A site dedicated to the life and work of Sir Thomas Browne, 
physician and polymath born 19 October 1605 in London, died 19 October 1682 
in Norwich

Sir Thomas Browne Day: Book launch and talk at St Peter Mancroft Church on Thursday 19 October 2023 at 2pm

A new book, entitled ‘The Debt of Our Reason’ written by Hugh Aldersey-Williams, author of The Adventures of Sir Thomas Browne in the 21st Century has been commissioned by St Peter Mancroft Church to help celebrate Sir Thomas Browne Day and to complement the artefacts relating to Thomas Browne and his family already in the church, including his grave and a replica of his skull.

​All are welcome to a book launch and talk at St Peter Mancroft at 2pm on Thursday 19 October 2023.
​The talk will be about 45 minutes long and the book will be available to purchase in the church.
A new publication, putting Thomas Browne in context with his life from beginning of 17th century.  He was born in the year of the Gunpowder Plot and lived through the Great Plague, the Great Blow, the English Civil War and many significant 17th century scientific developments.

Author: Hugh Aldersey-Williams
Publisher / copyright: Jarrold Publishing and St Peter Mancroft Church, Norwich
ISBN 978-0-85101-661-0 : 40 pages
Purchase price  £8.00
Available in the church from 19 October 2023

Sir Thomas Browne : The Theatre of Ourselves - a talk by Kevin Faulkner

Join Kevin Faulkner and learn more about the life and work of the 17th century Norwich-based physician-philosopher, Sir Thomas Browne.

This year's annual Thomas Browne essay was previewed in a well-attended  live presentation by Kevin Faulkner on behalf of Norfolk Heritage Centre as welll as a live-stream of the talk.
'The Theatre of Ourselves - the proto-psychology of Thomas Browne' looks at his self-examination, deep interest in people, use of symbols, fascination with dreams and relationship to Jungian analytical psychology. The essay will be posted on the Aquarium of Vulcan blog site on October 19th as well as on this website

Gavin Francis' new book and event presented by the National Centre for Writing 
​Sir Thomas Browne and the Opium of Time 

On Sunday May 28 as part of the Norfolk and Norwich Festival , Dr Gavin Francis came to Norwich to talk about his new book Sir Thomas Browne : The Opium of Time. 

Bestselling writer and doctor Gavin Francis examines the extraordinary life and work of Norwich-based physician, writer, and polymath Thomas Browne through a personal, 21st century lens. In this event, Gavin will draw on his own experiences as a modern day writer and doctor to illustrate that although many centuries separate him from Browne, they share a fundamental curiosity about the world and about people.
​
Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682) was an English physician, wordsmith, and polymath who contributed hundreds of words to the English language (such as medical, electricity, migrant, and computer). Gavin’s book The Opium of Time examines Browne’s work through a variety of themes: ambiguity, curiosity, vitality, piety, humility, misogyny, mobility, and mortality. He argues that the work has lost little of its power and wisdom, and none of its beauty.
For more details of Gavin and the book go here
The book, Sir Thomas Browne : The Opium of Time is published by Oxford University Press as part of the My Reading series,  published 25 May 2023 in hardback, £18.99, 176pages ISBN 9780192858177.

This is a neat and attractive small tome, written by Dr Gavin Francis, a GP in Edinburgh and author several books including Recovery : The Lost Art of Convalescence, Adventures in Human Being and Island Dreams. He has spoken before about how the written works of Dr Browne have influenced him as a medic in the 21st century.

The book is neatly portioned into themed chapters, to be read consecutively or dipped into one by one. The themes relate to Browne's character and interests; ambiguity, piety, misogyny, mobility, curiosity and explores in tandem, Brownes experience in life alongside Gavin's so side-by-side we learn about both men and their ways.
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Read Kevin Faulkner's review of the book here
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Link to livestream recording of the talk and book launc h at St Peter Mancroft  on 19 October 2023 - view on YouTube
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Kevin Faulkner delivers talk entitle Sir Thomas Browne and the Theatre of Ourselves at Norfolk Heritage Centre, October 3rd
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Dr Gavin Francis
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Dr Gavin Francis' book Sir Thomas Browne and The Opium of Time

Sir Thomas Browne Day 
​19 October each year

In 1682, Thomas Browne died on his birthday, 19 October. We are working to establish 19th October as an annual Sir Thomas Browne Day in Norwich, and further across the country. The idea is to organise events to mark the day and to stimulate interest in Browne, increase people's knowledge about Browne and his commitment to curiosity and investigation, learning and thought.

In 2018 Sir Thomas Browne day fell within the Norwich Science Festival which is an appropriate time to celebrate and establish a day dedicated to him. A number of places in Norwich have references or artefacts connected with Browne.

