William Hickey, born in 1749 into Anglo-Irish gentry, lived through the height of the Georgian renaissance during the reign of George III. Although his profession was that of an attorney, his real passion in life was fast living. Especially, as a young man, partying, drinking, and women. Lots of women. The memoirs are very touching, because he constantly laments his bad behaviour, and especially the disappointment of his beloved father, but he simply can’t stop himself from “dissipation”; constantly falling in with the worst kind of company, and he can never turn down a professional lady. Some his excesses are hilariously funny, such as the time his sisters dressed him as a nun and then took him to a party where he became abominably drunk and raucous, while the wits around him tut-tutted at such bad behaviour from a lady of God. It’s a superb insight into the underside of Georgian London, and the life that could be had if one had a little money, the right friends, and avoided the ubiquitous STDs. Hickey, after several failed attempts, finally finds fortune practicing as an attorney in Bengal with the East India Company. He returns to London, where he spends the fortune over several years, then returns to India with his wife Charlotte on an 18 month voyage from hell, which features them nearly shipwrecked in a monsoon hurricane, and then captured by the French. It’s notable how large a part of the memoirs are devoted to life at sea. Poor Charlotte died soon after arriving in Calcutta, and Hickey then took up with an Indian women who later also died, this time from childbirth. He eventually retired at age 58 and returned to England where he settled quietly in Buckinghamshire for the next two decades until his death in 1830. He doesn’t comment much at all on Indian culture, and appears to take little interest in it, which is a shame. The Indian sections of the book are in many ways the least interesting. It’s the debauched living in London that’s the real treat, and that make this volume such a classic.