A remarkable literary discovery in Rome has brought one of the oldest surviving works in the English language back into scholarly focus, as researchers from Trinity College Dublin uncovered a previously unknown manuscript of Caedmon’s Hymn, a seventh-century Old English poem believed to be the earliest surviving English poem.

The manuscript, hidden for centuries within the holdings of the National Central Library of Rome, contains a version of the famous nine-line hymn composed by Caedmon, an illiterate cattle herder from Northumbria whose story was first recorded by the medieval monk and historian Bede in the eighth century.

The discovery is being hailed by medieval scholars as one of the most significant literary finds in recent years, not only because of the poem’s age but because of the unique form in which it survives. Unlike older known copies, where the Old English text appeared only as marginal notes beside Latin text, the Rome manuscript places the Old English version in the main body of the manuscript itself evidence of the growing prestige of English as a written language during the early medieval period.

Researchers Elisabetta Magnanti and Mark Faulkner made the discovery while investigating conflicting records about manuscripts linked to Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, one of the foundational texts of early English history.Magnanti, a specialist in medieval manuscripts, requested the Roman library to check its archives for overlooked documents.

Library staff located the manuscript, digitised it, and sent the images to Dublin. When the scholars examined the pages, they immediately realised they had found something extraordinary.“When we saw it, we looked at each other and I said, ‘No one knows about this,’” Magnanti recalled. “To make sure I wasn’t dreaming, I double-checked the catalogues and there was no mention of it.

It was a huge surprise.”Experts believe the manuscript was copied by a monk in northern Italy sometime between AD 800 and AD 830, making it around 1,200 years old. It is now considered the third-oldest surviving version of the poem, following even earlier copies preserved in Cambridge and St Petersburg.The significance of the Rome version lies not only in its age but in what it reveals about language and literary culture.

According to Faulkner, the decision to place the Old English text within the central manuscript rather than on the margins suggests that English poetry had achieved a new level of importance among early readers.“The absence of the poem would have been felt by the readers,” Faulkner explained. “That is why it goes in.”The manuscript also offers fascinating clues about the evolution of written English.

Every word in the poem is separated by a full stop, showing that scribes were still experimenting with systems of spacing and punctuation. In the early medieval world, texts were often written continuously without spaces between words, making reading a more demanding skill.

Faulkner noted that the punctuation reflects a transitional moment in writing practices. “It is part of the early development of ways of dividing words and shows text starting to come towards the presentation of English that we know today,” he said.Caedmon himself remains a legendary figure in English literary history.

According to Bede, he worked as a cattle herder at Whitby Abbey and was unable to read or write. One night, after reportedly receiving a divine vision, he was inspired to compose and sing a hymn praising God’s creation of the world.

That poem became known as Caedmon’s Hymn, a brief but powerful expression of Christian devotion and poetic skill. Bede included a Latin translation of the work in his historical writings but omitted the original Old English version.

Later scribes, however, ensured that the original language survived.Within a century, a monk connected to the abbey of Nonantola in northern Italy included the Old English text in a manuscript, preserving what many scholars now regard as the first known English poem.

The newly identified Rome manuscript strengthens the evidence of how widely respected the poem had become across medieval Europe. Despite being written in Old English, far from Italy’s linguistic world, the poem was carefully copied and preserved by continental monks.

“There are at least 160 surviving copies of Bede’s history,” Faulkner said, adding that the continued transmission of Caedmon’s work shows how much early readers valued English poetry.

The findings have been published in Early Medieval England and its Neighbours, an open-access academic journal issued by Cambridge University Press. Scholars believe the discovery may prompt renewed study of neglected manuscript collections across Europe, particularly as libraries continue large-scale digitisation efforts.

Andrea Cappa, head of manuscripts and rare books at the Roman library, said the institution is working to digitise holdings from Italy’s National Centre for the Study of the Manuscript, a project expected to make more than 40 million images available to researchers worldwide.

Magnanti described the discovery as proof of how digital access is transforming scholarship. Without digitisation, the manuscript may have remained unnoticed for decades longer.“This discovery is a testament to the power of libraries to facilitate new research by digitising their collections and making them freely available online,” she said.

