17TH CENTURY ATLAS UNCOVERED AT BOOK SALE

The Christian Aid Week book sale at St Andrew’s and St George’s West Church was this year boosted by the discovery of one of the rarest books in its 46-year history.

The 1601 atlas An Epitome of Ortelius’s Theatre of the World was found in a bag of romantic paperbacks. It still has its original vellum binding and contains images printed on copper plates in Leiden, in the Netherlands. It was bought by Edinburgh University Library for £5000.

Among the other highlights of this year’s sale were a signed, limited first edition of T S Eliot’s Dante, first editions of the George Orwell novels Animal Farm and 1984, and a painting donated by Scottish artist Victoria Crowe.