Masters of Old Britannia : Two new biographies explore a golden age of discovery.(On a Grander Scale: The Outstanding Career of Sir Christopher Wren and Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self)

More than three centuries ago, Britain abolished its monarchy for a decade, and the experience proved so traumatic that the country never attempted it again. The fledgling republic, ravaged by civil war, expired as a ferocious hurricane swept the country on the death of its elected ruler, Oliver Cromwell. The storm heralded the end of an era: the restoration of the monarchy in 1660 ushered in another kind of revolution, a golden age of scientific discovery and innovation which is viewed afresh through the eyes of two of the period's most intriguing characters in a pair of lively biographies out this fall. Both Lisa Jardine's "On a Grander Scale: The Outstanding Career of Sir Christopher Wren," and "Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self" by Claire Tomalin are full of new research and insights, and are likely to be the definitive word on their subjects for a long time to come.

Across their pages march a colorful succession of familiar names--the architects of ideas and discoveries still vital to scientists, philosophers, politicians and writers today. While the hurricane raged and Cromwell died, a country schoolboy named Isaac Newton was amusing himself by measuring how far he could jump against the wind, calculating its force. Thirty years later his "Principia" would change the face of mathematics and mechanics. John Milton was writing "Paradise Lost" while toiling in the civil service. Pepys's "Diary," an un-self-conscious, shockingly frank account of life in Restoration England, created a new genre of literature when it was published in the 1800s. When Wren was buried in St. Paul's Cathedral, a building in which he reached his pinnacle as an architect, the inscription placed above his tomb said it all: reader, if you require a monument, look about you.

Wren and Pepys were born within a year of each other in the 1630s, into families at opposite ends of the social spectrum. Wren spent his boyhood in Windsor Castle. Pepys, the son of a tailor, grew up near Fleet Street in a crowded apartment above his father's shop. Their personalities, too, were poles apart-and infuse each biography with a distinct style. Pepys's gregarious lust for life is seared on every page of his "Diary," and Tomalin's book is woven through with his vivid sketches of 17th-century London, its turbulent politics, bustling streets, sights and ...