In his most recent book, The Posthumous Papers of the Manuscripts Club, Christopher de Hamel gathers, into the club, the people throughout history who have devoted their lives to manuscripts - scribes, monks and patrons, as well as collectors, curators and forgers. Using research and imagination, he brings them to life, taking the reader on visits in time and location, to discuss and share the delight in making and using illuminated manuscripts. We will visit castles, monasteries, synagogues, and museums, to meet fellow enthusiasts from Saint Anselm in the eleventh century to the mysterious American femme fatale Belle Da Costa Greene in the twentieth, all with stories and wonderful books to show. Followed by a book signing with The Little Ripon Bookshop.

For centuries, Ferdinand Magellan has been celebrated as a hero: a noble adventurer who circumnavigated the globe in an extraordinary feat of human bravery; a paragon of daring and chivalry. In his book Straits, Felipe turns that belief on its head; instead offering up a stranger, darker and even more compelling narrative than the fictional version that has been glorified for half a millennium. Straits untangles the myths that made Magellan a hero. Drawing on extensive and meticulous research into Magellan's life, his character and his ill-fated voyage, Filipe will prove that Magellan did not attempt - much less accomplish - a journey around the globe; and that in his own lifetime, the explorer was abhorred as a traitor, reviled as a tyrant and dismissed as a failure.

For centuries, Ferdinand Magellan has been celebrated as a hero: a noble adventurer who circumnavigated the globe in an extraordinary feat of human bravery; a paragon of daring and chivalry. In his book Straits, Felipe turns that belief on its head; instead offering up a stranger, darker and even more compelling narrative than the fictional version that has been glorified for half a millennium. Straits untangles the myths that made Magellan a hero. Drawing on extensive and meticulous research into Magellan's life, his character and his ill-fated voyage, Filipe will prove that Magellan did not attempt - much less accomplish - a journey around the globe; and that in his own lifetime, the explorer was abhorred as a traitor, reviled as a tyrant and dismissed as a failure.