CUP signs 'outstanding' historian Robert Bartlett's book on manuscripts

Cambridge University Press has signed History in Flames: The Destruction and Survival of Medieval Manuscripts by historian and television presenter Robert Bartlett.

Publisher Liz Friend-Smith acquired world print and digital rights directly from the author. The book will be published in August. 

History in Flames focuses on the manuscripts from the Middle Ages and the cases in which they were destroyed by human action, examining the political and military events that preceded the destruction. From the Franco-Prussian War, the Irish Civil War to the Second World War, the book looks at material lost and the efforts made by scholars and archivists to preserve the manuscripts.

Bartlett is the writer and presenter of "The Plantagenets", "The Normans" and "Inside the Medieval Mind", and is professor of medieval history emeritus at the University of St Andrews. 

Friend-Smith commented: "Robert is one of the most outstanding historians of the medieval world, with a gift for communicating not just why history matters and is important, but also why it is interesting and often fun. We are very excited to work with him again on History in Flames, which looks at how and why some archives of historical writings survived, and some did not, and probes the very nature of our relationship with the past."