Picture Credits

Introduction: Nazi book-burnings in Berlin, 10 May 1933. (Scherl/Süddeutsche Zeitung Photo/Alamy Stock Photo)

Chapter 1: Austen Henry Layard sketching at Nimrud. (From Discoveries Among the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon (New York, 1859), Getty Institute, 84-B9374. Reproduced by Permission of the Getty Institute.)

Chapter 2: The poet Virgil holding a scroll, from a manuscript, early fifth century. (Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana, MS. Vat. Lat 3225, fol. 14r. De Agostini Picture Library/Bridgeman Images)

Chapter 3: St Dunstan kneeling at the foot of Christ, from St Dunstan’s Classbook, late tenth century. (Bodleian Library, MS. Auct F.4.32 fol. 1 recto. Reproduced by Permission, Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford.)

Chapter 4: Sir Thomas Bodley (1545–1613), portrait by an unknown artist, c.1590s. (Bodleian Library, LP 71. Reproduced by Permission, Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford.)

Chapter 5: Rear Admiral Sir George Cockburn at the burning of Washington, painted by John James Halls, engraved by C. Turner, 1819. Mezzotint. (Library of Congress, PGA – Turner–Sir George Cockburn. (D size) [P&P]. Reproduced courtesy of the Library of Congress.)

Chapter 6: Franz Kafka, photograph by Atelier Jacobi, Prague, 1906. Silver gelatin print. (Bodleian Library, MS. Kafka 55, fol 4r. Reproduced by Permission, Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford.)

Chapter 7: Louvain University Library, before the burning in 1914. (From Karel Sluyterman, La Belgique monumentale: 100 planches en phototypie tirées. Intérieurs anciens en Belgique (Le Haye: Martin Nijhoff, 1915). Chronicle/Alamy Stock Photo)

Chapter 8: YIVO materials being unpacked in New York, 1947. Silver gelatin print. (From the Archives of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York.)

Chapter 9: Philip Larkin at All Souls, 1970, possibly a self-portrait. Silver gelatin print. (Hull History Centre, Larkin Photographs, U DLV/3/190(7))

Chapter 10: Esau coming back from the hunt, and Jacob’s ladder from the Sarajevo Haggadah, c.1350. fol. 10r. (Courtesy of the National Museum of Bosnia Herzegovina.)

Chapter 11: One of the Bodleian’s Ethiopian manuscripts with members of the Ethiopian and Eritrean communities, August 2019. (MS. Aeth.c.2, Gospels, fifteenth century. Photograph by Ian Wallman.)

Chapter 12: Kanan Makiya and Hassan Mneimneh examining Ba’ath Party files in the Iraq Memory Foundation offices, Baghdad, November 2003. (Ashley Gilbertson/VII/Redux/eyevine)

Chapter 13: Photograph of Led by Donkeys’ banner, April 2019. (By permission of Led by Donkeys.)

Chapter 14: John Milton, aged twenty-one, by William Marshall. (Frontispiece to Poems of Mr John Milton, Both English and Latin (London, 1645). Bodleian Library, Arch.g.f.17. Reproduced by Permission, Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford.)

Coda: Shelves of paper files in the Stasi Museum, Berlin. (Jason Langer/Glasshouse Images/Alamy Stock Photo)