This exhilarating fraternity, and the fellow enthusiasts who come with it, throw new light on how manuscripts have survived and been used by very different kinds of people in many different circumstances. Christopher de Hamel's unexpected connections and discoveries reveal a passion which crosses the boundaries of time. We understand the manuscripts themselves better by knowing who their keepers and companions have been.

The illuminated manuscripts of the Middle Ages are among the greatest works of European art and literature. We are dazzled by them and recognize their crucial role in the transmission of knowledge. But we generally think much less about the countless men and women who made, collected and preserved them through the centuries, and to whom they owe their existence. The earliest member of de Hamel’s notional “Manuscripts Club” is Saint Anselm, an 11th-century Benedictine monk who ran the scriptorium in Bec Abbey in Normandy before becoming Archbishop of Canterbury. De Hamel walks us through Bec Abbey, vividly capturing the collegiate culture of lending and copying that allowed European scribes to produce and disseminate learned texts. You don’t need to know your psalters from your breviaries to be swept away by his scholarly but conversational style. Reading the Posthumous Papers is like taking a walk in excellent company.

gloriously engaging and readable ... De Hamel wears his erudition lightly, and the reader is taken deeply into the worlds of individuals who lived across almost a thousand years of history Richard Ovenden, Financial Times Chapter 36: The chief Features of which will be found to be an authentic Version of the Legend of Prince Bladud, and a most extraordinary Calamity that befell Mr. Winkle

a beautifully produced and magnificently surprising journey through the history of how and why people have wanted to collect manuscripts. An impossibly recondite subject, you might think; but it turns out to have a lot to do with all sorts of things about how we make sense of our histories and cultures - and it introduces us to a gallery of unforgettable characters. De Hamel acquired his first antiquarian book at the age of 15 and promptly defaced it with his signature I dream of stealing it away, and I am not alone in my weakness for these singular objects (as centuries of light-fingered clergymen could attest). My bibliophilia, however, cannot compete with that of Christopher de Hamel, the Cambridge fellow and ex-Sotheby’s expert whose 2017 Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts saw him wrangle with hundreds of the things. For this follow-up, The Posthumous Papers of the Manuscripts Club, he takes us into the strange world of bibliomaniacs across time, presenting 12 portraits of collectors and their surprisingly “restless” texts, that shuffle across nations and continents as they pass between collections. The people who made, saved and sometimes destroyed medieval manuscripts, over a thousand years of history, from the acclaimed author of Meetings with Remarkable ManuscriptsA scribe (probably Bede) writing, from Life and Miracles of Saint Cuthbert by Bede, 12th century. Bridgeman Images. Chapter 13: Some Account of Eatanswill; of the State of Parties therein; and of the Election of a Member to serve in Parliament for that ancient, loyal, and patriotic Borough Reading the Posthumous Papers is like taking a walk in excellent company ... an exceptional book, and itself an object worth cherishing.