William Tyndale looms so large over the early English Reformation that it’s easy to mistake him for a typical figure of the movement. In fact, he was one of its most distinctive and uncompromising voices.

In this episode, Dr Tony Watkins, our Fellow for Public Engagement, speaks with Alec Ryrie, Professor of the History of Christianity at Durham University. They explore the world that shaped Tyndale, the risks he ran to put the New Testament into English, and why his refusal to bow to Henry VIII’s ambitions left him more exposed than any of his fellow reformers.

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Alec Ryrie discusses:

  • why the Reformation shows so clearly that theology matters, and why its debates are still alive today
  • the long medieval tradition of reform that Erasmus and his followers inherited
  • how growing up on the Anglo-Welsh borderlands, and near Gloucestershire’s Lollards, might have shaped Tyndale’s passion for translation
  • Tyndale’s request to Bishop Cuthbert Tunstall for permission to translate: mischievous or naive?
  • how Tyndale stood “a step and a half ahead” of Cambridge reformers such as Robert Barnes, Thomas Bilney and Hugh Latimer
  • the interrupted printing in Cologne in 1525, the first complete New Testament from Worms in 1526, and why Antwerp became Tyndale’s base
  • the growing danger Tyndale faced from Thomas More, Bishop Stokesley and the Low Countries authorities
  • why Tyndale, unlike Cranmer and Barnes, refused to go along with the king’s marital adventures, and how that sealed his fate
  • Tyndale’s threefold legacy: theological, political and above all as a translator whose vivid, immediate English still echoes in modern Bibles

About our guest:

Alec Ryrie is Professor of the History of Christianity at Durham University and a Fellow of the British Academy. He was Gresham Professor of Divinity from 2018 to 2022. His books include The Gospel and Henry VIII: Evangelicals in the Early English Reformation, Protestants: The Faith That Made the Modern World, Unbelievers: An Emotional History of Doubt, The English Reformation: A Very Brief History and The Age of Hitler and How We Will Survive It.

September 24, 2026