The view east towards the High Altar in Durham Cathedral. Beyond the altar stands the shrine of miracle-worker St Cuthbert (?635-687), for whom the cathedral was first raised in 1093; behind the viewer, at the west end of the cathedral, is the shrine of Cuthbert’s biographer and close contemporary St Bede (?672-735). Bede lived most of his life at the monastery of St Paul in Jarrow, now a suburb of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne. He spent his days in prayer (especially singing Psalms) and in the study of Scripture and the Church Fathers, becoming an authority on music, astronomy and theology recognised across the whole Western world, and a key figure in the ‘Northumbrian Renaissance’ that so invigorated Christianity on the Continent. The Psalmist might almost have been thinking of Bede when he wrote:

His delight is in the law of the Lord; and in his law doth he meditate both day and night. And he shall be like a tree that is planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season.