The tradition of illuminated manuscripts lasted for over a thousand years. The books were created by individuals or teams for uses as wide-ranging as private prayer aids, service books in churches, textbooks, and protective talismans to take into battle. Across all this variation, those tricky little drawings in the margins are a unique window into the minds of medieval artists. A rabbit attempts to play a church organ, while a knight fights a giant snail and a naked man blows a trumpet with his rear end. These bizarre images, painted with squirrel-hair brushes on vellum or parchment by monks, nuns and urban craftspeople, populate the margins of the most prized books from the Middle Ages. Michelle Brown explores the rich history and tradition of illuminated manuscripts.