I'm Vicki Hackett. I'm an actor and I often work with Riding Lights Theatre Company.

Riding Lights takes theatre with a spiritual heart to all sorts of communities all over the UK. One of our aims is to bring the Bible alive to people in a way that they can understand, wherever they are.

[Words from Riding Lights play extract:
"I'm reading the holy prophets!"
"Doesn't it make you sick?"
"This is the holy word of God!"
"I meant reading in a chariot…"
"No, I just wish I understood it more." ]

Until this appeared, almost nobody could understand the Bible. What makes this book so special is that it's one of the first copies of the New Testament printed in English and it dates from 1525. Believe it or not, this book provoked such an uproar that the man who translated it ended up in prison.

He was William Tyndale, a priest and a scholar. He lived during the reign of Henry VIII. Back then, the Bible was only available in Latin but Tyndale believed passionately that everyone should be able to hear and understand the message of Jesus for themselves. Not everyone agreed. The Church knew knowledge was power and Tyndale's work was very threatening to many people in the establishment. But he was determined to continue, so he left for the continent. Pages of his translation were printed abroad and smuggled home. As soon as they arrived they were seized upon, either by those who were desperate to read them, or by those who were just as desperate to destroy them.

Out of the first print run of 6,000 copies, only two survive today and this, the Tyndale Bible, is one of them. Now it is priceless. In 1535 it cost Tyndale everything: he was arrested, and after a year in prison, he was burnt at the stake as a heretic.

Tyndale knew how dangerous his work was, so why did he do it? Before he fled England, he said to a critic that "If God spare my life, ere many years pass, I will cause a boy that driveth a plough shall know more of the Scriptures than thou dost."

Tyndale can't have known how close his vision was to being realized. Within a year of his death, the first complete English Bible was licensed. The impact was massive. Anyone who could read English could now read the Bible for themselves, so now the task for Christians was to teach everyone to read.

For centuries the Church had taught the elite, but now it started to bring education to people from all backgrounds, not just through schools run by the established church but growing non-conformist groups like Methodists and Quakers and movements like Sunday School, founded to educate children on their day off from factory work. In communities up and down the country we can still see that link between church and education. In fact, one out of every five primary school children still attend a church school.

I doubt Tyndale could have guessed the effect an English Bible would have on our country but he clearly knew the difference it would make to people like me.

[Words from Riding Lights play:
" 'Mundum' - that means 'world'
"Oh Mr Tyndale, we thought you had given up on us!"
"Never!"]

The desire to make the Bible's message of hope and challenge accessible drove Tyndale to publish this book. To me keeping that same message alive is just as important today as it was for Tyndale five hundred years ago.