What I've dedicated my life to is revenge.

A brand new drama based on the best-selling novel.

They think they're better than us.

Who do you think you are?

I'm going to prove to them that they're wrong.

She's punishing me.

You destroyed my family.

I will not rest until I've destroyed yours.

A Woman of Substance on Channel 4 starts tonight at 9.

... A Woman of Substance on Channel 4 starts tonight at 9.

Sunday, 28th of November.

I breakfasted with Mr. Douglas.

I went to St. James's church and heard service and a good sermon on,

by what means shall a young man learn to order his ways, in which the advantages of early piety were well displayed.

What a curious, inconsistent thing is the mind of man.

In the midst of divine service, I was laying plans for having women.

And yet I had the most sincere feelings of religion.

So that was James Boswell, writing in his journal six months before his fateful meeting with Samuel Johnson, the hero of this story in Thomas Davis's bookshop. So Boswell had begun this great journal, one of the most

glittering, scintillating records of life in the 18th century ever written, arguably the most

complete record of what it's like to live in the 18th

century. He'd begun this enormous project two weeks earlier. But who was this young man

who was sitting in church having all these fantasies about having women during the sermon of all

...