There’s conflicting news about those ancient Malian manuscripts that were said to have been destroyed by Islamic militants fleeing Timbuktu. Reports coming out of the city suggest that many of these volumes were hidden away for safe keeping, so that the damage to the historic collections may be minimal.

The History of Material Texts seminar in Cambridge heard last week about another way in which fighting in Mali might have an impact on the transmission of texts. Bob Groser, the Bibles Production Manager at Cambridge University Press, revealed that the Press binds some of its most up-market Bibles in Nigerian goatskin–the classic ‘Morocco’ leather. He was watching the unfolding events and worrying about a possible disruption of trade-routes that might seriously affect the price and availability of the skins.

Something like this had, Groser explained, happened after the Japanese tsunami of 2011, which knocked out the paper mills that had been supplying the Chinese cigarette industry. All of a sudden the French mills which produce the kind of fine, opaque ‘Bible paper’ that you need to cram the text of Scripture into a small space redirected their energies to the Far Eastern fag trade–causing more headaches for CUP. (Apparently you can roll excellent cigarettes from a Bible–although Rizlas probably work out cheaper).

By the end of Groser’s talk, a CUP Bible had become a rather awe-inspiring transnational commodity, like your tablet or smartphone the product of an invisible network that spreads out across the globe. And there were many more juicy details along the way. Quite a lot of modern book leathers come from pigs, but CUP avoid pigskin, mainly because it’s infra dig–too lowly for the purpose (though why a goat or a cow should be more acceptable is not quite clear to me). And it turns out that you get just two bindings out of the average goatskin; the plentiful off-cuts go for reconstitution as bonded leather. And the binding is strongest if the spine of the book and the spine of the animal are aligned… the thought of which sends a faint shiver down my spine.