Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks is embarking on his last major literary project in office - a complete set of festival prayer books.

His Rosh Hashanah machzor, with a new English translation and commentary, is scheduled to be out in time for the New Year this September, followed by one for Yom Kippur in 2012.

By the time he reaches his planned retirement in 2013, he hopes to have produced a full set of Yomtov prayerbooks.

The Sacks machzorim will replace the standard Routledge set, originally commissioned for the British community by Chief Rabbi Herman Adler more than a century ago.

Latterly, many Orthodox congregants have turned to the American Artscroll, written from a more right-wing perspective than that of minhag Anglia, the English tradition.

The new set will be issued by Koren, the Jerusalem publishers celebrated for design and Hebrew typography. It will come in two editions, one for the American market, and one for Britain.

Publisher Matthew Miller said: "The Chief Rabbi's translation is beautiful, and the introduction is like
nothing I have read before on Rosh Hashanah."