Aubreys woorden lagen al die tijd, 300 jaar, te wachten totdat iemand ze wakker zou kussen. Scurrs biografie over hem is een boek uit het computertijdperk, een machine had het kunnen schrijven.
John Aubrey, inventor of modern biography, pioneering archaeologist, had an irrepressible urge to record everything around him that took his attention. He was interested in everything. He is perhaps best known as the author of ‘Schediasmata: Brief Lives’, his collection of short biographical pieces.
Ruth Scurr used Aubrey’s own words to create the diary he never wrote. ‘I thought: if only we had Aubrey’s diary, his modesty, self-effacement, attention to others would not be such a problem. No one gets crowded out of his or her own diary.’ John Aubrey, My own life is a biography of a biographer that doubles as an experimental analysis of biography itself.