Brief Lives, Vol. 2

Henry Isaacson presents his chronology to Charles I; the king turns to his own birth and spots a lie. Ashamed, Isaacson slips away before praise or reward can reach him.

In seventeenth-century England, John Aubrey gathers the kinds of details formal histories leave behind: a poor inventor denied credit for bringing water to London, and Judge David Jenkins, who endured years of imprisonment rather than yield his loyalty. These brief portraits are pieced together from family memories, personal encounters and chance discoveries, full of sharp turns from the grand to the intimate. Aubrey’s subjects may be celebrated, stubborn or nearly forgotten, but each comes alive in the words of someone who saw more than a public reputation. What else did their friends and witnesses remember that history might otherwise have lost?

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