Painting of the St Bartholomew's Day Massacre
Credit: Francois Dubois
The journals and scrapbooks of Pierre de L'Estoile have for generations provided a vivid picture of France in a time of religious upheaval. Now Cambridge historian Tom Hamilton has written the first book devoted to the life of L'Estoile as a diarist, collector and man about town. Hamilton's book examines a life both ordinary and extraordinary. He uses the diarist's writing and collecting to rethink the complex flavours and textures of a world disrupted by religious and political conflict. Pierre de L'Estoile has been described as France's Samuel Pepys. Like Pepys, he lived in singularly interesting times. Like Pepys, he documented in his journals both the inner world of his household and the wider world of politics and gossip.
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