When Tim Munby was librarian at Cambridge University’s King’s College, he co-owned a 1925 type 40 Bugatti, “which was regularly taken to pieces by the roadside.” On one trip, when one of the car’s gaskets kept blowing, Munby had a few of his own rare manuscripts to hand. After a process of experimentation, the gasket turned out to respond to vellum. An old antiphonal that had been ruined by water was cut up and put to use,
