St. Aelred of Rievaulx has become a best seller with his Spiritual Friendship, the Mirror of Charity and other works on prayer and the Christian life. Here he turns his hand to history, writing a Life of Saint Edward the Confessor which was to circulate widely for hundreds of years.

Neglected in more recent years, the text is now available in English for the first time. It tells us not so much about the shadowy figure of Edward - England's last great Saxon king, still remembered today as the founder of Westminster Abbey - as about later medieval devotion to him.

On this text were based the prayers and hymns to St. Edward used in medieval and modern worship.

Through Aelred's engaging narrative we learn not only of the legends associated with an eleventh century saint, but also how a great Christian mystic viewed the ideal of Christian kingship, an ideal which speaks to every age, including our own.