Burning the Books: A History of the Deliberate Destruction of Knowledge

"Well, the delight of this is, firstly, it’s by someone who isn’t actually in what you might call a formal academic historian job. Librarians can often be treated rather as second class citizens by historians because they’re the people who often seem to be stopping you getting the books while you’re drumming your fingers on the desk, waiting for them to arrive. But what Richard does is to take the experience of being a librarian, and the most senior sort of librarian you can get, and use that as part of the fabric of the book. And he’s constantly, unashamedly, delightedly referring to one particular library, Bodley’s library in Oxford, and the book is full of delightful illustrations of Bodley. But that’s against the background of the theme, which could be so depressing and in many parts of the book is depressing—destroying books. There is a slight consolation about the picture, that the process of destruction has been so long, going right back to the Sumerians. It’s not a book that’s simply about some of the awful things that happened in the 20th century. It’s showing the constant impulse among the powerful to destroy stories that are inconvenient to them, but also a constant impulse, maliciously, to destroy the memory and identity of those who you’re fighting against. Some of the most horrible stories really are 20th century. There’s a really depressing chapter about the university library of Leuven which has been destroyed twice in the 20th century. It was a calculated atrocity in the First World War by German soldiers. They deliberately set fire to it. And then the same thing happened again during the Blitzkrieg in 1940 in the Second World War. This time the Germans were a bit embarrassed and tried to claim that the British had filled the library with gasoline, which happened to be hit by bombs—not convincing. That library has been destroyed twice, but restored twice. There is a superb library again in Leuven. “There’s a theme all through this of heroism, and it’s the unheroic heroism of librarians who quietly fight—librarians have to be quiet all the time—against the destruction” Another story this book tells is the horrific, calculated destruction of the National Library in Sarajevo during the Bosnian War. And it’s told in all its horror. Again, there’s a story of patient, heroic rebuilding, against very considerable political odds and against forces which didn’t want to see that library restored. There’s a theme all through this of heroism, and it’s the unheroic heroism of librarians who quietly fight—librarians have to be quiet all the time—against the destruction. And there’s a very touching chapter on librarians fighting back against the Nazis destroying Jewish libraries. So the book ends on a positive note, and it’s just full of wit and personal experience. They’re all must-reads!"