History in Flames

Robert Bartlett, CBE, FBA, is Professor Emeritus at the University of St Andrews. His books include The Making of Europe: Conquest, Colonization and Cultural Change 950–1350, which won the Wolfson Literary Prize for History. He has written and presented three television series for the BBC, “Inside the Medieval Mind” (2008), 'The Normans' (2010), and 'The Plantagenets' (2014).

• Preface; 1. Our Knowledge of the Past; 2. Libraries and Archives; 3. What Has Been lost?; 4. A Narrow Escape: Beowulf; 5. 'Away With the Learning of the Clerks!'; 6. Strasbourg, 24 August 1870: The Garden of Delights; 7. Bulin, 30 June 1922: The Public Record Office of Ireland; 8. Naples, 30 September 1943: The State Archive; 9. Hanover, 9 October 1943: The Ebstorf Map; 10. Chartres, 26 May 1944: The Municipal Library; Conclusion.

'We seldom consider how tenuous our knowledge of the past really is. Robert Bartlett's History in Flames is an essential contribution to our understanding of how the raw materials of the past - books and documents - are destroyed by the forces of subsequent ages. The past is not constant; we can only understand it through what survives, and Bartlett's unparalleled grasp of the Middle Ages gives a poignant sense for just how much has been lost, and what is at stake in the future.' Patrick Wyman, author of The Verge: Reformation, Renaissance, and Forty Years that Shook the World