Alan Noel Latimer Munby

Alan Noel Latimer ('Tim') Munby (1913–1974) was an English author, writer and librarian.

Born in Hampstead, Munby was educated at Clifton College[1] and King's College, Cambridge. He is best known for his five-volume study of the eccentric nineteenth-century book collector Sir Thomas Phillipps, and for his slim volume of ghost stories, The Alabaster Hand, which includes three tales written in Oflag VII B, a German prisoner-of-war camp near Eichstadt, during World War Two. These stories - 'The Topley Place Sale', 'The Four Poster' and 'The White Sack' - featured in a prison-camp magazine, Touchstone, edited by Elliott Viney, which was produced on a printing press owned by the Bishop of Eichstadt, Michael Rackl.

Munby worked in the antiquarian book trade with Bernard Quaritch, Limited (1935–37) and Sotheby & Company (1937–39, 1945–47). He became Librarian at King's College, Cambridge in 1947 and Fellow in 1948; he was J.P.R. Lyell Reader in Bibliography, University of Oxford (1962–63) and Sandars Reader in Bibliography, University of Cambridge (1969–70).[2] He was elected President of the Bibliographical Society in 1974 and died during his term of office.[3]

Munby's first marriage was to Joan Margaret Edelsten; his second marriage was to Sheila Rachel Crowther-Smith.[4]