Christopher de Hamel loves books, manuscripts, libraries, art, and people. All of this becomes clear in this remarkable work.
de Hamel is one of the preeminent experts on medieval manuscripts, and he speaks about how much he enjoys engaging with people who visit him, telling them about a particular piece, introducing them to the time period, paging through something created centuries ago that has its own history of creation and travel and ownership. So he decided to select 12 manuscripts he finds particularly interesting and set about traveling the world to visit them and share with his readers every detail of the experience.
One vicariously visits libraries and manuscript collections from Russia to California in the company of a very knowledgeable and engaging scholar. You see and smell and feel every detail of these places and then learn about who owned that particular manuscript and where it traveled, and why that is important or strange or miraculous.
The author is a delightful and funny companion. The illustrations are magnificent. I will never be able to see or handle these 12 manuscripts, but I read about them with attention and delight.