Book description
The King James Bible has often been called the Book of Books both in
itself and in what it stands for. Since its publication in 1611 it has
been the best selling book in the world, and many believe, had the
greatest impact. The King James Bible has spread the Protestant faith.
It has also been the greatest influence on the enrichment of the English
language and its literature. It has been the Bible of wars from the
British Civil War in the seventeenth century to the American Civil War
two centuries later and it has been carried into battle in innumerable
conflicts since then. Its influence on social movements - particularly
involving women in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries - and politics
was profound. It was crucial to the growth of democracy. It was integral
to the abolition of slavery and it defined attitudes to modern science,
education and sex. As THE ADVENTURE OF ENGLISH explored the history of
our language, so THE BOOK OF BOOKS reveals the extraordinary and
still-felt impact of a work created 400 years ago. Melvyn Bragg's
first novel, FOR WANT OF A NAIL, was published in 1965 and since then
his novels have included THE HIRED MAN, for which he won the Time/Life
Silver Pen Award, WITHOUT A CITY WALL, winner of the John Llewellyn Rhys
Prize, CREDO, THE MAID OF BUTTERMERE and THE SOLDIER'S RETURN, which was
published to huge critical acclaim in 1999 and won the WHSmith Literary
Award. He has also written several works of non-fiction including SPEAK
FOR ENGLAND, an oral history of the twentieth century, RICH, a biography
of Richard Burton, ON GIANTS' SHOULDERS, a history of science based on
his BBC radio series, THE ADVENTURE OF ENGLISH, 12 BOOKS THAT CHANGED
THE WORLD and SOUTH BANK: THE FINAL CUT. He was born in 1939 and
educated at Wigton's Nelson Thomlinson Shool and at Oxford where he read
history. He is President of the National Campaign for the Arts, and in
1998 he was made a life peer. He won an Academy Fellowship at the BAFTA
Television Awards in 2010.
