Charming, vibrant, witty and edifying, The Life of Samuel Johnson is a work of great obsession and boundless reverence. The literary critic Samuel Johnson first encountered James Boswell at the age of 54; the friendship that developed spawned one of the greatest biographies in the history of world literature. The book is full of humorous anecdote and rich characterization, and paints a vivid picture of 18th-century London, peopled by prominent personalities of the time such as Sir Joshua Reynolds, John Wilkes, Oliver Goldsmith and David Garrick, while also giving a compelling insight into Johnson’s complex humanity – his depression, fear of death, intellectual brilliance and rough humor. David Timson has made over 1,000 broadcasts for BBC Radio Drama. For Naxos AudioBooks he has written The History of Theatre and directed four Shakespeare plays. He has also read the entire Sherlock Holmes canon and Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
