Professor Michelle Brown, Lay Canon at Truro Cathedral, will be giving this year’s Benson Lecture, on Tuesday, April 18, at 7.30pm.

In it she will consider the forms in which the Celtic and Anglo-Saxon peoples of Britain first encountered the Bible, the beautiful copies of it that they produced - such as the Lindisfarne Gospels, the Ceolfrith Bibles and the Bodmin Gospels (Cornwall's earliest book) - and the impact that its teachings exerted upon society and its ethos, illuminating the far from 'dark ages.'

Michelle, who lives in Cornwall, is professor of medieval manuscript studies at the School of Advanced Study, University of London. She is a world authority on illuminated manuscripts previously holding the position of curator of illuminated manuscripts at the British Library (1986-2004). She is widely published and has been used as an historical consultant and on-screen expert on several radio and television programmes.

Michelle said: “With its vibrant prehistoric tin trade extending to the Middle East, Cornwall is likely to have been amongst the earliest places in Europe to have received news of Christianity. When the super-power of the Roman Empire collapsed it continued its ancient trade routes and kept the flickering flame of faith alive, to be fanned into a bright blaze by the intrepid men and women who set out from newly-converted Ireland in the late 5th to 7th centuries to inspire with their own 'Celtic' style of Christianity.”

Her lecture will focus on this early period when following an authentic Christian life meant radical changes - for society and for the individual as the Good News (Old English Godspel) swept through these islands. Many of these changes we still value and protect today.