Literary treasure hunts

Books illuminate our history, so we must protect them, says The Repair Shop’s Chris Shaw

Samuel Pepys’s self-incriminating diaries

Whether vestiges of paganism survived Europe’s Christianisation is a subject of enduring fascination. Scholarly debate navigates between the ‘maximalist’ position (much survived) and the ‘minimalist’

Making the best use of fabric scraps, rag rugs may have been born of exigency, but the creativity behind their intricately woven designs knows no bounds, discovers Matthew Dennison

The ‘Mona Lisa of manuscripts’, finally on view

How Old Norse mythology endured in the Christian era