The False Virgin

The Programme

Prologue; In which Karen Maitland tells how a grisly discovery in St Oswald’s Church in Lythe, near Whitby, turns a Saxon princess into a venerated saint.

Act One; In which Susanna Gregory and Simon Beaufort tell how Beornwyn’s hand is stolen from Lythe by two unscrupulous thieves in the year 1200, and taken to drought-stricken Carmarthen. A violent thunderstorm follows… and so does murder.

Act Two; In which Nick Zuliani and his grand-daughter Katie travel to a Greek island on a mission for the Doge of Venice, and encounter murder and the cult of virgin saint Beornwyn.

Act Three; In which Philip Gooden describes how John of Gaunt’s Thames-side place is shaken by a murder linked to a poem about Saint Beornwyn, composed by Geoffrey Chaucer, Gaunt’s protégé.

Act Four; In which Bernard Knight tells how Saint Beornwyn led to a murder enquiry in 1405 in an obscure priory near the Malverns, which was resolved by Owain Glyndwr.

Act Five; In which Karen Maitland relates how a Master of the Butcher’s Guild is determined to conceal the guild’s valuable reliquary of Saint Beornwyn, to prevent Thomas Cromwell’s most feared enforcer from destroying it. But when Cromwell’s enforcer arrives in Sherwood Forest, murder follows in his shadow and threatens to destroy more than the precious relic.

Epilogue; In which Philip Gooden tells of an encounter between a dealer in saints’ relics and a Russian oligarch.