Alan Noel Latimer Munby

Alan Noel Latimer Munby, called "Tim" by nearly everyone who knew him, was a later follower of M.R. James in the antiquarian tradition. His interest in rare books was first aroused by visits to booksellers in Bristol, near Clifton College where he was at school. Between 1935 and 1947 (except for during the Second World War), he worked in the book trade, at the antiquarian book dealers Bernard Quaritch, and in the book department at Sotheby's. After the war, he became Librarian of King's College, Cambridge, the college which had formerly been home to both M.R. James and E.G. Swain. He became an important figure in the librarianship community, and was made a member of the first ever British Library Board in 1973. Munby started writing ghost stories whilst a prisoner at Oflag VII B, a German prisoner-of-war camp near Eichstätt, after his capture at Calais in 1940. The Roman Catholic Bishop of Eichstätt, Michael Rackl, gave the prisoners access to his own printing press, and they produced a camp magazine called *Touchstone*, which contained three of Munby's tales as well as poems, illustrations and essays by other prisoners. The stories recycled Munby's own antiquarian interests and knowledge into escapist fantasy for his fellow soldiers. Later he had these tales, and others written in the same period, published as *The Alabaster Hand* (1949).