Tag Archives: diaries

From the diary of a writer-publisher: 14

1 February I received an email from Sam1 (Russia) in a Moscow hospital. His whole family has gone down with COVID. The others are coping with it at home, but he was rapidly losing lung capacity and had to be … Continue reading

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A skipped life

For my taste, this book is the most innovative biography since Ruth Scurr’s John Aubrey: My Own Life (see 15 October 2016). Although reviewed positively when it appeared last year, it is so original that I defy anyone to get their head quite round … Continue reading

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Ruth Scurr: ‘A book in which he is still alive’

  If in her first biography Ruth Scurr’s identity approached that of Robespierre as a ‘friend’, in John Aubrey: My Own Life (2015) she seems to have merged her identity with Aubrey altogether. The fundamental problem of modern biography, Scurr has written elsewhere, … Continue reading

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