Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts by C. de Hamel

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Here’s our take on Christopher de Hamel’s Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts.

Quick facts

• Full title: Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts. Twelve Journeys into the Medieval World
• Author: Christopher de Hamel, librarian of the Parker Library; handled all medieval manuscripts at Sotheby’s for over 25 years.
• First published: 2016
• Publisher: Penguin
• Number of pages without notes: 588

Our review

Ah yes, Christopher de Hamel’s journey through the Middle Ages, accompanied by twelve – truly – remarkable primary sources. It’s an expedition as only De Hamel is able to tell, with all his experience regarding basically anything old and written. While reading the Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts, you travel from public library to museum to private collection. Some works have barely moved from the place where they were originally written; others, as you’ll find out, have traveled across the globe – some even having been thought irrevocably lost for centuries, only to resurface in the Modern Era.

The book’s a veritable “non-fiction Dan Brown”, if you will. You’ll spend time with Christopher de Hamel, deciphering ancient clues that tell us whether the manuscript in question may have belonged to one person or the other. The author sprinkles his adventures with anecdotes like meeting the pope in person, or how he was treated by the museum staff in St Petersburg. De Hamel does this with a certain post-imperialist gusto like only a British person can do, commenting willy-nilly on the anthropological nature of the Danes, the Dutch, or the Americans. These remarks seem a bit of out touch by now, but they’re mostly innocent and usually quite funny.

Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts needs this humor, too. Apart from De Hamel’s truth-seeking odysseys around the world, the book can get quite technical. You’ll be presented with details on how the manuscripts were collated and bound. And whilst this information sometimes sheds light on the backstory of the time during which it was written, these parts of the book are overly dry. We really think this book is quite daunting for the uninitiated, also regarding the many biblical metaphors which of course litter these medieval manuscripts but do not always make sense straight away for the modern reader (that’s you, by the way).

This is precisely why De Hamel’s achievement is remarkable: he has managed to breathe life into a subject that is normally rather dull or inaccessible to a wider audience. The author’s experience with the subject makes Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts one of those books that only he could write. Christopher de Hamel was personally present at auctions where staggering amounts of money were bid in order to come into possession of these manuscripts. And he is not hesitant to spill the beans with his readers.

In short, for those right at home in the Middle Ages, this is a fun and unique perspective into an otherwise remote world of ancient writing. Let Christopher de Hamel take you by the hand and we’ll guarantee you that you’ll enjoy the trip. Because it’s not every day that you’ll be able to read about writing itself.

Our verdict

Where to buy

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