Jarrow

	The church of St Peter and St Paul at Jarrow

One of the most valuable documents we possess in English is The History of the English Church and People by the Venerable Bede, who is regarded as the foremost European scholar of his time. It is largely thanks to him that the BC/AD method of dating, invented some 200 years earlier by another monk, became the standard European chronology.

At the age of seven, Bede was given to the monastery at Jarrow/Monkwearmouth established only five years before by the Anglo-Saxon nobleman, Benedict Biscop. Thanks to Biscop's extensive travels, the monastery with two sites soon housed a library of 300-500 books, making it one of the main centres of learning in Britain - and Bede was just the man to profit from this. He became something of a polymath, writing works on science, music, history, biography and theology. He was a competent poet and a gifted teacher and his influence on England was profound - to the extent that he was given the name "Venerable" by subsequent generations.

In this film we visit the remains of the monastery of Jarrow, which include part of the church Bede knew, and tell the sad story of its rebuilding and abandonment.

I regard the film as something of a triumph: I got through it without once referring to Bede as "the Venemous Bede" - and if you don't know why that was a temptation, write to me and I'll be glad to tell you.