The Migrants

A Memoir with Manuscripts

Christopher de Hamel

$55

Hardback

Forthcoming
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English

Allen Lane
14 April 2026

History of art: Byzantine & Medieval art; Memoirs; History; Australasian & Pacific history; Medieval history; Colonialism & imperialism

A brilliant memoir of adolescence in New Zealand and of the migration of European manuscripts to the far side of the world

Christopher de Hamel is one of the world's best-known scholars and writers on illuminated manuscripts. He was mostly brought up in the south of New Zealand, where his family moved when he was four. This book magically evokes a childhood at vast distance from Europe, recalling his thrill and wonder in first encountering medieval manuscripts in libraries there and the realization that they too are migrants far from home.

The Migrants explores the immense journeys of books and people. It is a tale of colonization and the migration of culture - of motives and idealism, triumphs and disasters - bringing us face-to-face with history. We meet the colonial governor on his paradise island, the shipwrecked accountant, the nonagenarian who cut up manuscripts, the magnate who unknowingly bought Becket's Boethius and the early settler who inscribed his Book of Hours in the Maori language in 1842. We travel with the author today back to where these manuscripts began their own lives, through France and Poland and medieval England, discovering their first owners and following the longest journeys on earth.

This is a coming-of-age saga with extraordinary twists, crossing many hundreds of years and tens of thousands of miles, recounted with passion, humour and a lifetime's reflection.

By: Christopher de Hamel
Imprint: Allen Lane
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 240mm, Width: 156mm, Spine: 28mm
Weight: 500g
ISBN: 9780241670125
ISBN 10: 0241670128
Pages: 304
Publication Date: 14 April 2026
Audience: General/trade , Professional and scholarly , College/higher education , ELT Advanced , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

In the course of a long career at Sotheby's and at Cambridge University, Christopher de Hamel has probably handled more medieval manuscripts than anyone alive and his delight and enthusiasm in them run through all he writes. His many books, translated into numerous languages, include A History of Illuminated Manuscripts, Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts (winner of the Duff Cooper Prize and the Wolfson History Prize), The Book in the Cathedral- The Last Relic of Thomas Becket and The Posthumous Papers of the Manuscripts Club. He is a Life Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. He lives in London.