
Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts
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Narrated by:
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Christopher de Hamel
About this listen
Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts written and read by Christopher de Hamel.
This is a book about why medieval manuscripts matter. Coming face to face with an important illuminated manuscript in the original is rather like meeting a very famous person. We may all pretend that a well-known celebrity is no different from anyone else, and yet there is an undeniable thrill in actually meeting and talking to a person of world stature. The idea for this book, which is entirely new, is to invite the listener into an intimate conversation with a selection of the most famous manuscripts in existence and to let each of those manuscripts illuminate the Middle Ages and sometimes the modern world too.
Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts invites the listener to accompany the author on exclusive private visits to a dozen very varied collections, in different parts of the world, to discover 12 great manuscripts and to explore their historical and intellectual significance.
©2016 Christopher de Hamel (P)2017 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Story
Charles Freeman, lauded historical scholar and author of The Closing of the Western Mind (“A triumph”—The Times), explores the rebirth of Western thought in the centuries that followed the demise of the classical era. As the dominance of Christian teachings gradually subsided over time, a new open-mindedness made way for the ideas of morality and theology, and fueled and formed the backbone of the Western mind of the late Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and beyond.
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Fascinating survey of 1,000+ years of thought
- By Roger on 11-07-23
By: Charles Freeman
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Alice
- Alice Roosevelt Longworth, from White House Princess to Washington Power Broker
- By: Stacy A. Cordery
- Narrated by: Alex Picard
- Length: 19 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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From the moment Teddy Roosevelt's outrageous and charming teenage daughter strode into the White House—carrying a snake and dangling a cigarette—the outspoken Alice began to put her imprint on the whole of the twentieth-century political scene. Her barbed tongue was as infamous as her scandalous personal life, but whenever she talked, powerful people listened, and she reigned for eight decades as the social doyenne in a town where socializing was state business.
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Interesting but sometimes infuriating
- By Info Seeker on 05-16-23
By: Stacy A. Cordery
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The Missing Thread
- A Women's History of the Ancient World
- By: Daisy Dunn
- Narrated by: Daisy Dunn, Jenny Funnell
- Length: 17 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Around four thousand years ago, the mysterious Minoans sculpted statues of topless women with snakes slithering on their arms. Over one thousand years later, Sappho wrote great poems of longing and desire. For classicist Daisy Dunn, these women—whether they were simply sitting at their looms at home or participating in the highest echelons of power—were up to something much more interesting than other histories would lead us to believe. Together, these women helped to make antiquity as we know it.
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Not quite what I expected
- By havanese lover on 01-13-25
By: Daisy Dunn
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How the World Made the West
- A 4,000 Year History
- By: Josephine Quinn
- Narrated by: Alix Dunmore
- Length: 15 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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In How the World Made the West, Josephine Quinn poses perhaps the most significant challenge ever to the “civilizational thinking” regarding the origins of Western culture—that is, the idea that civilizations arose separately and distinctly from one another. Rather, she locates the roots of the modern West in everything from the law codes of Babylon, Assyrian irrigation, and the Phoenician art of sail to Indian literature, Arabic scholarship, and the metalworking riders of the Steppe, to name just a few examples.
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Middling
- By Amazon Customer on 11-14-24
By: Josephine Quinn
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The Eagle and the Hart
- The Tragedy of Richard II and Henry IV
- By: Helen Castor
- Narrated by: Helen Castor
- Length: 20 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Richard of Bordeaux and Henry of Bolingbroke, cousins born just three months apart, were ten years old when Richard became king of England. They were thirty-two when Henry deposed him and became king in his place. Now, the story behind one of the strangest and most fateful events in English history (and the inspiration behind Shakespeare’s most celebrated history plays) is brought to vivid life by the acclaimed author of Blood and Roses, Helen Castor.
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A thrilling read
- By Rich C on 11-30-24
By: Helen Castor
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The Wages of Destruction
- The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy
- By: Adam Tooze
- Narrated by: Adam Tooze, Simon Vance
- Length: 30 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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An extraordinary mythology has grown up around the Third Reich that hovers over political and moral debate even today. Adam Tooze's controversial book challenges the conventional economic interpretations of that period.
