by Esmé Partridge, The Critic
Every aspect of English national life owes something to Christianity
Circling around a Gloucestershire valley on a spring afternoon I recently came face to face with a tall stone pillar on the horizon. From across the ridge, it appeared at the highest point on the landscape, standing proud over the River Severn.
It was a monument dedicated to William Tyndale — the 16th century Protestant Reformer who first translated the Bible into English. Tyndale was, understandably, given a memorial of such proportions to mark the paramount contribution he made to his country: he brought scripture into the hands of the people, inspiring congregations and renewing the nation’s faith.
But what made Tyndale especially remarkable was his rendering of the Bible into a distinct, poetic vernacular. It is thanks to him that we have such idioms as “the apple of my eye” and “a wolf in sheep’s clothing”, at once capturing the solemnity of scripture and the playfulness of the English idiolect in a style that would influence Shakespeare and George Herbert.