THE SUNDAY SNAP

Bibliophilia and the smell of old leather

A fat brown box arrived on the doorstep this week, lined with bubble wrap and full of old books. Specifically, all 12 volumes of the Chronicles of Jean Froissart, in an 1809 binding, the tan leather battered and the pages a little foxed but in perfectly good nick for my purposes.

I need Froissart because I’m about to start work on the sequel to my novel Essex Dogs. This second book in the trilogy is called Wolf Moon and it is a trip into the nightmare of a fourteenth-century city siege: specifically, the 1346-7 winter siege of Calais. Froissart wrote about that episode, which is why I wanted an unabridged English translation of his great chronicle. But a full set of Froissart is a work that will sit in my library, used and loved in equal measure, until the day I retire or die. Which I hope will be the same day.

Anyway. Here are six of the books. Gorgeous things, which smell of dead skin and must. They’re going to sit on the same shelf as my (much newer) three-volume set of William Marshal’s History - another work I come back to again and again. And while I expect I could have found the bit I needed on archive.org for free, and saved myself about 400 quid, there’s not a bit of me that regrets this investment. Anyone who loves books - that’s most of us, I think? - will know what I mean.

This week on History, Etc, I’m planning to publish the third instalment in our occasional outlaw series, with a subscriber-only post on Reynard The Fox. There’ll be the Wednesday thread and the Friday episode of First Draft. As always, if you have any other requests, I’m all ears.

Enjoy your Sunday.

Dan x