"IT'S St George's Day this week. Let's do a Local History page about him."

This request from a colleague proved challenging, since the words "history" and "St George" are difficult to place in the same sentence with any confidence.

Though he is patron saint of England, he did not set foot in this country, was demoted to "third class sainthood" by the Vatican in the 1960s and probably never existed.

His fame in the West lies in the story of St George and the Dragon, a tale of derring-do which made him popular with the militant kings and knights of medieval times.

They adopted his emblem of a red cross, placing it on a white background, as their battledress at the time of the Crusades when they were fighting in Palestine, the country from in which George (if that was his name) reputedly grew up and was later buried.

The legend is that he arrived at a city being terrorised by a dragon which refused to let the citizens use their waterspring unless they gave it a sheep or a maiden to devour every day.

Our hero arrived on the day that the princess was earmarked to become the next victim and, though the king begged for her life, the naughty old dragon was having none of it.

Enter George with his trusty sword Ascalon and after a lengthy battle - during which he was sprayed with poison, knocked from his horse and sheltered under an enchanted orange tree - he slayed the monster.

That was the essence of the legend brought back by the Crusaders in the 12th century from their travels in the Middle East where St George was already well established as a figure of veneration.

It is said that George was born in Cappadocia, the eastern part of Turkey, around 270AD to an officer of the Roman army and a woman from Lydda, now Lod, in Israel. Both parents were Christians at a time when it was not a popular religion to belong to.

Nevertheless the young man followed his father's footsteps into the army, rapidly rose in the ranks, and was in the Emperor Diocletian's personal guard.

But his career came to an abrupt end in 303AD when Diocletian ordered the extermination of Christians. George refused to participate, then owned up to being one of the persecuted minority.

So his boss ordered that he should be tortured on a wheel of swords and he was beheaded on April 23.

Until the Norman invasion and for some years after, the patron saint of England was Edmund, a King of the East Angles murdered by Viking invaders for refusing to denounce his faith.

By the 12th century, however, his popularity had waned and there were many who leaned more towards the romantic figure of St George.

It was in the 14th century that he was adopted as the patron saint at the time of King Edward III with his notions of chivalry and his establishment of the Order of the Garter.

By the 16th century when Shakespeare was writing his famous rallying cry for Henry V at the Battle of Agincourt - "God for Harry, England and St George" - the patron saint had become an establishment figure.

William Shakespeare, by the way, was both born and died on April 23.

In 21st century England, you have to wonder what the Crusaders and knights of old would think if they saw their proud emblem making its appearances on sweaty faces on the terraces at international sporting fixtures and in pubs organising a well-oiled April knees-up.