MORE than 250 people attended the launch of Mark Byford’s latest book, The Annunciation: A Pilgrim’s Quest, in Winchester Cathedral.

Mr Byford, a city resident and former BBC deputy director general, is now a lay canon at the cathedral.

It was a chance viewing of an Annunciation painting in London’s National Gallery that inspired his three-year quest to understand more about the spiritual meaning of the story.

The early 18th century picture by French artist, François Lemoyne, is currently on loan from Winchester College. It first came to Winchester from Paris in 1729 to be displayed as an altar piece in the school’s chapel. However, for almost 300 years, until only recently, French art historians did not know its whereabouts, calling it Lemoyne’s ‘lost Annunciation’.

The picture shows the pivotal point in Christianity when Gabriel informs Mary that she will conceive a son and must name him Jesus. In the book, Mr Byford wonders why the status and significance of the annunciation story has been lost in today’s world.

Seeing Lemoyne’s painting led Mr Byford on a long search, speaking to more than 100 senior clerics, theologians, historians and artists, to hear their views on the Annunciation. What does the gospel passage mean for them? Do they see is as fact, metaphor, or something else? If the story is about calling and acceptance, how has its key message shaped their lives? When the Roman Catholic Bishop of Portsmouth, Philip Egan, describes the Annunciation as ‘the most important event in human history’, what do they make of such a stark statement?

Luke’s Annunciation passage is under 300 words long and takes just over a minute to read. Yet many different interpretations are put forward about its spiritual meaning. Mr Byford learns how the Virgin Mary’s role and status in the story creates a range of reactions, from adoration to condemnation, often highly charged and emotional. The frank and intimate revelations offer the reader unique insights about belief and non-belief, certainty and doubt, and the notions of truth and calling in Christianity today. The publisher, Winchester University Press, describes the book as “a project of scale, ambition and innovation, highly distinctive in its originality of approach and content.”

The impressive cast-list includes the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams; the first woman bishop in the Church of England, Libby Lane; the recently appointed Bishop of London, Sarah Mullally; the Bishop of Winchester, Tim Dakin; the head of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, Cardinal Vincent Nichols; the former President of the Methodist Conference, Mark Wakelin; the Orthodox Metropolitan Bishop, Kallistos Ware; and the general director of the Evangelical Alliance, Steve Clifford.

Alongside the searching conversations, Mr Byford travels around England, across the Continent and to the Holy Land, to stand in front of more than 100 great works of art from the past 2,000 years, all inspired by the annunciation story. A vast array of paintings, sculpture, mosaics and tapestries, together with stunning music and poetry rooted in the biblical encounter. From what’s claimed to be the first image of the Annunciation - a third-century fresco on a ceiling in a catacomb in Rome - to an Andy Warhol screen-print; from a John Tavener choral piece performed live in Winchester Cathedral to ten great Annunciation treasures on display in the V&A.

He also studies Annunciation-inspired pieces created by leading Hampshire artists, including Alice Kettle’s ‘Harlequin Madonna’, Sophie Hacker’s ‘Annunciation’, a series of nine abstract, charcoal drawings by Caroline Hall and Milli McGregor’s ‘Lady in Waiting’. At the event on Monday evening, a new work by the Winchester-based glass engraver, Tracey Sheppard, was unveiled, entitled, ‘With God nothing is impossible’.

The launch was preceded by a special Evensong to mark the feast of the Annunciation, which was transferred to last Monday from its normal date of March 25 because, this year, the date fell on Palm Sunday. The Evensong included poetry readings and dance.

The Annunciation: A Pilgrim’s Quest is published by Winchester University Press and is available from WUP and P&G Wells bookshop, £40.