New pointer to fate of saint's body

Fresh evidence has emerged that the bones of England's greatest saint, Thomas Becket, are secretly buried at Canterbury Cathedral, it was revealed yesterday.

A former canon, Julian Bickersteth, told his godson Cecil Humphery-Smith, that he and three other men cut into a stone slab in the 1940s to confirm their suspicions that it covered Becket's unmarked grave.

Becket was Archbishop of Canterbury for eight years until he was murdered in 1170 by four knights from the court of Henry II with whom he had quarrelled. At the Reformation, Henry VIII wanted his memory erased from the cathedral.