An Introduction to The Arcadian Library 1 by Dr Robert ... - Wolfsberg

An Introduction to The Arcadian Library 3
by Dr Robert Jones
themselves and with the massive resources at their disposal, will be hard on
our heals. Standing on the left of the picture is Professor Alastair Hamilton,
our academic advisor and the author of several of our books. It is ten years
since the Arcadian Library created his current post of visiting Arcadian
Professor at London University’s School of Advanced Studies, resident at the
Warburg Institute. Regrettably, he could not be with us today as he is just now
on a visit to some of the Coptic monasteries in Egypt.
Quite apart from their precise historical contents, antiquarian books have
always taken on a symbolic meaning explaining, as it were, why we are where
we are now. It was royalty and the nobility who in the past were the collectors
of these books; and many a country house is enriched by association with the
vision and breadth of mind that their libraries exude. For a visitor such as His
Royal Highness Prince Charles, Prince of Wales, who read History as an
undergraduate at Cambridge and has a special sensitivity for the culture and
arts of Islam, the library holds a deep fascination. He greatly appreciated a
visit he made just three days before his 60 th birthday, on his return to London
after the commemoration of Armistice Day at Verdun with President Sarkozy
on 11 November 2008.
4. Books more than any other medium have the ability to transport us to
another world, to take us back in time to earlier eras when very different sets
of criteria informed and shaped people’s lives. Not that history repeats itself in
any precise way. But some knowledge, at least, of 19 th -century books on
Afghanistan during the period of the so-called Great Game between Britain
and Russia, might, for example, raise awareness of the cultural context of
what we face today.
5. Aside from the combative aspect of our relationship – through the
Crusades, the Islamic conquest of Spain and its eventual fall, the rise and fall
of the Ottoman Empire, the conflicts of the Colonial period – aside from the
aggressions around the Mediterranean Sea and beyond, more than any other
medium, books can show us that there is an immensely productive and