Nicolas Barker grew up in Cambridge, surrounded by books. The University Library taught him about their history, and the University Press taught him how to print them. He started his own press aged fourteen, but after graduating from Oxford in 1957 went into publishing, working for Rupert Hart-Davis, Macmillan’s and the Oxford University Press. He also wrote for the TLS and The Book Collector, of which he became editor in 1965 and retired from in 2016. In 1976 he became first Head of Conservation of the new British Library, retiring in 1992. Since then he has been Libraries Adviser to the National Trust, and consultant to the House of Commons, the Rosenbach, Pierpont Morgan and many other libraries. He was Visiting Professor at University of California between 1986 and ’87, and was elected Fellow of the British Academy in 1998. He has written or edited over thirty books, most recently The Roxburghe Club: A Bicentenary History (2012).