Publication date Thursday, September 12, 2024
Pre-order limited signed copy for despatch on publication.
Numerous saints were held to have lived, breathed and performed miracles across
Britain, from only decades after Christ's death, up to the eve of the Reformation, with all
of its consequent destruction.
In medieval narratives these saints are given nature's blessing: a salmon finds Cadog's handbook, the Thames parts for Alban, geese fill the sky to converse with Werbaugh.
Moreover they fit the medieval view of British history at large. St Cadog and King Arthur are contemporaries; St Mungo meets Merlin in the woods; St Alban is implicated in the
Roman persecution of Christians. And while there was no single history accepted across
its islands and diverse populations, these stories do enable us to reconstruct a long,
obsolete view on Britain's deepest past.
Through passages of narrative, deeply researched explanation and beautifully illustrated
by the author with thirty paper-cutouts, Saints retells stories that enjoyed centuries of
popular appeal among medieval Christians but were suppressed when their shrines were
destroyed. These stories embraced the darkness of their heroes: sinister saints who
sacrificed their followers and women who communed with geese, saints whose
decapitated heads spoke to wolves.