The idea for the book, which is entirely new, is to invite the reader into intimate conversations with twelve of the most famous manuscripts in existence and to explore with the author what they tell us about nearly a thousand years of medieval history - and sometimes about the modern world too.

Good-humoured, unpretentious and a bit eccentric, it's more like having a well-read friend than a subscription to a literary review. Coming face to face with an important illuminated manuscript in the original is like meeting a very famous person. The binding, the layout and the lavish illustration make it a pleasure to handle before you even turn to the content, which perfectly fulfils its promise. The author of the book is Christopher de Hamel, fellow and librarian of the Parker Library of Corpus Christi, Cambridge.

Unfortunately we cannot offer a refund on custom prints unless they are faulty or we have made a mistake. Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts is one of the least likely and most wonderful books I have ever read. Jeanne de Navarre's ''Hours'' was made for the 24th-century French queen and later owned by Baron Edmond de Rothschild. As De Hamel points out, the reformed Church of England was not as rigorously anti-Catholic as its continental equivalents. Christopher de Hamel is the author of A History of Illuminated Manuscripts and Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts , which won the Wolfson History Prize and the Duff Cooper Prize in 2016.

But he tells you in a way that he expects you not to know anything (in a non-patronising way) and explains well little secrets of the Manuscripts.With scholarly elegance, Christopher de Hamel opens the door and invites us to join him for the intellectual expedition of a lifetime.

billion years old, all those trillions of years in the excerpt occur only in the fertile imagination of the book's author. Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts is an extraordinary and beautifully illustrated exploration of the medieval world through twelve manuscripts. Might-have-been moments in the lives of manuscripts are familiar to De Hamel, who for 25 years worked for Sotheby’s. These books, patricians of parchment, have circulated in European society at the very highest level for centuries.Indeed, Ethiopia converted to Christianity in the fourth century AD, when the Ark of the Covenant – the Old Testament casket lined with gold to accommodate the two tablets bearing the 10 Commandments – was allegedly transferred there from southern Egypt. De Hamel is a man of extraordinary erudition and easy charm; his book asks many questions of the past, and invokes many mysteries. Reading is my life, but only about once a decade do I find a book that seems to tilt the world, so afterwards it appears different. A visual feast and a genre-defying mixture of history, memoir, and travelogue held together by the author’s inimitable charm, Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts is unique slice of publishing and a deeply fascinating read. Christopher de Hamel has turned a lifelong obsession with ancient literature into a book that critics are comparing to A History of the World in 100 Objects and the wonderful The Hare with Amber Eyes .