering threats to cause death or bodily harm and damage property, as well as with assaulting a peace officer. He was released from custody on April 14 on six conditions – including no contact with two alleged victims, and staying away from his home in Surrey. 'He's supposed to be in the hospital not in the jail,' Magdalene told Global News in an interview on Thursday. 'He was released and thrown to the streets with a restriction not to go to his house.' Story continues below advertisement Hours later, Nungu was arrested again and charged with assault causing bodily harm after a Toronto woman was attacked on the Vancouver seawall near Stanley Park just after midnight on April 15. 'We are all devastated,' Magdalene said. 'We are all broken down mentally.' 2:06 Tourist beaten in alleged random attack in Downtown Vancouver Surrey-Cloverdale Conservative MLA Elenore Sturko, who serves as B.C.'s opposition public safety critic, wonders if opportunities to intervene were missed – given the family's indications that Nungu was in a mental health crisis and no longer taking medications for his mental illness. 'It certainly begs the question why in the first instance wasn't a mental assessment taken then,' Sturko told Global News Tuesday. 'Some people fall through the cracks, unfortunately,' said Amanda Butler, an assistant professor with SFU's criminology department. Story continues below advertisement Butler told Global News the options for judges in cases like this are limited. 'The Mental Health Act is a health system law, it's not a criminal justice system tool,' she said in an interview on Tuesday. Butler said judges can ask for an accused to undergo a psychiatric assessment at a bail hearing but it's quite rare, and almost exclusively occurs in cases where a person may not be fit to stand trial or is a potential candidate for an application to be declared not criminally responsible by way of a mental disorder (NCRMD). 2:25 More details into Vancouver Lapu Lapu Day suspect's mental state The vast majority of people with mental illnesses will go through the regular court system Butler said, and she would love to see more comprehensive psych assessments at the bail stage of the criminal justice system. Story continues below advertisement She added that while judges can include conditions related to mental health in their release orders, for example, to attend counselling, they cannot force an involuntary hospitalization under the Mental Health Act. 'The reality is that for a very, very small portion of people who have a mental illness, their mental health issues intersect with their criminal justice needs and we don't have great intersection between those systems,' Butler said. Magdalene said she was surprised to get a call on the morning of April 15 alerting her that her son was in jail again when she thought he would have been taken to the hospital for help. 'Now I'm so devastated about all what happened because he was not taken at the right time to the mental hospital,' Magdalene told Global News Thursday. In a recent TikTok video, the tourist who Nungu is accused of assaulting said she hopes he adheres to his strict bail conditions and gets the resources and support he needs. 'And I hope that no one else is harmed, including his own family,' she stated.
Global News
25-04-2025
- Global News
Family of accused tourist seawall attacker say they are ‘devastated' by events
The mother of the suspect in a random attack on a tourist in Vancouver told Global News that the family is devastated to hear what happened. The victim was visiting from Toronto when she said she was randomly attacked by a man on the seawall on April 15. Peterhans Jalo Nungu was charged with assault causing bodily harm and was released on Wednesday on 10 conditions including reporting to his bail supervisor within one day of his release, he must live at a home in South Vancouver under house arrest and can only leave for court or medical appointments, he cannot have any contact with the victim, he cannot posses weapons, consume drugs or alcohol and he must attend psychiatric intake assessment or treatment program to forensic psychiatric services. His mother, Nungu Magdalene, told Global News that her son was in a 'mentally ill condition' on Sunday, April 13, and they called the police to help take him to the hospital. Story continues below advertisement Surrey Police Service confirmed that they were called on April 13 to a home in Surrey for reports of a man threatening a woman. The RCMP Surrey Provincial Operations Support Unit attended, and Nungu was arrested and charged with assaulting a peace officer, uttering threats and uttering threats to damage property, but his mother said her son was experiencing a mental health episode and needed help. 2:06 Tourist beaten in alleged random attack in Downtown Vancouver Magdalene said the family had asked that he be taken to the hospital to be treated for mental health, and they were shocked to learn he had been taken to jail. Get breaking National news For news impacting Canada and around the world, sign up for breaking news alerts delivered directly to you when they happen. Sign up for breaking National newsletter Sign Up By providing your email address, you have read and agree to Global News' Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy 'He was acting because of his case, his situation, and that's why we needed help. And the help was given in the wrong way, and look at where we are now,' she said. Story continues below advertisement 'He was supposed to be taken to the hospital, that's why we call(ed) for help.' Magdalene said that her son suffered a mental health crisis a year ago, but he was getting help and treatment. However, he suffered a setback recently, which led to the recent events. 'We are so psychologically troubled, traumatized, we couldn't sleep since that Saturday, we are all suffering from anxiety,' Magdalene said. She added that her son is in a psychiatric hospital now. B.C. Premier David Eby was asked about the most recent attack, on April 15, and said that while he didn't know all the details, he found the incident 'deeply disturbing.' 'Obviously serious concerns about (the) mental health of the individual,' Eby said. 'I'm very hopeful there will be interventions to ensure this individual does not repeat this cycle of violence.' Magdalene said she wants her son to get the help he needs and deserves, and said he was released to a mental health hospital on Wednesday, where he remains. 'I am devastated about what has happened to all the parties who are concerned,' she said. Story continues below advertisement 'And all our mental health and our own anxiety, we are all devastated. We are all broken down mentally.'
