Cipher Mysteries

In his 1665 letter to Athanasius Kircher accompanying what we now call the Voynich Manuscript, Johannes Marcus Marci wrote [Philip Neal's translation]:- Doctor Raphael, the Czech language tutor of King Ferdinand III as they both then were, once told me that the said book belonged to Emperor Rudolph and ...

Just so you know, I'll be contributing a session to the London Rare Books School 2012, which is a yearly study week (this year running from 25th June to 6th July 2012) held at the University of London around Senate House, and intended to broaden participants' exposure to the widely varied aspects of the history of writing. Myself excepted ...

Where, you may ask, does that annoying word "Xmas" come from? Is it just a linguistic marketing ploy to get a blunt message across in fewer letters? Well... yes, sort of. But perhaps not quite in the way you think... In English, we write "Christ", but his name was originally "Χριστος" ...