Book · 2013
My Brief History
Hawking's short, candid 2013 memoir: the constraint and the life, told plainly in his own words across barely 120 pages.
Last updated 23 May 2026 · How we research
Book · 2013
My Brief History
Stephen Hawking
The short, candid memoir, the life in his own words.
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My Brief History, published in 2013, is Stephen Hawking's own account of his life. At barely 120 pages it is short by any measure, and deliberately so: spare, unsentimental and direct, it is the most reliable single source for how Hawking understood his own story.
The life, in his own words
The memoir traces the arc of his life in plain terms: the wartime birth in Oxford, the eccentric family and the St Albans childhood, the idle brilliance of his Oxford years, the move to Cambridge, and the 1963 diagnosis that should have ended everything. From there he writes about his first marriage to Jane, the raising of their three children, the steady advance of his illness, the loss of his voice, the discoveries that made his name, and the extraordinary fame that A Brief History of Time brought.
What is striking is the tone. Hawking does not dramatise his own courage or invite pity. He writes about his illness matter-of-factly, treats his successes with a certain modesty, and is honest about the strains in his personal life. The result is a portrait that feels true rather than burnished.
Who it's for
Anyone who wants the facts of Hawking's life from the man himself, rather than filtered through a film or a biography, should read this. It is brief enough to finish in an afternoon, and it makes an excellent companion to the more reflective essays in Black Holes and Baby Universes.