One of the smallest -- and best - books I have is a volume I found  in the SPCK bookshop near Winchester Cathedral "The Anglo-Saxon Passion".

I was thrilled to discover that this was written by a neighbour in Colebrook Street, the Reverend David Scott. David is the Rector of the parish with St Lawrence and St Swithun-upon-Kingsgate churches. He is a Canon of the cathedral and also one of Britain's foremost poets.

The volume interweaves four strands. Firstly David Scott tells how when tracking down some old prayers, he discovers them to be much more ancient than he imagined - eleven hundred years - and to his surprise that they originated right on his doorstep over a thousand years ago - collected together as 'The Book of Nunnaminster' and kept by the British Museum. These were prayers used by the nuns of the Winchester Abbey founded at the end of the reign of Alfred. The Abbey, St Mary's, was bounded by Colebrook Street and was very big, perhaps similar to Romsey Abbey, also a nunnery 

The second strand of the book is one of the nuns, thinking as she prays and works during the days and hours leading to the feast of Easter.

The third and most important element are twenty four prayers describing in detail the sufferings of the body of Jesus, using amazingly direct language. Then for each prayer David gives a commentary. In services still today he reads the prayers, still as vivid and powerful after a thousand years.

Image of Nunnaminster copyright Winchester City Museums

There are many ways to get an impression of what life and our past environment was like: perhaps by re-enacting actors, perhaps by carefully made models or drawings and paintings, or even by guides and archaeological sites. I think that this book is a perfect way, taking us directly into the mind of someone alive a thousand years ago, and through the prayers for the sorrow and suffering of Jesus and the disciples back yet another thousand.

David Scott found the prayers had been printed in Latin a century ago and with the help of a College Don he translated them into English. With knowledge of prayers of similar antiquity David makes the fascinating suggestion that even in the Latin they might represent the beginnings of Englishness captured in writing, something between the Celtic ("all heart, less mind" and the Roman ("all mind, little heart"). If so then perhaps the Book of Nunnaminster - at this moment part of the King Alfred Exhibition in the Winchester Discovery Centre - deserves a permanent place in the new Museum of English Language planned for Winchester?