whom it was written ⦠Nicolson takes one back to the Bible with a fresh eye and ear, which is not easily done these days.â
New Statesman
âThe story of the seven years between commissioning and printing fascinates from start to finish. It is told in a way which combines scholarship and entertainment.â
Independent on Sunday
âVivid, exhilarating, consistently intelligent, you can almost taste the air breathed by these Jacobean heroes, who gave English its most famous book. History at its best.â
SIMON JENKINS
âNicolson vividly evokes many aspects of Jacobean England: the secret police, religious passions, a profligate court, an atmosphere of emotional extravagance, splendid architecture, stained glass ⦠Adam Nicolson has deepened my understanding of the greatest work of English prose, for which I am grateful.â
Literary Review
CONTENTS
1 A poore man now arrived at the Land of Promise
2 The multitudes of people covered the beautie of the fields
3 He sate among graue, learned and reuerend men
5 I am for the medium in all things
6 The danger never dreamt of, that is the danger
7 O lett me bosome thee, lett me preserve thee next to my heart
8 We have twice and thrice so much scope for oure earthlie peregrination â¦
9 When we do luxuriate and grow riotous in the gallantnesse of this world
10 True Religion is in no way a gargalisme only
11 The grace of the fashion of it
12 Hath God forgotten to be gracious? hath he in anger shut vp his tender mercies?
B The Six Companies of Translators
P.S. Ideas, interviews & features â¦
If You Loved This, Youâll Like â¦
The making of the King James Bible, in the seven years between its commissioning by James VI & I in 1604 and its publication by Robert Barker, âPrinter to the Kingâs Most Excellent Majestieâ, in 1611, remains something of a mystery. The men who did it, who pored over the Greek and Hebrew texts, comparing the accuracy and felicity of previous translations, arguing with each other over the finest details of chapter and verse, were many of them obscure at the time and are generally forgotten now, a gaggle of fifty or so black-gowned divines whose names are almost unknown but whose words continue to resonate with us. They have a ghost presence in our lives, invisible but constantly heard, enriching the language with the âcivility, learning and eloquenceâ of their translation, but nowadays only whispering the sentences into our ears.
Beyond that private communication, they have left few clues. Surviving in one or two English libraries and archives are the instructions produced at the beginning of the work, a couple of drafts of short sections sketched out in the course of it, some fragments of correspondence between one or two of them and a few pages of notes taken at a meeting near the end. Otherwise
