Books
|
John Aubrey: My Own Life
By Ruth Scurr "My Own Life is light, ingenious, inspiring, a book to reread and cherish. The vigour and spirit on every page would delight John Aubrey, that most individual of thinkers and writers, who has found a biographer of originality and wit. It is reverent, charming, poignant: it is made of the same ingredients as its subject." (Hilary Mantel) "Another writer of brief lives, Lytton Strachey, feared that in our modern civilization John Aubrey would 'never come into existence again'. But that is exactly what he does in Ruth Scurr's absorbing and imaginative biography. In these pages his purchase on posterity returns with all his ingenious visions and impulses. Scurr is no less a pioneer biographer than Aubrey himself." (Michael Holroyd) "Writing a biography of a biographer that doubles as an experimental analysis of biography itself is a formidable and astonishing achievement. That it is also profoundly affecting is what makes John Aubrey: My own life a triumph" (Stuart Kelly The Times Literary Supplement) "To me this book is a delight and…it is the one that I would take with me to a desert island" (David Aaronovitch The Times) "For me, the academic historian, Scurr’s experimental “act of scholarly imagination” has already modified significantly my own historical understanding" (Lisa Jardine The Financial Times) "[A] moving and delicate book" (Frances Wilson New Statesman) "Scurr’s judgment and scholarship in constructing Aubrey’s own account of events are so flawless that she allows us almost to forget that she is there" (Alexandra Harris The Guardian) "It is a testament to [Scurr’s] skill that you quickly stop thinking about technique and instead slip happily into the company of the character she has created. The wealth of research and the seams between imagination and reality disappear from view. This is truly selfless biography" (Daisy Hay, 5 stars Daily Telegraph) "A delightful read about the ebb and flow of thoughts in one extraordinary man’s mind" (Claire Harman Evening Standard) "Drawing on [Aubrey’s] manuscripts and letters, [Ruth Scurr] has fashioned, as chronologically as possible, an autobiography in the form of the diary that Aubrey never wrote. It fits him perfectly… Ms Scurr has done him proud" (The Economist) |
|
Fatal Purity: Robespierre & the French Revolution
|
