Stolen literary documents 1


Reading the introduction to N Denhom-Young’s Richard of Cornwall (Oxford, 1947) I was reminded of my own paranoia at the possibility of losing my draft thesis to burglars. When I went away, I used to back up on two zip discs; hiding one in a suit pocket and giving the other to a neighbour. Denholm-Young writes that “all my notes towards this book and a draft of about a third of it were stolen from the Zurich-Chur express in the winter of 1938-9". So whilst the storm clouds closed over Central Europe, a robber bothered to steal these documents. Of course, Richard of Cornwall was also the only English King of Germany but did the robber really target these documents. It took poor old Denholm-Young the whole of the War to get his work rewritten and published. This triggered off another memory of a Central European stolen literary document; this time the crime took place on the shore of the Mondsee in Austria. Umberto Eco rested there after a journey down the Danube to the great abbey of Melk with his beloved. He recalls in The Name of the Rose that, after one tragic night, she left him taking his valued source book with her.

What does one do when an event like this happens? My first reaction would be to bury my head in my hands and burst into tears. In the end my thesis survived but I know, from the times when a long witness statement carefully dictated over many hours was wiped before typing, that I would pick my self up and start again. Or would I? Anyway I am glad that Denholm-Young and Eco both did.