Boswell’s 1762-63 London journals were his training ground for the work that would come to define him. They are also fascinating in their own right: he was the Pepys of the 18th century. Born in August 1740, Boswell’s father was Lord Auchinleck, a Scottish judge. He studied at Edinburgh and Glasgow (where he heard Adam Smith lecture) before escaping to London, where he lived in Downing Street. He spent most of 1762 trying to obtain a comfortable commission in the Army – an unlikely destination just as the Seven Years War was ending and regiments were being disbanded. (His father wanted him to study law instead.) His journal painfully records his sucking up to influential aristocrats, who humour him but are little help.