For literary historians, the recovery of the manuscript is more than an archival triumph it is a rare glimpse into the birth of English literature itself.The modern poet Paul Muldoon translated the hymn into contemporary English in 2016, capturing its timeless reverence:“Now we must praise to the skies, the Keeper of the heavenly kingdom, The might of the Measurer, all he has in mind, The work of the Father of Glory, of all manner of marvel.”

Across thirteen centuries, Caedmon’s voice once believed lost to time has spoken again.

For years, she wanted a child. After a decade of waiting, hope and uncertainty, pregnancy finally arrived carrying both joy and fear in equal measure. What followed, however, was not the soft, instinctive transition into motherhood that culture often promises, but a physically traumatic birth, emotional numbness and a long struggle to recognise herself in her new life.

During pregnancy, she found herself largely alone. Her husband, though supportive and loving, was frequently absent, consumed by the demands of a startup consultancy he had recently founded with two academic partners.

Medical appointments, including an amniocentesis prompted by concerns over possible chromosomal abnormalities, were often faced without him because he was abroad for work.

She attended prenatal classes, but support systems felt limited. Only one person in her close circle had children, and her relationship with her own mother, who lived in Italy, was strained. The isolation deepened her anxiety, particularly because childbirth itself frightened her.

When she raised those fears with her general practitioner, she recalls receiving a familiar reassurance that did little to ease them.“Don’t worry, birth isn’t an illness,” her male GP told her. “It’s all perfectly natural.”She felt the dismissal ignored her lived reality. She was asthmatic and suffering from undiagnosed endometriosis that caused severe pain every few weeks.

Pregnancy did not feel simple or natural. It felt uncertain and medically significant.Still, she felt deeply connected to the child growing inside her. She recognised her daughter through movement alone—the shape of limbs pressing against skin, strong kicks in response to passing sirens, a physical presence both strange and intimate.

She imagined a temperament already forming: long legs like her father, a temper like her own.She expected love to be immediate. After waiting so long, how could it not be?Her due date passed. Then another week.

Then another. At more than 44 weeks pregnant, she says she had to insist repeatedly before her GP agreed to induction. Only when hospital monitoring showed signs of fetal distress did medical staff finally intervene and break her waters.

Labour lasted 20 hours.

She describes induced labour not as a gradual progression but as a sudden collapse into nausea, pain and exhaustion. Hours passed with no progress. She was unable to receive an epidural at first because she was not dilating. The pain became all-consuming.

At one point, fearing the worst, she asked her husband to make a promise: if doctors had to choose between saving her life and their child’s, he should choose the baby.“I am not going to lose either of you,” he replied.

She remembers University College Hospital at the time as a place that inspired little confidence—a crumbling Victorian building with filthy bathrooms, blood on the floors and junior doctors exhausted by punishing shifts. Around her, the maternity ward echoed with the sounds of women in labour: groans, cries, gasps and fear.Eventually she received an epidural, but the baby remained stuck.

Just before midnight, an emergency forceps delivery and episiotomy were performed. Her husband later told her there were 13 people in the room.Then their daughter arrived.She weighed just under 4.5 kilograms—almost 10 pounds.

The mother had lost so much blood that the experience felt, in her words, like surviving a car crash. Her husband, standing in blood-soaked jeans, was overwhelmed with joy.“Isn’t she wonderful?” he said.She felt nothing.

She describes the absence of emotion not as rejection, but as total numbness, as though the epidural that had numbed her body had also severed access to feeling. She spent the night awake in the recovery ward waiting for the expected rush of maternal love that never came, listening to other women crying as anaesthesia wore off.

Instead, she felt transported back to boarding school dormitories, where she had learned early to suppress everything except anger.“Rage has served me quite often as a stimulant against exhaustion,” she writes. “Every woman who goes through childbirth has, I believe, been through the equivalent of war.

”She compares childbirth to trauma rather than celebration, arguing that many women leave the experience carrying symptoms closer to post-traumatic stress than to joy.

She believes poor maternity care intensified that reality.Her experience took place during years of severe strain on Britain’s National Health Service, when long-term underfunding and overstretched staff affected standards of care.

