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The boy-king Edward VI, last of the male Tudors, died while still a teenager, his plans for his country’s future soon to be overturned by his Roman Catholic half-sister Mary. Yet his reign has a significance in English history out of all proportion to its brief six-year span. During its course, England’s rulers spearheaded a religious revolution which propelled them into the heart of the European Protestant Reformation. They deliberately sponsored the destruction of a thousand-year-old devotional world, and they let loose an explosive new form of Christianity within the realm. This moulded the future identity of the English nation, created a shape for the Church of England which remains today, and inspired one of the foundation documents of English prose, the Book of Common Prayer, a key text in the development of one of the world’s most widely spoken languages.

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