Richard joined the University of Oxford in 2003 from Edinburgh University, where he was Director of Collections, and has served as Keeper of Special Collections and Deputy Librarian before being appointed Bodley’s Librarian in 2014, and then Head of Gardens, Libraries, & Museums in 2022. He was awarded the OBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours in 2019. He is an active researcher, his recent book Burning the Books: A History of Knowledge under Attack was shortlisted for the Wolfson History Prize in 2021. He holds a Professorial Fellowship at Balliol College.
In his book Richard explains how attacks on libraries and archives have been a feature of history since ancient times but have increased in frequency and intensity during the modern era. Libraries are far more than stores of literature. Through preserving the legal documents such as Magna Carta and records of citizenship, they also support the rule of law and the rights of citizens. Today, the knowledge they hold on behalf of society is under attack as never before. His book explores everything from what really happened to the Great Library of Alexandria to the Windrush papers, from Donald Trump’s deleting embarrassing tweets to John Murray’s burning of Byron’s memoirs in the name of censorship.
At once a powerful history of civilisation and a manifesto for the vital importance of physical libraries in our increasingly digital age, Burning the Books is also a very human story animated by an unlikely cast of adventurers, self-taught archaeologists, poets, freedom-fighters — and, of course, librarians and the heroic lengths they will go to preserve and rescue knowledge, ensuring that civilisation survives.
