Genesis of genius

On its website, SPCK promises that its “Very Brief Histories” are “short, accessible, and written by world experts in their subjects”. Melvyn Bragg’s biography of William Tyndale is short and accessible, but its author – as he almost admits in the preface – is not an expert: he is an enthusiast. The reader thus gets an enjoyably pacy read, with plenty of one-sentence paragraphs to ramp up tension. Bragg’s often emotional experience of encountering Tyndale also features prominently. The last of eight glossy pictures in the middle of the book captures the author, in profile, staring solemnly through a window in the building that now stands on the site of Tyndale’s final imprisonment.