De Hamel and Poleg gazed at the 8in-by-6in manuscript "trembling with excitement", de Hamel writes in a short book published earlier this year, The Book in the Cathedral: The Last Relic of Thomas Becket. There was no jewelled Anglo Saxon silver-gilt binding - this would have been torn off and melted down during the Reformation, but here was a book, de Hamel now felt, that was surely a lost holy relic of the Middle Ages.