Christopher Howse
The great discovery of 1986 for me has been Aubrey's Brief Lives. I feel like Randolph Churchill, who on reading the Bible in extenso for the first time ex- claimed, 'Why didn't anyone tell me about this before?' I read Anthony Powell's edition, but Aubrey deserves to be pub- lished more fully in a standard edition. Faber should also reissue Geoffrey Key- nes's edition of Sir Thomas Browne, or no one will ever know about badgers having two legs shorter than the others.
A surprising pleasure has been L. T. C. Rolt's biography Isambard Kingdom Brunel (Pelican), which Jeffrey Bernard kindly lent me. The stovepipe hat and waistcoat conceal a man who could swarm up a rope 200 feet above the Avon gorge or superintend his own tracheotomy. But Brunel's noblest triumphs were over fail- ure.
The most elusive book this year has been Thurber's The Years with Ross, which I borrowed from Theobald's Road public library on the morning of 11 October and had stolen from me in Greek Street at lunch time. Has anybody seen it?
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