With the aid of some funding from  Norwich Freemen's Trust (formerly Town Close Trust) we will be developing some learning resources for both adults and children. 
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Please get in touch if you want to get know more about the Thomas Browne Society.
Supported by the
Sir Thomas Browne Facebook page
A Thomas Browne Society?
A  Thomas Browne Society  brings together enthusiasts and experts from around the globe. If you are interested in the development of a Society please sign up here free to join

Help the Thomas Browne Project

If you would like to make a donation to the Thomas Browne Project to support the development and maintenance of this site and evens, please donate by using the button above

Articles
There are lots of interesting articles that mention Sir Thomas Browne, which help us to get to know him bit by bit. Links are included below  and there are more on the Links page.

Getting to know Browne's work
​A thoughtful article in the Guardian about Hydriotaphia, or Urne Burrial here
The man who invented popular science used a 17th-century version of clickbait
Interesting link here about Sir Thomas and some of the techniques he used to get people interested in science
Thomas Browne and porcelain
​Sir Thomas Browne was interested in alchemy and the science of substances. This article mentions him in relation to trying to work out how porcelain was made, as porcelain, at the time was as valuable as gold and its manufacture was a jealously guarded Chinese secret.
OED Word of the Day on Sir Thomas Browne Day 2017: recubation, n. The action of reclining or lying down #thomasbrowne
Follow OED on Twitter for Oxford English Dictionary Word of the Day, a Thomas Browne neologism 'recubation'
​ ​https://twitter.com/OED?lang=en

Some things to listen to

A link to a podcast of Professor Claire Preston's talk about Browne's Curious Words in Norwich October 2017 ​https://thenorfolkheritagecentrepodcast.wordpress.com/
A podcast script  for Thomas Browne Day by Jonathan Tooke
A link to an article about Browne's invention of words
daily.jstor.org/sir-thomas-brownes-vulgar-errors
About elderberries ref Pseudodoxia Epidemica 
One of Browne's experiments was to de-bunk the myth that elderberries are poisonous, which he tested by eating elderberries. This article talks about the health benefits of elderberries in averting flu and the science behind it, although it does point out that elder wood is poisonous and shouldn't be ingested. ​http://marmadukescarlet.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/elderberry-cordial-great-tasting-anti.html
Sir Thomas Browne and words
​Sir Thomas Browne invented many of the words we use today.  As well as those that stood the test of time many didn't. However he is credited with coining words, numbering second only to the great bard William Shakespeare. Here are a few examples 
Free Thinking
​Here is a link to a recording of the Free Thinking edition about Sir Thomas Browne - interesting listen
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05sy6qv
EDP article about Sir Thomas Browne Day ​www.edp24.co.uk/features/celebrating-true-norwich-great-sir-thomas-browne-1-5237996
‘We are not magisterial in opinions, nor have we dictator-like obtruded our conceptions, but in the humility of enquiries or disquisitions, have only proposed them unto more ocular discerners.’
Useful links about Sir Thomas
www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Browne
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Photo Sarah Cocke

Publications

 A new edition of this book entitled Thomas Browne  : Selected Works by Kevin Killeen has recently come out in paperback from Oxford University Press, at a wholly affordable price. Thomas Browne, Selected Works, edited by Kevin Killeen, contains all of Browne’s major writings, Religio Medici, Urn-Burial, and The Garden of Cyrus, and generous selections from Pseudodoxia Epidemica, as well as a selection of writings published after his death. 

​The volume is part a new series, ‘21st Century Oxford Authors’, and is ‘lightly modernised’ – the original spelling is generally retained, but punctuation is clarified when necessary. It includes an introduction to Browne, explanatory notes and commentary at the end of the book.

Kevin Killeen is a lecturer in English Literature at the University of York, and is part of the team editing The Complete Works of Sir Thomas Browne, in 8 volumes, also from Oxford University Press, albeit in expensive format. He has written extensively on Browne, including the prize-winning Biblical Scholarship, Science and Politics in Early Modern Culture: Thomas Browne and The Thorny Place of Knowledge (2009).
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/thomas-browne-9780198797654?lang=en&cc=gb
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'The Adventures of Sir Thomas Browne
​in the 21st Century'
Now out in paperback and available from bookshops, Amazon and on Kindle etc


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Hugh Aldersey-Williams' book about Sir Thomas Browne was published by Granta and launched at The Book Hive Norwich in 2015.
​See more here

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Sad to say that the artwork Homage to Thomas Browne on Hay Hill has been removed

UPDATE: The Council planners granted planning permission to remove this artwork from Hay Hill to storage. The work has started to take them away.  If you are interested I am collecting photographs to chart the journey. 
The Council have concluded that they intend to move the sculptures from Hay Hill. They have no other place to relocate them so they are heading for storage

Norwich City Council have put forward a proposition to remove the artwork Homage to Thomas Browne on Hay Hill. The set of sculptures (marble and granite) together make up an artwork by Anne & Patrick Poirier, French artists with an international reputation. They want to do this to enable them to clear the space and remodel it - change the steps, add planters and some spouting water features - all of which will improve the space. It is not necessary to remove the sculptures to make these improvements but they would rather have a clear space where they stand. 

