In 1762 the 22-year-old James Boswell left Edinburgh to conquer London. His journal, published for the first time only in 1950, is an intimate and exhilarating account of the momentous nine months he spent exploring the high and low life of 18th-century London. It describes Boswell's growing friendship with the great Dr Johnson (later to be immortalized in Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson), the taverns, playhouses and coffee houses they frequented, and the men and women Boswell befriended, such as the poet James MacPherson and the actor David Garrick.