Dan Brown donates €300,000 to digitise mystical books that inspired him

Da Vinci Code author gives money to help the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica in Amsterdam put collection online

Dan Brown, whose hero Robert Langdon is able to crack ancient codes with ease, has donated €300,000 (£237,000) to the Dutch library whose priceless collection of antique manuscripts helped inspire his bestselling thrillers.

Brown’s gift to Amsterdam’s Ritman Library, which is also known as the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica, will go towards digitising and preserving its core collection so that the texts might be viewable online by the public. The library holds around 4,600 manuscripts and books that were printed before 1900, and about 20,000 printed after 1900, covering topics including alchemy and mysticism.

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