How does Jeremiah Mount, a dealer in pornography and a ruined farmer'

son, come to be the lover of the Duchess of Albemarle and the colleague of the great Samuel Pepys? In Pepys Diary, Jem plays a shadowy role but in Jem's own memoirs Sam looms large. Friends and drinking partners at first, they become vicious rivals for fame, power and women. In his struggle to survive and triumph over his adversary in a rackety world, Jenm

stumbles into many trades: chemist, butler, soldier, secretary and, now and then, lover. This newly discovered autobiography- with its disconcerting echoes of our own time takes its dubious hero from the shaky days of Cromwellian England, through the unbuttoned license of the Restoration to the panic of Monmouth's Rebellion and the Jamaica sugar boom.