Image: ©John Cairns
Burning the Books: a history of knowledge under attack
In his latest book, Burning the books: a history of knowledge under attack, Richard Ovenden describes the deliberate destruction of knowledge held in libraries and archives from ancient Alexandria to contemporary Sarajevo, from smashed Assyrian tablets in Iraq to the destroyed immigration documents of the UK’s Windrush generation. He examines both the motivations for these acts – political, religious, and cultural – and the broader themes that shape this history. He also looks at attempts to prevent and mitigate attacks on knowledge, exploring the efforts of librarians and archivists to preserve information, often risking their own lives in the process.
Richard Ovenden was appointed Bodley’s Librarian, University of Oxford in 2014. Prior to that he held positions at Durham University library, the House of Lords library, the National Library of Scotland and the University of Edinburgh.
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