The books of Richard III are typical of what was available to and popular with the medieval reader – religion, chivalry, history, genealogy, advice on how to govern, romance and prophecy – and allow us to draw an interesting overview of fifteenth-century opinions.

Each type of book is examined on its own terms and then related to the known preoccupations of Richard himself, his associates and to the political practices of his time. Containing valuable biographical material, insights into the history and politics of the later fifteenth century, and much detail on late medieval piety and other important aspects of contemporary culture, this fully illustrated survey has wide-ranging significance for all who study the history and literature of the medieval period.

‘Hilarious’ Sam Leith
‘I loved this book’ Susie Dent’
‘Witty and affectionate’ Lynne Truss

Perfect for book lovers, a delightful history of the wonders to be found in the humble book index

Most of us give little thought to the back of the book – it’s just where you go to look things up. But here, hiding in plain sight, is an unlikely realm of ambition and obsession, sparring and politicking, pleasure and play. Here we might find Butchers, to be avoided, or Cows that sh-te Fire, or even catch Calvin in his chamber with a Nonne. This is the secret world of the index: an unsung but extraordinary everyday tool, with an illustrious but little-known past. Here, for the first time, its story is told.

Charting its curious path from the monasteries and universities of thirteenth-century Europe to Silicon Valley in the twenty-first, Dennis Duncan reveals how the index has saved heretics from the stake, kept politicians from high office and made us all into the readers we are today. We follow it through German print shops and Enlightenment coffee houses, novelists’ living rooms and university laboratories, encountering emperors and popes, philosophers and prime ministers, poets, librarians and – of course – indexers along the way. Revealing its vast role in our evolving literary and intellectual culture, Duncan shows that, for all our anxieties about the Age of Search, we are all index-rakers at heart, and we have been for eight hundred years.

Charting its curious path from the monasteries and universities of thirteenth-century Europe to Silicon Valley in the twenty-first, Dennis Duncan reveals how the index has saved heretics from the stake, kept politicians from high office and made us all into the readers we are today. We follow it through German print shops and Enlightenment coffee houses, novelists’ living rooms and university laboratories, encountering emperors and popes, philosophers and prime ministers, poets, librarians and – of course – indexers along the way. Revealing its vast role in our evolving literary and intellectual culture, Duncan shows that, for all our anxieties about the Age of Search, we are all index-rakers at heart, and we have been for eight hundred years.

*A Financial Times and History Today Book of the Year*

In A Place for Everything, acclaimed historian Judith Flanders fascinatingly lays out the gradual triumph of alphabetical order, from its use as a sorting tool in the Great Library of Alexandria to its current decline in prominence in the digital age. Along the way, the reader encounters a wonderful cast of characters,from the great collector Robert Cotton, who catalogued his manuscripts by the names of the busts of the Roman emperors surmounting his book cases, to the unassuming sixteenth-century London bookseller who ushered in a revolution by listing his authors by ‘sirname’ first.

‘One of the many fascinations of Judith Flanders’ book is that it reveals what a weird, unlikely creation the alphabet is.’ Guardian