Although Bede, the great Anglo-Saxon monk, scholar and historian, spent all his life in north-east England, his influence spread across Europe and gained him the title the ‘Venerable Bede’.

Bede was born in 673 in what is now Tyne and Wear in north-east England. At the age of seven he was sent to the monastery of Wearmouth-Jarrow, that he would ultimately become a monk. There, the Anglo-Saxon-speaking Bede learned Latin and Greek. In fact, he was to spend all his life at the monastery, which although isolated, was an outstanding centre of learning with a priceless library of over 200 books. There he became a deacon at the unusually early age of nineteen, a priest at thirty and, over the years, an increasingly renowned scholar and teacher.