Many people throughout history have kept diaries of some kind, but I suggest that Samuel Pepys is, as the Encyclopædia Britannica puts it, “the greatest diarist of all.” Pepys’ 1.25 million words on the period 1660-1669 is not just a unique record of a formative and hugely interesting period in English life, but a ground-breaking… Continue reading
Posts Tagged → Isaac Newton
Starlight expression
Phænomena: Doppelmayr’s Celestial Atlas Giles Sparrow, London: Thames & Hudson, 2022, 255pp., £50 Johann Doppelmayr (1677-1750) spent most of his life in Nuremberg, but had a European reputation for his writings on astronomy and mathematics. Nuremberg had long been an intellectual and technical as well as political powerhouse, and as a young man Doppelmayr had… Continue reading
John Aubrey – remembrancer, Romantic and forward-thinker
JOHN AUBREY – REMEMBRANCER, ROMANTIC AND FORWARD-THINKER John Aubrey, My Own Life Ruth Scurr, London: Chatto & Windus, 2015, hb., 518pp, £25 Just as English painting is renowned for portraiture, so English letters have been illuminated by some of the greatest biographers ever to burnish world literature. After Boswell, the best-known is John Aubrey (1626-1697),… Continue reading