The Ghost of Galileo

Its appearance in a portrait of the young heir of Corfe Castle and his tutor forms the starting point for this lively, stylish rendering by historian John Heilbron of the intellectual life of early Stuart England. Deftly, he brings together connections between England and Italy in the time of James I and Charles I, religious and political machinations and conflicts, arguments about cosmological systems, art, and culture. Kings, courtiers, clerics, astronomers, and physicians; Van Dyck, Ben Jonson, Inigo Jones; a now almost forgotten artist; a young man's fashionable melancholy and travels-all figure in the backdrop to the painting. Together, they capture the intellectual and cultural landscape of the time, while explaining the presence of a ghost of Galileo in rural Dorset. Book jacket.