Facts about the life and work of Leviathan author Thomas Hobbes

1. Thomas Hobbes was born premature, because his mother was worried about the imminent invasion of the Spanish Armada. Hobbes was born in April 1588, several months before the Spanish Armada of Philip II of Spain set sail for the English Channel. In the months leading up to the invasion, England was full of fear about the coming attack. As Hobbes later put it, ‘my mother gave birth to twins: myself and fear.’ Hobbes would live a long and productive life. Although he famously described human existence as ‘nasty, brutish, and short’, Hobbes himself lived to be 91, dying in 1679.