From Britain to Byzantium

My choice of title calls for a word of explanation – perhaps of apology. When I opted to discuss the study of Greek manuscripts I was thinking particularly about the pioneering days of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and I hoped to find out what sort of imaginative impression was made on classical scholars of the time by Byzantine culture in the shape of its books. What I have found is plenty of evidence to reinforce my sense that this was indeed an exciting and even heroic period, when scholars attached enormous importance to tracking down manuscripts, and lavished a great deal of money and effort on travelling to find them and make collations or to acquire them for their own collections.