SCA Annual Lecture 2021 with Richard Ovenden

We were delighted that this year’s SCA Annual Lecture was given by Richard Ovenden, Bodley’s Librarian and author of the recent book Burning the Books: A History of Knowledge Under Attack (2020: John Murray).

Richard describes the deliberate destruction of knowledge held in libraries and archives from ancient Alexandria to contemporary Sarajevo, from smashed Assyrian tablets in Iraq to the destroyed immigration documents of the United Kingdom’s Windrush generation. He examines both the motivations for these acts—political, religious, and cultural—and the broader themes that shape this history. He also looks at attempts to prevent and mitigate attacks on knowledge, exploring the efforts of librarians and archivists to preserve information, often risking their own lives in the process. Recorded 29 November 2021.