Venerable father of English history
From our UK edition
It might seem to some a bold move to base a book on any kind of journey at all when its hero entered the monastery at Wearmouth, Northumbria at the age of seven and, as far as we know, never left. Not that Bede was entirely parochial, distributing what was then an exotic luxury, pepper, amongst his peers on his deathbed. But his was essentially a virtual and vicarious world, reliant on a network of informants and an unrivalled library largely collected by its founder, Benedict Biscop, here memorably described as ‘the “millionaire” monk’, even if the more than 200 books we know Bede knew will seem small beer to most of us with bigger bookshelves.
