Fifteen minutes later I was in a taxi on my way to Paddington station to catch the next train to Oxford.

Five

haven’t had an extended lunch break for, what, five years? So I’m taking one today.’

It did not surprise me. I have known quite a few librarians across the world, in major libraries and senior posts, and none has ever struck me as likely to take a long lunch, or even in some cases a lunch at all. It is not their way. So I was delighted when Fergus McCreedy, a very senior man at the Bodleian, suggested we walk from there up to lunch at the Old Parsonage. It was a warm, bright summer’s day and Oxford was, as ever, crowded. But in August its crowds are different. Parties of tourists trail behind their guide, who holds up a red umbrella or a pom-pom on a stick so as not to lose any of his charges and language-school students on bicycles replace undergraduates on the same. Otherwise, Oxford is Oxford. I always enjoy returning to my old city, so long as I stay no more than a couple of days. Oxford has a way of making one feel old.

Fergus never looks old. Fergus is ageless. He will look the same when he is ninety as he did the day I met him, when we were both eighteen and in our first week at Balliol. He has never left Oxford and he never will. He married a don, Helena, a world expert on some aspect of early Islamic art, they live in a tiny, immaculate house in a lane off the lower Woodstock Road, they take their holidays in countries like Jordan and Turkistan. They have no children, but if they ever did, those children would be, as so many children of Oxford academics have always been, born old.

I had not seen Fergus for a couple of years. We had plenty to catch up on during our walk to lunch and later while we enjoyed a first glass of wine at our quiet table in the Old Parsonage’s comfortable dining room. But when our plates of potted crab arrived, I asked Fergus about his letter.

‘As you know, I have a very good client who has set me some difficult challenges in the past few years. I have usually found what he wanted – he’s a very knowledgeable book collector. It’s a pleasure to work with him.’

‘Not one of the get-me-anything-so-long-as-it-costs-a-lot brigade, then.’

‘Absolutely not. I have no idea how much he’s worth or how he made his money, but it doesn’t signify, Fergus, because he loves his books. He’s a reader as well as a collector. He appreciates what I find for him. I know I have a living to earn and money is money, but there are some I could barely bring myself to work for.’

I meant it. I had had an appalling couple of years being retained by a Russian oil billionaire who only wanted a book if it was publicised as being both extremely rare and extremely expensive and who did not even want to take delivery of what I bought for him. Everything went straight into a bank vault.

‘So your man wants a First Folio.’

Our rare fillet of beef, served cold with a new potato and asparagus salad, was set down and we ordered a second glass of Fleurie.

‘I told him it was more or less impossible. They’re all in libraries.’

‘We have three,’ Felix said. ‘The Folger has around eighty. Getty bought one a few years ago of course – that was sold by one of our own colleges.’

‘Oriel. Yes. Great shame.’

Felix shrugged. ‘They needed the money more than the book. I can understand that. A small private library in London with a mainly theological collection, Dr Williams’s Library, sold its copy a year or so back for two and a half million. But that endows the rest of their collection and saves it for the foreseeable future. It’s a question of balancing one thing against another.’

‘If you had a First Folio would you sell it?’

Felix smiled. ‘The one I have in mind as being just possibly for sale does not belong to me. Nor to the Bodleian.’

‘I thought every one of the 230 or so copies was accounted for?’

‘Almost every one. It was thought for some years that apart from all those on record in libraries and colleges and a few in private hands, there was one other First Folio, somewhere in India. But almost by chance, and by following up a few leads, I think I have discovered that that is not the case.’

He helped himself to more salad. The room had filled. I looked at the walls, which were lined with an extraordinary assortment of pictures, oils and watercolours, five deep in places – none of them was of major importance but every single one had merit and charm. The collection enhanced the pleasant room considerably.

‘The Folio was mentioned to me in passing,’ Fergus said, ‘because my German colleague was emailing me about something entirely different, which we have been trying to track down for a long time – a medieval manuscript in fact. In the course of a conversation I had with Dieter, he said almost in passing something like, “They don’t know half of what they do possess, including a Shakespeare First Folio.”’

‘They?’ I said.

Fergus got up. ‘Shall we have our coffee on the terrace? I see the sun has come out again.’

SITTING AT A TABLE under a large awning, we were somewhat protected from the noise of the passing traffic on the Banbury Road and the coffee was first-rate.

Fergus took three gulps of his double espresso. ‘Have you ever heard of the monastery of Saint Mathieu des Etoiles?’

‘I didn’t so much as know there was such a saint.’

‘Not many do. He’s pretty obscure, though there are a couple of churches in France dedicated to him, but so far as I know only one monastery bears his name. It’s Cistercian, an enclosed and silent order, and very remote indeed, a bit like La Grande Trappe – high up among mountains and forests, in its own small pocket of time. In winter it can be completely cut off. There is a village some six miles away, but otherwise it’s as remote from civilisation as you can probably get anywhere in Western Europe. Oh and it also maintains the tradition of wonderful sacred music. A few people do visit – for the music, for a retreat – and the monastery is surprisingly in touch with what you might call our world.’

‘Most of them are,’ I said. ‘I know one in the Appalachian Mountains – remote as they come, but they are on email.’

‘When you think about it, the silent email suits the rule far better than the telephone. Now, a couple of years ago I had the good fortune to visit Saint Mathieu. They have one of the finest and oldest and best-preserved monastic libraries in the world. One of the ways they earn their living is in book restoration and rebinding for other libraries. We’ve used their skills occasionally. You’re wondering what all this has to do with you? More coffee?’

We ordered. The terrace was emptying out now, as lunchtime drew to a close.

‘The monastery, like so many, is in need of money for repairs. When your building dates from the twelfth century things start to wear out. They are not a rich order and the work they do keeps them going, but without anything over and to spare. They urgently need repairs to the chapel frescoes and the roof of the great chapter house, and even though they will provide some of the labour themselves, the monks can’t do it all – they don’t have the skills and, besides, many of them are in their seventies and older. So, after a great deal of difficulty, they have obtained permission to sell one or two treasures – mainly items which don’t have much reason to be there, and which sit rather oddly in a Cistercian monastery. For instance, for some strange reason they have one or two early Islamic items.’

‘Ah – so Helena comes into the picture.’

‘She does. So do we. They have a couple of medieval manuscripts, for instance – an Aelfric, a Gilbert of Hoyland. In each case it was thought only one or possibly two copies existed in the world, but Saint Mathieu turns out to have wonderful examples. They only need to sell a few things to pay for all of their repairs and rebuilding and to provide an endowment against future depredations. They’re pretty prone to weather damage up there, apart from anything else. They need to protect themselves against future extreme winters.’