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Books

A lively, rebellious boy

17 September 2016

9:00 AM

17 September 2016

9:00 AM

It is one of the great set-pieces of high drama in English history. The king, shamed by his part in the murder of his one-time friend turned implacable enemy, the Archbishop of Canterbury, agrees to come as a penitent to the holy site of the archbishop’s death to seek forgiveness and, in a conspicuously unkingly gesture, to prostate himself at the martyr’s tomb.

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