A Bosnian poet said that afterwards ash from the burnt volumes fell on the city like “black birds”. “Ray Bradbury reminded us in 1953 of the temperature at which paper burns – Fahrenheit 451 – but an entire library takes a long time to be destroyed,” Ovenden writes. The librarians tried to save what they could from the burning building, but it was no good: Serb marksmen picked off the firefighters, even targeting them with anti-aircraft guns. Ovenden notes that the shells aimed at the library were incendiaries, “designed to raise fire rapidly on impact”. We learn of the library staff who, along with the people of Sarajevo – Serbs, Croats, Jews and Muslims – formed a human chain to rescue books when the National and University Library of Bosnia and Herzegovina came under deliberate and sustained artillery fire from Serbian military positions in August 1992. But he is careful to lavish special attention, the admiration of a kindred spirit, on those who stood in the way. He dissects the methods and motives of those who have sought to burn, bury or delete the texts through which the story of the human race – its wanderings, discoveries and longings – has been documented. He starts with ancient Mesopotamia and ends in Facebook and Twitter, detailing specific episodes rather than attempting a comprehensive history, charting the apparently never-ending threat to the recorded past. These are the stars of Burning the Books, a deeply engaging and timely “history of knowledge under attack” by Richard Ovenden, who since 2014 has rejoiced in the title of Bodley’s Librarian: meaning that he is the 25th person to run the Bodleian Libraries in Oxford. Rather, it is their very earnestness, diligence and scholarship – along with their willingness to risk their lives to protect and preserve the truth – that has the reader cheering them on. None wears a cape they do not cast aside their owlish spectacles and transform themselves into muscled hulks.

Is an irresistible new chapter in his epic story of the birth of England and the legendary king who made it possible.I t’s both amusing and a little bit touching that a lifelong librarian has written a book in which librarians are the heroes. Joining the Vikings, allied with his old friend Ragnar-and his old foe Haesten-Uhtred devises a strategy to invade and conquer Wessex itself. But the sweetness of Uhtred's victory is soured by tragedy, forcing him to break with the Saxon king. Bestselling Saxon Tales chronicling the epic saga of the making of England, 'like Game of Thrones, but real' (Īt the end of the ninth century, with King Alfred of Wessex in ill health and his heir still an untested youth, it falls to Alfred's reluctant warlord Uhtred to outwit and outbattle the invading enemy Danes, led by the sword of savage warrior Harald Bloodhair.

The burning land book