355 years ago, this month, in 1667, a 27-year-old man called Samuel Simmons printed a very important

book.

Now Simmons had fairly recently inherited his printing business on Ordersgate Street.

This was the first book Simmons entered into the stationery's register with his own name

as the imprint.

And what a book it would turn out to be.

For Simmons was printing none other than Paradise Lost by John Milton.

Farewell happy fields where joy forever dwells.

Hail horrors, hail in fertile world and now profoundest hell receive thy new possessor.

One who brings a mind not to be changed by place or time, the mind as its own place and

in itself can make a heaven of hell a hell of heaven.

What matter where if I be still the same and what I should be, all but less than he whom

thunder have made greater?

Here at least we shall be free.

The Almighty have not built here for His envy.

Will not drive us hence.

Here we may reign secure and in my choice to reign as worth ambition though in hell.

The story of the writing and publishing of Paradise Lost, one of the greatest epic poems

in the English language, is fascinating.

The poem's author was a man who came to the fore of radical politics and for a time later

became an enemy of the state.

This great poem was produced as his dream of a godly republic became reality and then

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