The Blavatnik Honresfield Library saved for the nation

The Friends of the National Library have launched a special publication about the purchase and subsequent donation to more than seventy UK libraries:

The Blavatnik Honresfield Library saved for the nation

Publisher: Friends of the National Libraries

ISBN: 9781399957496

Paperback (12 Oct 2023)

This commemorative book tells the extraordinary story of one of the most dramatic funding battles in the art world—a battle fought successfully by a small charity to save a national literary treasure trove. It is a dizzying tale of secret books, a reclusive collector, a hero tycoon, and of money, literature and philanthropy combining with a cast of large characters in an epic fight against the odds to secure an ending as triumphant as any adventure story that Sir Walter Scott might have penned. And like all the best stories, at its heart lies brilliant plotting, imagination, narration and the power of the written word. Thank goodness that, in basic Hollywood parlance, in this drama the good guys do finally win, the hidden treasure is saved and given out as a reward to those who most need and deserve it in the wider Kingdom. But I am getting ahead of myself and need to tell this in the slow and explanatory manner merited by a wondrous historic library of manuscripts and printed books created by some of the greatest British poets and storytellers the world has ever known.

Copies are available from Hatchards (London) and Blackwell's Rare Books in Oxford. Not online yet, as far as we know.

More information about the launch on the FNL's X timeline.