If God Spare My Life

illiam Tyndale (1494-1536) is one of history's most famous martyrs. Being out of sympathy with the contemporary English church and suspected of heresy, he left England in 1522 and matriculated at Wittenberg two years later where he got to know Luther. In 1525 he translated the New Testament and, by 1531, the Pentateuch. He had reached the book of Jonah when he was burned for heresy near Brussels. This account ties Sir Thomas More, newly named patron saint of politicians, to the betrayal and burning of Tyndale. The extraordinary feud between the two men is examined in detail and the book also includes portraits of Henry VIII, Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn and Cardinal Wolsey. Burnings alive, early printing, book smuggling, and the linking of More, "the man for all seasons" to the betrayal and execution of the most quoted writer in the language (84 per cent of the King James New Testament is word-for-word Tyndale) form the backdrop to one of the most astonishing lives in British history.