Christopher de Hamel in conversation – Daunt Books

Daunt Books welcome Christopher de Hamel to speak about his magnificent new book The Migrants.

Christopher de Hamel is one of the world’s best-known scholars and writers on illuminated manuscripts. This book magically recalls his childhood discovery of manuscripts growing up in remote New Zealand – an evocation of the thrill and wonder of that first, life-changing encounter – and about the history of empire and colonisation at the world’s last frontier.

The Migrants explores the meeting and creation of cultures, the necessity of collecting and the nature of authenticity, the importance of history in the last nation ever settled by humans, and, above all, the migration of people, art and heritage. We meet the colonial governor on his paradise island, the shipwrecked accountant, the evangelical nonagenarian who cut up manuscripts, the drug-addled magnate who bought Becket’s Boethius, and the settler who inscribed his Book of Hours in the Maori language in 1842. We travel with the author back to where the manuscripts were made, from Besançon in eastern France to Poland and Canterbury, revealing their first owners and following the longest journeys ever undertaken by people or books.

Ticket includes a glass of wine or soft drink.

Find out more here.