The book that sank on the Titanic and burned in the Blitz

A contemporary of that opinion was King Edward VII’s librarian at Windsor Castle, Sir John Fortescue. He was among the first to be offered the chance to buy the Omar but declined, later describing it as “the most eminent failure, perhaps, that I ever saw”, a work he found “absolutely inappropriate, ineffective and insignificant, and to me personally a positive distress”.