Both the title and the sub-title of Richard Ovenden’s fascinating book – Burning the books: a history of knowledge under attack – are somewhat misleading, because his story is as much about the heroic contribution libraries and archives have made to protect and preserve knowledge as it is about willful and systematic efforts to destroy it. No matter. There’s plenty here for those wanting to know about the destruction of the great library at Alexandria, the fate of England’s libraries following Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries, and the book-burning orgies of the Nazi regime. There’s also much about writers (Franz Kafka, Philip Larkin, Virgil) who wanted to see parts of their own works destroyed, and the executors and friends who (sometimes) defied their wishes.

It’s a tale with plenty of villains, of course. The forces , for example, who deliberately targeted the destruction of the National and University Library of Bosnia in 1992 deserve a special place in any record of infamy dedicated to cultural vandalism. There are heroes, too, and Ovenden is right to celebrate the librarians, archivists, scholars, and collectors who risked so much to protect the precious artifacts in their possession.

Ovenden, who is currently Bodley’s Librarian at the University of Oxford, has written an engaging and approachable work, and has achieved that rare thing of leaving the reader wanting to know more.