Umberto Eco publicly acknowledged the debt he owed to the late William Weaver, who translated his books from Italian to English. “The Name of the Rose by Bill Weaver,” he remarked, “is a better novel than The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco.” The book sold millions of copies, was made into a film starring Sir Sean Connery, and earned Weaver enough money to build an extension to his Tuscan villa that he dubbed “the Eco chamber”.