A site dedicated to the life and work of Sir Thomas Browne,
physician, philosopher and polymath born 19 October 1605 in London, died 19 October 1682 in Norwich
The Poirier sculptures Homage to Thomas Browne have a new home in Eaton Park where they have been welcomed with open arms by the Friends of Eaton Park
A new home has been found for the public sculptures 'Homage to Thomas Browne' by international artists Anne & Patrick Poirier which were originally made for the site on Hay Hill in central Norwich. They were removed in 2023 and have since been cleaned and stored. They have been relocated to a grassy site in Eaton Park on the edge of Norwich - a very different context but one which we hope will bring a fresh look at the work and raise the profile of Thomas Browne. The installation will be open to the public from Saturday 10 August.
Norwich City Council have also promised more interpretation and references to Browne, his life and works on Hay Hill when the refurbishment works are completed in 2024 which will hopefully reach more people. Read more about the news here Gavin Francis' book 'Sir Thomas Browne and the Opium of Time'On Sunday May 28 2023 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 publication, 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, Browne's experience in life alongside Gavin's so side-by-side we learn about both men and their ways. Read Kevin Faulkner's review of the book on his blog here
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. |
Norwich History Festival
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Download a new flyer and the Sir Thomas Browne Day Newsletter 2024
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About Thomas Browne's house
An interesting blog post by Colonal Unthank, fount of all knowledge of Norwich history
https://colonelunthanksnorwich.com/tag/thomas-brownes-garden-house/?fbclid=IwAR2ke0ns_FJVRJ5OHGQI_RK1yEPTs1mHPzPNeFaaBMTYSB2_zMufcu6zGVs
An interesting blog post by Colonal Unthank, fount of all knowledge of Norwich history
https://colonelunthanksnorwich.com/tag/thomas-brownes-garden-house/?fbclid=IwAR2ke0ns_FJVRJ5OHGQI_RK1yEPTs1mHPzPNeFaaBMTYSB2_zMufcu6zGVs
The sculptures have moved from their original home in Hay Hill to Eaton Park. Hay Hill which has been refurbished and is now open to the public
The Debt of Our Reason - a publication produced by St Peter Mancroft Church
Link to livestream recording of the talk between Hugh Aldersey Williams and Dr Fiona and book launch at St Peter Mancroft on 19 October 2023 - view on YouTube
You can read more about the publication here and also about St Peter Mancroft Church
You can read more about the publication here and also about St Peter Mancroft Church
Kevin Faulkner and his talks and essays about Thomas Browne
Kevin Faulkner delivers talk entitled Sir Thomas Browne and the Theatre of Ourselves at Norfolk Heritage Centre, October 3rd 2023
Browne scholar Kevin Faulkner speaks annually in Norwich about Sir Thomas Browne and an aspect of his work, usually at the Norfolk & Norwich Millennium Library. The next talk is on 22 October 2025. For more of Kevin's writing about Browne and his work, please follow his widely-read blog here https://aquariumofvulcan.blogspot.com/2024/08/browne-index.html?m=1
In Our Time : Melvyn Bragg on BBC Sounds
Link to the podcast is here. This is a really good listen to understand who Browne was.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0005ml9
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 text 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 well-received work 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.
Link to the podcast is here. This is a really good listen to understand who Browne was.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0005ml9
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 text 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 well-received work 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.
Sir Thomas Browne Day
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' 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. 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 
Exhibition at Eton College from 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 [email protected] 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
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 |
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
Talking Statues - find out more here
Tell us your Old Wives' TalesWe are collecting your Old Wives' Tales and Curious Questions. Why?
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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 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; |
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 [email protected] for consideration
If you have images, facts, documents or stories which you would like to add to this site, please email [email protected] for consideration
The Man
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His Work
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Homage to Thomas Browne
Artists Anne and Patrick Poirier
The sculpture work, formerly on Hay Hill in central Norwich, was an Homage to Sir 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. .