chairman of this enormous business. He was actually chairman during the
important years 1915-1920, and remained a director until 1926.

His intellectual energy was so great that throughout his life he found
time for scholarship as well as business. He travelled for his firm in
Europe and South America; and in the intervals of negotiating with
foreign governments studied manuscripts wherever he found a library. His
researches in the Vatican Library were of special importance, and in
connection with them he received a gold medal from the Pope; he was also
decorated by the Italian, Turkish and Japanese governments.

His scholastic interests included archæology, folklore, palæography,
mediæval history, architecture and church music; and he was a collector
of missals. Towards the end of his life he was made an Honorary Fellow
of Hertford College, Oxford, Honorary Reader in Palæography to Durham
University, and Honorary Librarian to the Chapter Library of Durham
Cathedral, which he left one of the best cathedral libraries in Europe.
He died at Durham in 1932.

Apart from _The Lost Stradivarius_, Falkner was the author of two other
novels, _The Nebuly Coat_ (1903--also published in Penguin Books) and
_Moonfleet_ (1898). He also wrote a History of Oxfordshire, handbooks to
that county and to Berkshire, historical short stories, and some
mediævalist verse.