But she also sees a broader cultural issue: motherhood itself, she argues, is often insufficiently respected.At the time, general practice and obstetrics were still dominated by men.

She does not argue that male doctors cannot provide excellent care, but believes many failed to understand how dangerous childbirth could still be, or how often women’s pain was normalised rather than addressed.She was discharged the next day after a blood transfusion and severe physical trauma. She could barely walk.

Her husband worried about her physical recovery, but neither of them recognised the mental damage taking shape beneath it.When the baby began crying—night after night, almost without pause motherhood became a contest between exhaustion and fury.

“Once our baby began to cry relentlessly every night, all night, it felt like a battle between my rage and hers,” she recalls.Then one day, something changed.Her daughter, whose eyes had until then seemed distant and unfocused, suddenly looked directly at her. Then came a smile—clear, unmistakable and full.It was not simply recognition. It felt like acceptance.

“She seemed not only to recognise me, but to greet me with unconditional love and delight,” she writes.She understood intellectually that infant smiles are biological survival mechanisms, but the emotional impact was overwhelming.

The joy felt so sharp it was almost painful.“Oh!” she remembers saying. “It’s you. It’s you.”That first smile altered everything.The sleepless nights did not disappear. The crying continued. But something fundamental shifted in her understanding of motherhood, of love and even of her own mother.

Her relationship with her mother, long marked by pain and distance, softened. She began to understand her mother’s own unresolved grief and emotional absences not simply as cruelty, but as the result of childhood bereavement and wounds never healed.Motherhood brought not only responsibility, but perspective.

As a writer, she found that literature had offered little preparation for the reality of childbirth. Victorian novels she loved moved quickly past pregnancy and motherhood, treating them as narrative transitions rather than lived experiences.

Even contemporary women writers often avoided describing the devastation of birth itself.When she included the physical brutality of childbirth in her 1996 novel A Vicious Circle, critics attacked what one reviewer called “revolting details.”

Yet she says she had still softened the truth, giving her fictional heroine an instant maternal bond she herself had not felt.Years later, much changed. Hospitals improved. Her GP practice became staffed by younger, mostly women doctors. She had a second child, a son, whose birth was entirely different and with whom she bonded immediately.

Her daughter, Leon, grew into a novelist herself—healthy, loving and brilliant.Looking back, she says motherhood brought both unimaginable suffering and extraordinary love.

Public conversation often reduces it to either sentimental joy or unbearable hardship. The truth, she argues, is both.And if the early days felt like darkness, what remained was not the trauma alone, but the light that followed.

From Crime and Punishment to The Count of Monte Cristo, literature has long returned to the prison as a setting where human character is stripped to its essentials.

Within enclosed spaces governed by rules and surveillance, writers have explored not only punishment but also memory, guilt, resistance and transformation.In many such works, confinement is not merely physical. It becomes a psychological and moral condition.

In Crime and Punishment, the protagonist’s imprisonment begins long before formal sentencing, unfolding through inner conflict and moral reckoning. Similarly, Edmond Dantès in The Count of Monte Cristo endures years of isolation that ultimately reshape his identity and purpose.

These narratives suggest that prison, while designed to confine the body, often intensifies the life of the mind.

Literary depictions of incarceration frequently emphasise the slow passage of time. Days are marked by repetition, silence and the absence of choice. In One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, routine becomes both a burden and a survival mechanism, structuring existence within an unforgiving system.

Yet within such rigidity, literature often identifies subtle forms of resistance. Small acts preserving dignity, recalling memories, or forming human connections take on disproportionate meaning. These moments do not dismantle the system but allow individuals to endure it.

Writers have also drawn attention to the emotional weight of confinement. In Letters from Birmingham Jail, imprisonment becomes a site of moral argument, where reflection and expression challenge the legitimacy of authority itself.

Yet within such rigidity, literature often identifies subtle forms of resistance. Small acts preserving dignity, recalling memories, or forming human connections take on disproportionate meaning. These moments do not dismantle the system but allow individuals to endure it.

Writers have also drawn attention to the emotional weight of confinement. In Letters from Birmingham Jail, imprisonment becomes a site of moral argument, where reflection and expression challenge the legitimacy of authority itself.

