Cipher Mysteries

I remember when I first saw the "Roger Bacon Manuscript": Wilfrid Voynich brought it with him to Philadelphia for his lecture back in 1921 - my old friend Bill Newbold was there, taking in every word, nodding like the crazy-but-brilliant spiritualist and Antioch-obsessed nutter he was. So it just had to be Bacon behind it all, right? I sat at the ...

Much as I enjoyed watching Micky Bet covering the Voynich Manuscript, I couldn't help but wonder how much better it would be had it had a slightly funkier script. So (courtesy of the kind people at Overstream) I added my own captions. Enjoy! :-) (If you can't see this in your browser or email client, here's a ...

If (like me) you enjoyed Roman Polanski's film "The Ninth Gate" (I happened to see it in a hotel room in New Haven, giving it a particular resonance for me) which I mentioned recently, you might think about reading the novel from which it sprang, Arturo Perez-Reverte's "The Dumas Club". Its main protagonist, Lucas Corso, gets described early on as ...

When the Voynich Manuscript misdecipherer William Romaine Newbold died, his friend & colleague Roland Grubb Kent decided to bring all his late friend's notes together into a book: this was published in 1928 by the University of Philadelphia Press under the title "The Cipher of Roger Bacon". If you'd like your own copy, Kessinger sell a modern print-on-demand reproduction of ...