On the Thames towpath with Samuel Pepys

A handful of writers speak to us from the past with their lips pressed against our living ears – we feel their warm breath, smell it even. Often enough, I’ll be inexpertly toggling together my clothes when in the arch accents I attribute to Lord Byron a voice will lazily aspirate, “Ah! All this buttoning and unbuttoning … ” Or perhaps I’ll be all alone in an isolated house in winter, bereft of companionship, and I’ll pick up a volume of Montaigne&…