John Dee — astrologer, alchemist and magus, one of the great characters of Tudor England — had the greatest private library in the western world. But when he was off on a European tour, it was pillaged by “friends” and the contents were lost. Some turned up in other collections over the centuries, but his library — like the ones of Alexandria, Constantinople, Cordoba and the Maya — is partly legendary. The libraries we have now are mosaics of knowledge: mere fragments of the libraries we have lost plus the knowledge we have acquired. The Royal College of Physicians has put on […]
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