For many literary figures, writing within prison is not simply an act of documentation but a means of survival. Fyodor Dostoevsky, who experienced incarceration firsthand, later infused his works with an acute understanding of psychological endurance under constraint.

Texts emerging from confinement often blur the line between testimony and art. They document conditions, but they also reinterpret them, transforming suffering into narrative. In this way, literature becomes both witness and response.

The act of reading, too, holds significance. Within prison narratives, books frequently appear as objects of escape, education or self-reinvention. Whether through philosophical reflection, storytelling or poetry, they provide an alternative framework through which inmates can understand their circumstances.

Across literary traditions, one recurring theme is the persistence of identity despite confinement. Characters may be reduced to numbers or roles within institutional systems, yet their inner lives resist complete erasure.

In The Ballad of Reading Gaol, the prison becomes a place where individuality is suppressed, yet human emotion grief, empathy, remorse remains irreducible. The tension between institutional control and personal identity forms the core of many such works.

These portrayals neither romanticise incarceration nor reduce it to a single narrative. Instead, they reveal its contradictions: discipline and chaos, despair and resilience, punishment and reflection.

Literature does not resolve these tensions.It records them. In doing so, it offers a lens through which confinement is understood not only as a condition imposed by systems, but as an experience that continues to generate meaning, memory and, at times, a fragile sense of freedom.

Participating for the 12th consecutive year, Ithra is offering visitors an immersive experience that highlights the Kingdom’s rich heritage and innovative contributions to literature, art, and knowledge.

The pavilion is thoughtfully divided into four sections, beginning with an introductory area showcasing Ithra’s key facilities, including its library, museum, theater, and cinema.

Visitors can explore two dedicated zones for library programs, featuring workshops, discussion panels, and interactive sessions designed to inspire curiosity and learning. In addition, a bookstore highlights Ithra’s latest titles spanning philosophy, literature, art, and heritage, giving attendees a chance to engage with unique content.

Abdullah Al-Hawas, director of Ithra, emphasized the center’s commitment to fostering cultural dialogue and knowledge sharing. “Every year, Ithra brings fresh ideas to the Riyadh International Book Fair.

This year, under the theme ‘Riyadh Reads,’ we are presenting 13 new publications covering philosophy, literature, and art, most of which were recently produced,” he said.

Among the most popular titles is The Mu’allaqat for the Millennial Generation, which makes classical Arabic poetry accessible to today’s readers. Another acclaimed publication, Arabic Proverbs for the New Generation, features over 150 Arabic proverbs with insightful commentary, encouraging readers to reconnect with their linguistic and cultural heritage.

Ithra also presents Hijra: In the Footsteps of the Prophet, detailing the historic eight-day journey from Makkah to Madinah, along with books on camels, crafts, and philosophy, all carefully selected for their cultural significance.

Ithra’s publications have gained international recognition through translations into Spanish, German, Korean, Chinese, French, and English, reflecting the center’s mission to share Arab culture with global audiences. The Ithra Library, one of Saudi Arabia’s largest and first fully digital libraries, spans four floors, housing over 357,000 books and thousands of digital resources.

As a cultural hub, Ithra hosts engaging programs such as the Ithra Reading Club, Majaz poetry celebrations, Ithra Library Saturdays, Your Book in a Minute, and Bridges to the World, promoting literary creativity, knowledge exchange, and cultural appreciation.

Through its dynamic participation in the Riyadh International Book Fair, Ithra continues to strengthen Saudi Arabia’s position as a center for culture, learning, and innovation, inspiring readers of all ages to explore and celebrate the richness of Arab heritage.

In 2014 the peaceful city of Raqqa in northern Syria was proclaimed the capital of the Islamic State group’s so-called caliphate. For nearly four years, residents there lived under a reign of terror.

A new book out in French brings their stories to the world. “L’Asphyxie : Raqqa, chronique d’une apocalypse” (“Asphyxiation: Raqqa, Chronicle of an Apocalypse”) is co-written by French reporter Céline Martelet and Syrian journalist Hussam Hammoud.

Hammoud has just arrived in France where he has been granted asylum after an initial rejection by French authorities. The two authors joined us for Perspective.