Cipher Mysteries

Excitement surged loudly through Imperial College's Great Hall as the announcer belatedly bellowed those four terrifying words, signifying what for one side would be the beginning of the end: "Sssseconds out, Rrrrround One!" Danny grabbed Charles Hope's arm: "Am I going to be able to do this?", he asked. "Do you really think I've learnt enough to last five rounds... against him?" "Relax", said the ...

While searching for things to do with the humanist minuscule hand, I stumbled across a reference in a short 2002 paper by Jessica Wilbur to an oversized 1981 hardback by Jacqueline Herald called "Renaissance Dress in Italy : 1400-1500". Now, I thought, that sounds like a book I'd really like to buy: only to find out from ...

Once again, it's time to roll out and dust off the Cipher Mysteries crystal skull crystal ball (no, I didn't buy it on eBay, nor did I nick it from the British Museum) to peer dimly ahead to 2010. What will it bring us all? Of course, 2009's big news was the radiocarbon dating of four slivers of the Voynich Manuscript's ...

For the recent Hungarian Voynich summer camp, I offered to do a couple of IM sessions over Skype, both of which seemed to go down very well. I thought many Cipher Mysteries readers might enjoy going over the transcript, so here it is (lightly edited for house style, as usual, and with after-the-event section dividers to make it not quite so unwieldy). ...

Was the "Consecrated Little Book of Black Venus" really written by John Dee? I first saw this several years back, when I stumbled upon Joseph Peterson's transcription of it on the Esoteric Archives website. The link with Dee seemed (and still seems) to me to be spurious: even though he is mentioned right at the start of the text, for ...

A couple of VMs-related links for you today, one old and one new (but nothing blue, sorry): I thought I'd run them together for a bit of fun... Back in January 2005, the Independent on Sunday ran a piece called "Nudes, triffids and the mother of all riddles", a review of Gerry Kennedy & Rob Churchill's book "The Voynich Manuscript: ...

Day One of the Early Modern Research Techniques course was easy to write about, as was Day Two: but Day Three? Tricky... If I close my eyes, the single image from it burnt into my retinas is of Charles Hope sardonically half-warning participants about the historical Class A drug that is archival research. Yes, he personally had partaken of ...

A few errata and notes on the virtual pinboard, tacks don't have to be taxing... (1) Warburg librarian Francois Quiviger kindly points out that my description of the layout of the Warburg Institute (in the Day Two blog entry) wasn't totally precise: though the overall layout matches Warburg's arbitrary Mnemosyne plan, books within a section are arranged chronologically (or rather, ...

It's been a rollercoaster of a day for me at the Warburg Institute on the Early Modern Research Techniques course, like being given the keys to the world twice but having them taken away three times. I'll try to explain... Paul Taylor kicked Day Two's morning off in fine style, picking up the baton from Francois Quiviger's drily laconic ...

Every few days, I get asked to recommend a good introduction to the Voynich Manuscript (the 'VMs' for short). But each time this happens, my heart sinks a little: given the size and scope of historical research you'd need to have to properly grasp the subject, it's a bit like being asked to recommend a good 5-page encyclopaedia. Or rather, ...