John Aubrey - My Own Life

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2015 COSTA BIOGRAPHY AWARD

This is the autobiography that John Aubrey never wrote.

You may not know his name. Aubrey was a modest man, a gentleman-scholar who cared far more for the preservation of history than for his own legacy. But he was a passionate collector, an early archaeologist and the inventor of modern biography.

With all the wit, charm and originality that characterises her subject, Ruth Scurr has seamlessly stitched together John Aubrey-s own words to tell his life story and a captivating history of seventeenth-century England unlike any other.

''A game-changer in the world of biography'' Mary Beard

''Ingenious'' Hilary Mantel

''Irresistible'' Philip Pullman