Who exactly was our much-neglected national patron, and what is fact and what is fiction? He was a martyr in 303 under Emperor Diocletian, at Lydda in Palestine, where in former centuries his tomb was to be seen. He was venerated widely, especially in the East, where he is accorded the title of the ‘Great Martyr’ [megalomartyros]. The ‘Acts’ (account) of his life, written by Pasicrates, survives in many languages but is a spurious document; the author claimed to be a contemporary of the martyr but in fact lived much later. The medieval collection The Golden Legend, made popular through Caxton’s printing of it, added the most famous story of the saint. The land was terrorised by a dragon whose foul breath extinguished anybody who came near; the dragon was kept at bay by a daily offering of two sheep, but when these animals ran short the king’s daughter was chosen by lot to be a human substitute. George promised to rid the land of the monster if the people were baptised, and 15000 came to Christ with the elimination of this pestiferous beast. Qui velit, credat. George has been venerated in England since the 8th century when St. Bede’s ‘Martyrology’ made him known, but became most famous at the time of the Crusades, when King Richard I placed himself under the saint’s protection; the Order of the Garter followed under Edward III. Even so, George did not displace the ancient patrons of England, Edward the Confessor and Edmund of East Anglia, for some centuries. George is also the patron of Portugal, of the Catalan region of Spain, and of Venice and Genoa, cities which relied on the force of arms to accompany their trading expansion.