However, there is no doubt that the Hay Hill site cannot be more appropriate where it is as it is site-specific and celebrates Thomas Browne in an area where he lived, worked and is buried.

There are many aspects to consider. If you want to see what they are proposing for Hay Hill and also read more about why the artwork is there and what the artists  intended, click here.
For more on the proposals on the Norwich City Council site More about the artwork here
' In Sir Thomas Browne one finds three great nourishers of the mind and heart of man: religion, poetry, and science....He is a psychologist with a sense of humour; a botanist, embryologist, archaeologist, and physician; a guest at the banquet of beauty, knowledge, work, and religion.  Frank  Livingstone Huntley
Article about Browne 
​https://sebald.wordpress.com/category/thomas-browne/
Virtual exhibition about Thomas Browne curated by students at Winchester College
​www.cabinet.ox.ac.uk/thomas-browne
Would you like to explore Norwich @UNESCO City of Literature with Thomas Browne?
The National Centre for Writing has teamed up with  @EDP24 to share walks from our #WalkingNorwich series so that you can stay creative and connected to the city! This week @HoooAW retraces the steps of a famous Norwich polymath
A Walk with Thomas Browne 
by Hugh Aldersey-Williams
Part of the Walking Norwich series.

The National Centre for Writing has a series of walks around Norwich, UNESCO City of Literature.

This one, A Walk with Thomas Browne, is devised by writer and journalist Hugh Aldersey Williams.
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Hugh Aldersey-Williams is a writer and curator. He lives with his family near Aylsham. The Adventures of Sir Thomas Browne in the 21st Century (Granta) won the General Non-Fiction Prize at the East Anglian Book Awards in 2015. He is currently working on a book about the astronomer and inventor Christiaan Huygens and the science of the Dutch Golden Age.
"But why fly in the face of facts? Few people love the writings of Sir Thomas Browne, but those who do are of the salt of the Earth."  Virginia Woolf
Spanish writer Javier Marias talks about books to read and  cites Urn Burial by Sir Thomas Browne as being one of the books that not enough people read
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/25/books/review/javier-marias-by-the-book.html
Sir Thomas Browne was featured on Radio 4's 'In Our Time' programme with Melvyn Bragg on Thursday 6 June 2019. Hear it here on BBC Sounds
​ https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0005ml9
Delighted to say that Sir Thomas Browne was the subject for Melvyn Bragg's In Our Time programme on BBC Radio 4  featuring Browne experts Claire Preston, Jessica Wolfe and Kevin Killeen on Melvin Bragg's 'In our Time' broadcast on Thursday 6 June - if you missed it or want to recap,  listen again here. 
Exhibition at Eton College from 10 May 2019
A new exhibition is due to open on 10th May 2019  at Tower Gallery, Eton College, entitled Death and the Doctor: Dying Burying and Afterlives in the Seventeenth Century. The exhibition is curated by Dr Lucy Gwynn who recently completed her PhD on Thomas Browne. The writings of Thomas Browne provide the starting point for the exhibition and themes from the publication of Urne-Buriall are contextualised and explored. The cast of Sir Thomas Browne’s skull from Norwich Hospital will also be on display for duration of the exhibition. Visits Monday to Fridays by appointment. Email collections@etoncollege.org or call 01753 37050.
For Thomas Browne Day 2018, poet and writer George Szirtes wrote a specially commissioned piece which he delivered at the National Centre for Writing, Dragon Hall, King Street, Norwich - you can find the transcript here
Norwich-born Kevin  Faulkner has been performing as Browne for 20 years.  As a 21st anniversary celebration  he performed on Hay Hill on 19 October 2017
He looked at his own Soul
with a Telescope. What seemed
all irregular, he saw and 
shewed to be beautiful Constellations: and he added
to the Consciousness hidden
worlds within worlds.
​Coleridge on Browne.

