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

The glossarian as moralist – review of Landmarks by Robert Macfarlane

THE GLOSSARIAN AS MORALIST Landmarks, Robert Macfarlane, London: Hamish Hamilton, 2015, 387pps, hb, £20 Robert Macfarlane is one of the most lionized of contemporary British writers, somehow combining a Cambridge career with producing a celebrated sequence of unusually literate explorations of landscape. First was 2003’s Mountains of the Mind, about Occidental attitudes towards high places… Continue reading