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Book is good but contains bias
- By Heinz-Jürgen MacSwain on 01-29-24
By: Adam Tooze
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Every Living Thing
- The Great and Deadly Race to Know All Life
- By: Jason Roberts
- Narrated by: David de Vries
- Length: 14 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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In the eighteenth century, two men—exact contemporaries and polar opposites—dedicated their lives to the same daunting task: identifying and describing all life on Earth. Carl Linnaeus, a pious Swedish doctor with a huckster’s flair, believed that life belonged in tidy, static categories. Georges-Louis de Buffon, an aristocratic polymath and keeper of France’s royal garden, viewed life as a dynamic swirl of complexities. Each began his task believing it to be difficult but not impossible: How could the planet possibly hold more than a few thousand species—or as many could fit on Noah’s Ark?
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Fascinating history of scientific thought
- By Candy Dan on 06-10-24
By: Jason Roberts
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The Notebook
- A History of Thinking on Paper
- By: Roland Allen
- Narrated by: Mark Elstob
- Length: 10 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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We see notebooks everywhere we go. But where did these indispensable implements come from? How did they revolutionize our lives? And how can using a notebook help change the way you think? In this wide-ranging history, Roland Allen reveals how the notebook became our most dependable and versatile tool for creative thinking.
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A fascinating look at an often overlooked powerful tool.
- By Andrew Darlow on 12-28-24
By: Roland Allen
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Kingmaker
- Pamela Harriman's Astonishing Life of Power, Seduction, and Intrigue
- By: Sonia Purnell
- Narrated by: Louise Brealey
- Length: 16 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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When Pamela Churchill Harriman died in 1997, the obituaries that followed were predictably scathing–and many were downright sexist. Written off as a mere courtesan and social climber, her true legacy was overshadowed by a glamorous social life and her infamous erotic adventures. Much of what she did behind the scenes–on both sides of the Atlantic–remained invisible and secret. That is, until now: with a wealth of fresh research, interviews and newly discovered sources, Sonia Purnell unveils for the first time the full, spectacular story of how she left an indelible mark on the world today.
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Pamela reigns! But.....
- By Lucy Johnson on 11-30-24
By: Sonia Purnell
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The Crusades
- The Authoritative History of the War for the Holy Land
- By: Thomas Asbridge
- Narrated by: Derek Perkins
- Length: 25 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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The Crusades is an authoritative, accessible single-volume history of the brutal struggle for the Holy Land in the Middle Ages. Thomas Asbridge - a renowned historian who writes with "maximum vividness" (Joan Acocella, The New Yorker) - covers the years 1095 to 1291 in this big, ambitious, listenable account of one of the most fascinating periods in history.
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Comprehensive
- By Tad Davis on 10-04-16
By: Thomas Asbridge
Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?
Absolutely. I can't imagine a better introduction to the seductive world of illuminated manuscripts.What did you like best about this story?
Each manuscript has a fascinating back story, and de Hamel covers each one in detail. From a looted Nazi hoard to a dusty volume hidden inside a wall.What does Christopher de Hamel bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?
I am easily seduced by a British accent, but de Hamel is a natural story teller. There's not the slightest hint that he's reading from a text. When he's in a library looking at the actual manuscript, you feel like you're there with him, turning the pages.Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?
Not cry, no. But sometimes chuckle. And often just feel the wonder of such amazing books and how they survived.Any additional comments?
Lamentably, this audiobook does not come with a supplementary Pdf containing the illustrations. And you really need to see the illustrations! So I bought the iBooks version as well (for a total cost still less than the hardcover). The iBooks version has very good quality color illustrations which you can enlarge on iPhone or iPad to view the details. Mainly, I viewed the illustrations (which are numerous) while listening to the audiobook -- an ideal way to experience this book.I've been waiting a long time for a book like this
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A wonderful adventure with a “Paleographer”
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Caressed by a Manuscript
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Marvelous. Informative, passionate, funny.
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