Blair Worden
An Eie for Detail
Brief Lives, with an Apparatus for the Lives of our English Mathematical Writers
By John Aubrey (Edited by Kate Bennett)
Oxford University Press 1,968pp £250
John Aubrey: My Own Life
By Ruth Scurr
Chatto & Windus 518pp £25
From his bleakly solitary childhood onwards, John Aubrey (1626–97) was dogged by misfortune and by disadvantages of temperament. Being ‘never made to manage an estate’, he had to sell his lands, dodge debt collectors and throw himself on the hospitality of others. He was unlucky in love and in his marital hopes. To his pride he became an early fellow of the Royal Society and read papers to it, but for all the range and ardour of his intellectual pursuits (the subject of excellent books by Michael Hunter and William Poole) he lacked the critical exactitude of the leading scientists and was left behind the curve. He is a significant figure in many fields of inquiry, archaeology and the study of antiquities at their head, but he would have contributed far more had he known how to finish his books. Some people thought him a bit cracked, or ‘roving and magotie-headed’. The phrase is from a friend he unwisely trusted, Anthony Wood, who, in Aubrey’s final calamity, silently appropriated the biographical essays we know as Brief Lives and, in publishing material from them, circulated dangerous passages about contemporaries that Aubrey would have held back for posterity.
Such a career might have broken many a spirit. And yet what sunny company Aubrey was to a huge range of friends and acquaintances, and is to us. Lacking the driven ego that authorship demands, he gave himself to the encouragement of others and to collaboration with them. There is
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
Knowledge of Sufism increased markedly with the publication in 1964 of The Sufis, by Idries Shah. Nowadays his writings, much like his father’s, are dismissed for their Orientalism and inaccuracy.
@fitzmorrissey investigates who the Shahs really were.
Fitzroy Morrissey - Sufism Goes West
Fitzroy Morrissey: Sufism Goes West - Empire’s Son, Empire’s Orphan: The Fantastical Lives of Ikbal and Idries Shah by Nile Green
literaryreview.co.uk
Rats have plagued cities for centuries. But in Baltimore, researchers alighted on one surprising solution to the problem of rat infestation: more rats.
@WillWiles looks at what lessons can be learned from rat ecosystems – for both rats and humans.
Will Wiles - Puss Gets the Boot
Will Wiles: Puss Gets the Boot - Rat City: Overcrowding and Urban Derangement in the Rodent Universes of John B ...
literaryreview.co.uk
Twisters features destructive tempests and blockbuster action sequences.
@JonathanRomney asks what the real danger is in Lee Isaac Chung's disaster movie.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/eyes-of-the-storm