(Re-)Reading Bede: an author and his audience

Each year, hundreds – perhaps thousands – read Bede’s Ecclesiastical History for the first time. Others reread it, perhaps after a lengthy break, or turn to another of his numerous works which they had not before opened. For the vast majority, the initial experience will be via a modern translation into English. In the case of the Ecclesiastical History, which is today by far the most widely read of his works, this will almost certainly be in one of the two paperback translations published respectively by Penguin and Oxford University Press.2