Category: Biography
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Genius Fan’s Four Big Anniversaries for 2026
The coming year, 2026, is a big year to celebrate things that happened in 1776. That is, it’s a big year for 250th anniversaries, and I’m going to highlight four big ones. If you read history then it’s likely you’ll know these – they’re the ones everyone talks about. Here…
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Ladies and Gentlemen, Behold! Fanny Burney
Novelist Fanny Burney shared a friendship with one of the Eighteenth century’s greatest writers, Samuel Johnson, and when she died in 1840, at the age of 87, the mighty Thomas Babington Macaulay wrote of his surprise that someone who mixed in the illustrious Johnson circle, so many years ago, had…
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Crane Required to Lift Birkbeck Hill’s Book
A big book is annoying when it doesn’t fit onto the bookcase, especially if it’s a volume one is particularly proud or fond of. This is the case with George Birkbeck Hill’s Footsteps of Dr. Johnson (Scotland). I have a copy. I had to adjust the height of one of…
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Choosing a biography of Flora Macdonald
Take a guess: How many biographies are there of Flora Macdonald? (My guess is at the bottom of this post.) She sealed her fame as one of Britain’s most romantic heroines when she chose to help Bonnie Prince Charlie evade capture by government soldiers in June 1746. He was on…
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The ‘Foosteps Principle’ of Richard Holmes
A daydream of mine is to go to the Netherlands and visit the places James Boswell inhabited when he was at Utrecht University (1763-64). Ahhh the Eighteenth century. The challenges are not insurmountable: the second-most being to find the time to do it, and the first being to persuade my…
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