This special issue of the Bulletin of the John Rylands Library is dedicated to Peter Nockles. An expert on the Oxford Movement and the religious history of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Nockles was employed at the John Rylands Library from 1979 to 2016. During this time he extended his scholarly generosity and friendship to countless researchers. The issue features articles on a range of topics connected to Peter's scholarship and networks, including the Church of England (particularly High Churchmanship and the Oxford Movement), Catholicism, Methodism and Church-State conflict relating to the Church of Ireland.

The life of a slave in Virginia and his escape to Philadelphia.

This catalogue decribes in a detailed and systematic way the rich and varied collection of Turkish manuscripts preserved in the John Rylands University Library in Manchester.

Preparing for her husband's retirement from his parish, Michele Guinness, author of The Guinness Legend, decided to clear out the attic and in doing so rediscovered a trunk of letters, diaries, journals and notebooks, over one hundred years old, belonging to Grace Guinness, Peter's grandmother. Most famous for her unconventional marriage to renowned speaker and evangelist Henry Grattan Guinness, Grace's journals reveal an extraordinary woman who in many ways was before her time: a rebel against the constraints of her narrow religious upbringing, unconventional in her choice of husband, defiant of a society that frowned on a well-bred single mother going out to work, a businesswoman who ran her own hotel, and an early feminist who believed in birth control. She worked until she was in her seventies, read The Times every day, got through at least one book a week and could comment eruditely on politics, science, philosophy, theology, music and literature... This was a woman who wrote in a frank and sometimes risqué way about her life, love, hopes and fears, and encouraged others to break some of the taboos of their generation. In Grace, Michele Guinness weaves together the revealing contents of Grace's own words with her own to create a unique and inspiring interpretation of this remarkable woman's life and times.

The Smallest Book in the World takes the art of printing and bookbinding to an entirely new dimension of precision. German typographer Josua Reichert especially created a colorful alphabet for this tiny leather-bound ABC-picture book, exclusively produced in the traditional book city Leipzig where the idea was originally born. Measuring 2.4 x 2.9 mm, this is the smallest book worldwide in a published edition. The Smallest Book in the World is a remarkable object of desire, not only as a collector's item or for book enthusiasts' libraries.