I should point out (since it's an unfamiliar word) that the U.S. pronunciation of "irenicon" is eye-RENN-i-con, whereas the usual U.K. pronunciation is eye-REEN-i-con. Insofar as it's pronounced at all, that is.

What an excellent word. Now to find an opportunity to use it...

this is indeed a great article. i just started reading the bible for the first time and was quite taken with the importance of repetition. in genesis, the world comes into being through a series of repetitions or generations. this is beautifully reflected in the language as well.

What do we remember, when we need to remember something? A more recent, more technically accurate version? Or an older, more beautiful version with known errors? When does the version matter?

And how does this square with the earlier discussions here about translation?

As for Larkin, questions of religion are often central to his verse, even if he wasn't always so encouraging about it. "High Windows," "Days," "Church Going," "Water," and, especially, "The Explosion" come to mind.

The review convinces me that I should borrow rather than buy God's Secretaries, but I should certainly like to read it.

I don't see how one can read much of anything in post-Elizabethan English literature and then not enjoy reading the KJV, if only to get one's allusions in place. As a translation, yes, there are things it gets right and things it gets wrong, but I am sometimes obsessively in love with the sounds of Hebrew and Greek Scripture, and the KJV retains some of the same -- well, music, but one might also say "majesty."

"Irenicon" is an evocative word, but as "Irene" (peace) is a common female first name in Britain, I thought it was also commonplace elsewhere.

Adam Nicolson is an occasional contributor to the conservative-republican British newspaper "The Telegraph" and has commented about his book tour of the USA in his article "The strange death of liberal America".

Go to http://www.telegraph.co.uk/portal/main.jhtml?view=HOME&grid=P13&menuId=-1&menuItemId=-1&_requestid=304881

and key his name into the search engine.

However, I'd like to query the comment in the New Yorker review that WILLIAM TYNEDALE's translation of the Bible was responsible for 60% of the King James Version, because I have seen other accounts which put it as a much higher percentage; including parts and phrases that are the best known. Is there a definitive article or account of this?

Well, Tyndale's biographer David Daniell puts the figure at 83%, attributing it to "a student at Brigham Young University who compared the texts using a computer." I don't know the details of how it was arrived at, but there's a figure for you.

By Larkin, Languagehat, you might also like Aubade about death and The Trees about ageing and renewing.