The Book in the Cathedral
  • Published: 2 December 2025
  • ISBN: 9780141994246
  • Imprint: Penguin Press
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 64
  • RRP: $26.00

The Book in the Cathedral

The Last Relic of Thomas Becket

Formats & editions
Paperback
2 Dec 2025
EBook
6 Aug 2020
Hardback
20 Oct 2020
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The best-selling historian of medieval manuscripts discovers the most intimate surviving relic of Thomas Becket.

The assassination of Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral on 29 December 1170 is one of the most famous events in European history. It inspired the largest pilgrim site in medieval Europe and many works of literature from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales to T. S. Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral and Anouilh's Becket.

In a brilliant piece of historical detective work, Christopher de Hamel here identifies the only surviving relic from Becket's shrine: the Anglo-Saxon Psalter which he cherished throughout his time as Archbishop of Canterbury, and which he may even have been holding when he was murdered.

Beautifully illustrated and published to coincide with the 850th anniversary of the death of Thomas Becket, this is an exciting rediscovery of one of the most evocative artefacts of medieval England.
  • Published: 2 December 2025
  • ISBN: 9780141994246
  • Imprint: Penguin Press
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 64
  • RRP: $26.00
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About the author

Christopher de Hamel

In the course of a long career at Sotheby's and at Cambridge University, Christopher de Hamel has probably seen and catalogued more medieval manuscripts than anyone alive, and his delight and enthusiasm run through all he writes. He is the author of many books, translated into numerous languages, including A History of Illuminated Manuscripts, The Book in the Cathedral, and Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts, which won both the Duff Cooper Prize and the Wolfson History Prize. He is a Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.

Also by Christopher de Hamel

The Posthumous Papers of the Manuscripts Club
Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts
See all

Praise for The Book in the Cathedral

Readers will delight in de Hamel's passion for his subject, his book's sumptuous illustrations, and above all his virtuoso display of learning

John Guy, Literary Review

De Hamel - author of the wonderful Meetings With Remarkable Manuscripts - shows us all the tools of the bibliographer's trade: dating handwriting, identifying pigments, noting the rust marks left by nails from a now-lost ornate binding ... The identification - or rehabilitation - of his psalter, the book he carried with him into exile, possibly held at his death, is a timely and enjoyable tribute.

Dennis Duncan, The Guardian

Christopher de Hamel quotes Sherlock Holmes, as he might, in his latest bit of medieval detective work, showing that a book of the Psalms in a Cambridge college was once a treasured possession of St Thomas Becket ... grippingly told in The Book in the Cathedral.

Christopher Howse, Daily Telegraph