Sister Hildegard of Bingen was a 12th century nun, a composer of music, a scientist, painter and visionary. Arraigned by her Abbot for harbouring a suspected witch and for her "false" visions, Hildegard was eventually vindicated and founded her own women-only religious community at Bingen on the Rhine.
Patricia Routledge plays the multi-talented nun in a dramatic re-creation of Hildegard's heroic career by James Runcie and Nigel Williams. And in case anyone should wonder why the life of a medieval nun should interest a 20th-century audience: a recording of Hildegard's unaccompanied plainsong by the Gothic Voices, A Feather on the Breath of God, won Gramophone magazine's 1983 Record of the Year award.