Why Libraries Matter
the deliberate destruction of knowledge throughout history
Richard Ovenden is author of Burning the Books.1
Richard Ovenden OBE, Bodley’s Librarian, Richard explores the deliberate destruction of knowledge throughout history and its urgent relevance today. (May 28, 2026).
Ovenden, Richard. 2020. Burning the Books : A History of the Deliberate Destruction of Knowledge. First Harvard University Press edition. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Tolkien, J. R. R., and Richard Ovenden. 2025. The Bovadium Fragments. Edited by Christopher Tolkien. New York, NY: William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers.
Tolkien, Christopher. 2022. The Great Tales Never End : Essays in Memory of Christopher Tolkien. Edited by Richard Ovenden and Catherine McIlwaine. Oxford: Bodleian Library Publishing.
The impulse to destroy always lurks in the background, but today's imperative to denigrate and demean the best of the past undermines our civilization more persistently than book-burning would.