assassination

Illumination showing Becket’s martyrdom from a manuscript containing Alan of Tewkesbury’s Collection of St Thomas Becket’s Letters and John of Salisbury’s Life of St Thomas Becket, mid 1180s. Size (closed): 32.5 x 22cm

This week – Thomas Becket

With museums allowed finally to reopen next month, those of us who have been starved of culture are looking forward eagerly to the British Museum’s ‘Thomas Becket: murder and the making of a saint’. The exhibition, originally scheduled for last year, marks the 850th anniversary of the country's most famous political assassination – the grisly murder of the Archbishop of Canterbury on 29 December 1170 by four knights in the service of Henry II.