Christopher de Hamel: The Posthumous Papers of the Manuscripts Club

This event took place on 1 March 2023. The information below is correct as of the publication date. The illuminated manuscripts of the Middle Ages are among the greatest works of European art and literature. But we generally think much less about the people who made, saved and sometimes destroyed medieval manuscripts, over a thousand years of history. As introduced in his recent book The Posthumous Papers of the Manuscripts Club, world expert Christopher de Hamel discusses some of the extraordinary people who have spent their lives among illuminated manuscripts over the last thousand years. A monk in Normandy, a prince of France, a Florentine bookseller, an English antiquary, a rabbi from central Europe, a French priest, a Keeper at the British Museum, a Greek forger, a German polymath, a British connoisseur and the woman who created the most spectacular library in America. This exhilarating fraternity of keepers, companions and enthusiasts; all of them were participants in what de Hamel calls the Manuscripts Club. In the course of a long career at Sotheby's and at Cambridge University, Christopher de Hamel has probably seen and catalogued more medieval manuscripts than anyone alive, and his delight and enthusiasm run through all he writes. He is the author of many books, translated into numerous languages, including A History of Illuminated Manuscripts, The Book in the Cathedral, and Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts, which won both the Duff Cooper Prize and the Wolfson History Prize. He is a Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.