The Most Dangerous Man in Tudor England
William Tyndale
Melvyn Bragg
Prison Cell
500 years ago, this was the scene of a primitive and horrifying execution.
In 1536, an English priest and one of its very greatest scholars, was led from this cell to a nearby bridge, tied to a stake, wood piled
around him and burnt to death.
His crime was translating the Bible into English. His name was William Tyndale. Today, many have never even heard of him, yet this
man's legacy lives on in every English-speaking country.
Tyndale's influence is immeasurable. His translation of the Bible fuelled a Protestant ascendancy that went throughout the world. The
biblical ideas that he released into the common tongue fired the English Reformation. And his genius, now acknowledged, makes him, alongside
Shakespeare, one of the co-creators of the modern English language.
Tyndale's words and phrases have shaped the way we express ourselves and what we believe. Yet he's been written out of history,
perhaps because of the savage truths his story reveals about the men and women who dominated Tudor England.
William Tyndale
Melvyn Bragg
William Tyndale was a matchless scholar whose heroic life of principle took on the great forces of Henry VIII with only an army of
words and proved him to be a hypocrite, a bully and a tyrant. Henry VIII retaliated by trying to hunt him down and have him killed.
I think that William Tyndale is one of the greatest men in English history. And in this film, I'm going to uncover his remarkable story.
It's a quest that reveals a courageous pioneer who wanted to see the word of God accessible to everyone, from ploughboy to monarch. But his
work was thought to be an act of revolution, feared by kings and statesmen and bishops alike, who believed it would cause the status quo
to be ripped apart. In the longer term, they were right.
This is a story of 16th-century espionage. The burning of heretics and sympathisers who risked their lives to get the word of God
into English homes. It's a story of a man who was hounded out of his own country and spent most of his adult life on the run, in exile.
Yet no-one in history has changed our language as he did. No-one has had the impact on it, which released imagination, shaped thought
and reconsidered belief.
So, who was William Tyndale and why did his work strike fear into the hearts of England's most powerful men?
