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).