I'm Elena Jackson and I'm curator of illuminated manuscripts at the British Library and I'm going to be talking about the Linda Spahn Gospels today. Linda Spahn Gospels is an incredibly important manuscript. It was written and decorated more than 1,300 years ago. The manuscript contains the four gospels which are the biblical accounts of the life of Christ, the original text is in Latin and then there's also a translation which was added in the 10th century of the gospels into all English. And this is the earliest surviving example of the gospels in English. All the writing and all the decoration were done completely by hand by one individual who must have spent years and years of their life on it. And in fact even the paints and the inks to write it with would have had to have been made completely by hand. Later inscriptions say that the scribe who made the manuscript was Eadfreyth Bishop of Linda Spahn. Linda Spahn, a small island on the northeast coast of England, was home to one of the most important monasteries in Britain in the early Middle Ages. There's not that much art from that period that survives and what there is often looks every year of its age, whereas the Linda Spahn Gospels is in almost pristine condition. One of the reasons for that is because for its entire history it has been treasured and looked after because people have recognised that it's such an important spectacular manuscript. The Linda Spahn Gospels was made during a period of cultural transformation. The ruling people of Northumbria were mostly descended from Germanic speaking peoples who migrated from the North Sea coast of Continental Europe in the 5th century. They initially practiced a pagan religion, but the 7th century saw the introduction of Christianity to Northumbria. Irish missionaries moved in from the northwest while Roman missionaries came from the south. The mixing together of elements from these cultures is one of the striking features of the Linda Spahn Gospels. This page is a really good example of two of the influences coming together. It features an abstract depiction of a cross in a rectangular frame and the inside is completely filled with patterns which are drawn from different cultures and influences. We have this tangle of birds that go round like a maze and these are very similar to the types of birds that you get on metalwork from early medieval England such as Sun Who or the Staffordshire Horde. Then you also have these swirling spiral and trumpet designs and these are drawn from Irish influences that you get similar ones in Irish manuscripts and also on Irish metalwork. It might seem in today's world that multiculturalism is a new thing, but the Linda Spahn Gospels reminds us that our society has always been shaped by an ever-changing mixture of people and ideas.