The Library: A Fragile History
ANDREW PETTEGREE and ARTHUR DER WEDUWEN
(PROFILE BOOKS, 528 PP, £25)
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The Great Library of Alexandria was said to have contained everything that had ever been written. It was razed to the ground by Julius Caesar, or possibly destroyed by the emperor Aurelian; or perhaps the Caliph of Egypt burned its books to heat the public baths. Nobody really knows, but Andrew Pettegree and Arthur der Weduwen are inclined to think that simple neglect finished it off. Papyrus scrolls are susceptible to damp: without a careful curator, they perish.

 It was ever thus. Again and again, wonderful libraries are lost or dispersed, often when an heir cares less about them than had the dedicated collector. Poor Fernando Colón, son of Christopher Columbus, came closest to recreating the Alexandrian dream in Seville, having trawled Europe for more than 15,000 books. His nephew, unimpressed by this legacy, transferred the lot to a monastery, thence to the Inquisition. Today only 4,000 of them survive.

That, however, is a comparatively happy ending. Little wonder the subject of this magnificently researched and compendious book is described as fragile. Books succumb to dust, moth, bookworms, mice and rats: whole libraries are destroyed accidentally by fire, flood, shipwreck, volcanoes and earthquakes, and deliberately by piracy, looting, torching and bombing. One of Europe’s oldest and most distinguished libraries, at Louvain, was completely demolished by the advancing German army in 1914, violating Belgian neutrality and causing such international outrage that its restoration became a provision of the Treaty of Versailles. It was, indeed, rebuilt, but again reduced to ashes in 1940: this time a million books were lost.