Mr Key’s Shorter Potted Brief, Brief Lives

Wesley, Samuel (British clergyman and poet, 1662 - 1735). On Christmas Day 1716, Wesley was haunted by an apparition of a badger with no head. It was called Jeffrey. Frank writes: " It occurred to me that it would be a good idea to write a modern, updated version of John Aubrey's Brief Lives. But it further occurred to me that some books are unimproveable, and that in trying to follow in Aubrey's footsteps I would embarrass myself and become the butt of ridicule. The idea continued to nag at me, however, and eventually I decided the solution was to outdo Aubrey in brevity. My own Brief Lives would consist of a single, unadorned fact about each of my subjects. So the reader may not learn very much about the life of X or Y or Z, but they would be armed with one little nugget which might come in handy to chuck into a lull during the conversation at the kind of swish sophisticated cocktail party to which they no doubt get invited." Other entries include: Gibson, Willie Harmsworth, Alfred, Lord Northcliffe Jansson, Tove Lennon, John Stein, Gertrude Nixon, Richard Milhous Schubert, Franz Tippett, Michael Anderson, John Henry Brooke, Charles Callaghan, James Russell, Ken