Dissolution of the monasteries: Religion in ruins [audio 43min]

When he was an old man, Michael Sherbrook remembered in writing the momentous events of his youth:"All things of price were either spoiled, plucked away or defaced to the uttermost...it seemed that every person bent himself to filch and spoil what he could. Nothing was spared but the ox-houses and swincotes..." He was talking about the destruction of Roche Abbey, but it could have been Lewes or Fountains, Glastonbury, Tintern or Walsingham, names that haunt the religious past as their ruins haunt the English landscape. These were the monasteries, suddenly and for many shockingly, destroyed during the reign of Henry VIII. But was the destruction of monastic culture in England an overdue religious reform or the grandest of larcenies? Presenter Melvyn Bragg investigates the history of ideas and debates their application in modern life with his guests Diarmaid MacCulloch, Professor of the History of the Church at Oxford University; Diane Purkiss, Fellow and Tutor at Keble College, Oxford; and George Bernard, Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Southampton. Baron Bragg--historian, journalist, novelist--is Domus Fellow, St Catherine's College, Oxford; Chancellor of Leeds University; President of Britain's National Campaign for the Arts; a Governor of the London School of Economics; and Chair of Britain's Arts Council Literature Panel.