- Talk
- Arts & Culture
- Manchester
- 28 October 2026
“O Lord, Open the Eyes of the King of England”
500 years since William Tynedale was martyred for translating the Bible into English
28 October 2026
6:30pm - 8:00pm
Manchester M2 1NL
Cross Street Chapel
Cross Street,
Manchester M2 1NL
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£15.00 General Admission / £6.00 Students / Members book for FREE
Wheelchair accessible
Overview
In October 1526, book browsers outside St Paul’s Cathedral were shocked when a large run of a 700-page anonymous volume appeared. It was a first – a Bible in English – and it came courtesy of William Tyndale, who had been forced to go to Worms in Germany to get it published.
It was then illegal for the Bible to be in English, and copies had been smuggled into England hidden in bales of cloth. They were soon being burned outside St Paul’s. Those caught in possession were made to ride seated backwards on a donkey wearing boards on which the pages of the offending work were pasted. They then had to throw the boards into a fire as a warning of their own fate should they continue reading the banned translation.
Ed Glinert of New Manchester Walks and author of “Manchester: The Biography” relates the terrifying story on the 500th anniversary of the events.
Practical Information
The talk includes a Q&A session.
Booking is essential. Lit&Phil members: we recommend logging into the website to make booking your free member ticket quicker and easier.
Accessibility Information
The venue is wheelchair accessible with an accessible toilet on the ground floor. Please contact us regarding any specific accessibility requirements you may have by emailing events@manlitphil.ac.uk
Ed Glinert
Ed Glinert is one of the country’s most prolific tour guides, who has completed some 5,000 tours in the Manchester area. He is an expert in Manchester history whose research has uncovered a number of inconsistencies regarding accepted stories about the city, including the origins of the name “Manchester”, the reasons behind the choice of a slave ship and the purpose of the three stripes on the city’s coat of arms, whether or not Rolls and Royce did indeed meet at the Midland Hotel, why the pillar box on Corporation Street is NOT the one that survived the 1996 bomb, and where Marx and Engels really did write The Communist Manifesto.
He has been a journalist since 1981, most notably on Private Eye in the 1990s. He is a much-published author with books for Penguin, HarperCollins, Bloomsbury and other major names. His Manchester Compendium (Penguin, 2008), a street-by-street, building-by-building guide to the city, is due to be joined in November by Manchester: The Biography, the first ever epic, detailed history of the city – from pre-Roman times till today. Glinert is also an Arts Society lecturer and a cruise ships speaker.