My latest free-to-read post over on ‘All Old Strange Things’ is a bit of a detective story - where I track down (with invaluable assistance from @glosbio.bsky.social) the story behind a rather strange bookplate… open.substack.com/pub/drfrancisyoung/p/a-bookplate-speaks?r=1f2ejo&utm_medium=ios

April 06, 2026 - 09:17 UTC

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I don't think it's a real script at all, certainly not actual Tibetan - there's no horizontal headline to join it all together, the consonant stacking is completely random, the vowel marks are absent or meaningless, and the letter proportions are all over the place.
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That doesn’t surprise me - my guess would be it’s something copied from a Theosophist book
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It's not Lantsa/Ranjana either. Nor any of the magical alphabets.
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Thank you very much for the thanks & acknowledgement.

A response to a random appeal for further information has led to a fall into a fascinating biographical rabbit-hole (or sinkhole as now said) which may lead to hitherto unknown sub-cultures & social circles in mid-20thC Lincolnshire &...
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...elsewhere.

Re Edley-Morton's higher education, online sources show he gained a Geography Diploma from Oxford Uni in 1914, Geography Degree from UCL in 1921 & the same year completed Part I of the Cambridge Uni Geographical Tripos (as a 'Non-Collegiate')

As for the bookplate design, as a...
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It is the mantra 'Om mani padme hum' in Tibetan, albeit missing the vowel markings over 'ni' & 'me'. The little dots between the letters are 'tsek', which separate syllables, & the long vertical bar at the end is a 'shad' (like a period).
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Thank you!
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You (inexplicably) omit mention of his college at Oxford; the three chevrons brought Merton immediately to mind, but the hatching doesn’t indicate any variation between the dexter and sinister sides of the chevrons, which might rule that college out.
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I don’t have information on which college he was at
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I asked my in laws - FIL went to Stamford, MIL’s dad taught there - but they’re both slightly too late to have known him
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