William Tyndale’s Bible translations have been the best-kept secrets in English Bible history. Many people have heard of Tyndale: very few have read him. Yet no other Englishman – not even Shakespeare – has reached so many. . . . Astonishment is still voiced that the dignitaries who prepared the 1611 Authorised Version for King James spoke so often with one voice – apparently miraculously. Of course they did: the voice (never acknowledged by them) was Tyndale’s. Much of the New Testament in the 1611 Authorised Version (King James Version) came directly from Tyndale, as a glance at Luke 2 or most of Colossians or Revelation 21 will show (From the “Introduction” in Tyndale’s New Testament (in a modern-spelling edition with introduction by David Daniell), vii).