Notices

In Our Time
​https://youtu.be/fXW1Jdrwf6k
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the range, depth and style of Browne (1605-82) , a medical doctor whose curious mind drew him to explore and confess his own religious views, challenge myths and errors in science and consider how humans respond to the transience of life. His Religio Medici became famous throughout Europe and his openness about his religion, in that work, was noted as rare when others either kept quiet or professed orthodox views. His Pseudodoxia Epidemica challenged popular ideas, whether about the existence of mermaids or if Adam had a navel, and his Hydriotaphia or Urn Burial was a meditation on what matters to humans when handling the dead. In 1923, Virginia Woolf wrote, "Few people love the writings of Sir Thomas Browne, but those that do are the salt of the earth." He also contributed more words to the English language than almost anyone, such as electricity, indigenous, medical, ferocious, carnivorous ambidextrous and migrant. With Claire Preston, Professor of Renaissance Literature at Queen Mary University of London; Jessica Wolfe, Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; and Kevin Killeen, Professor of English at the University of York. Producer: Simon Tillotson.

Celebrating Sir Thomas Browne
at Winchester College
Sir Thomas Browne (OW) was, as Hugh Aldesey-Williams writes, ‘keen for people not to believe foolish things or to fall for false remedies’. He was an extraordinary man – a doctor, philosopher, botanist and polymath and on 15 March 2022, a plaque was unveiled in Cloister in memory of Thomas Browne, one of the College’s foremost scientists. In celebration of his scientific contributions, there was an exhibition of his written works in the Fellows' Library and a service of dedication in Chapel, followed by ‘Going Circum’, when the choir processed singing around Cloister for the blessing of the plaque.
Thomas Browne Day essay by Kevin Faulkner
Each year since 2011, Browne scholar Kevin Faulkner has written an essay to celebrate Sir Thomas Browne Day on 19th October.

You can access them here on Kevin's blog

​Paper by Kevin Faulkner
This paper was published by Adam Maclean
​(b. 1948) the leading British authority on alchemy. It includes almost every aspect of Browne which has subsequently been developed at length since its publication over 20 years ago, in 2002.
 http://levity.com/alchemy/sir_thomas_browne.html
Barbara Miller
​It is  with great sadness that I report the death of Barbara Miller. Thomas Browne Champion and parishioner of St Peter Mancroft. Barbara passed away peacefully at home on 1st December aged 92, having made full use of her long years, including 70 years of marriage to her husband Martin, her children and grandchildren. She will be sadly missed as will her regular tours of the Browne artefacts in the church and her knowledge of his life and works.
If you follow this link you will find a recording of one of the talking tours she did on Hay Hill and in St Peter Mancroft. It is unedited and recorded on a mobile phone so please bear with it!
​RIP Barbara
​Sir Thomas Browne's Facebook page www.facebook.com/theaquariumofvulcan/
​ A Glass of Spirits made of Æthereal Salt, Hermetically sealed up, kept continually in Quick-silver; of so volatile a nature that it will scarce endure the Light, and therefore onely to be shown in Winter, or by the light of a Carbuncle, or Bononian Stone'. From Museum Clausum​
An newspaper article about C&A stores and the Haymarket/Hay Hill with the Thomas Browne statue in the centre
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Talking Statues - find out more here

Tell us your Old Wives' Tales

We are collecting your Old Wives' Tales and Curious Questions. Why?
​Click here to find out
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Musaeum Clausum - a work by Jules Allen and Phyllis Williams
His whole house and garden is a paradise and Cabinet of rarities and that of the best collection, amongst Medails, books, Plants, natural things
​ John Evelyn, 'The Diary of John Evelyn' (1671)
 Those national repugnances doe not touch me, nor doe I behold with prejudice the French, Italian, Spaniard, or Dutch; but where I find their actions in balance with my Countrey-mens, I honour, love, and embrace them in the same degree; ​
Links to other resources about Sir Thomas will be posted here

About Sir Thomas Browne

Sir Thomas Browne lived and worked  in Norwich from 1637 until his death in 1682 . He was a physician, philosopher, botanist and writer and was very important in England at the time. He was well-liked in Norfolk, well-travelled and educated, religious and respected. There are traces of his time in Norwich all over the city and this site will tell you about his life and where to find out more about him.

If you have images, facts, documents or stories which you would like to add to this site, please email info@theshiftnorwich.org.uk for consideration

The Man

His Work

Homage to Thomas Browne

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Artists Anne and Patrick Poirier
The sculpture work, formerly on Hay Hill in central Norwich, was an Homage to Thomas Browne, made by French husband and wife team of artists, Anne and Patrick Poirer. It was intended to be a set of street furniture, a kind of living room for the city (the Poiriers tend not to make art for simply looking at). It has since been removed  by Norwich City Council and is awaiting relocation.

It was a major public art commission, installed in 2007 and paid for by Arts Council England East, Norwich City Council with a contribution by Norfolk County Council. Read more here
About this site: This site has just been started by an informal Thomas Browne Appreciation Society to enable people to get to know Sir Thomas Browne better by collecting information relating to him in one place. We have received some funding to enable us to develop the site and will also be launching a crowd-funding campaign to develop further. Please bookmark and come back regularly  for new content. .