Welcome to Clay Lane
Straightforward English
An old-fashioned, commonsense education in English language and culture, adapted from pre-1960s textbooks for home and school by Yorkshire schoolmaster NL Clay.
“The course should train pupils to observe, learn more of the world they live in, think clearly, use the imagination and to speak clearly.”
NL Clay, Think and Speak (1929)
Clay Lane is a traditional British education, of the kind seen in English schools before the educational changes of the 1960s. It is inspired by textbooks written by NL Clay, Senior English Master at Ecclesfield Grammar School in Yorkshire, and used across the country from the late 1920s.
Read short passages from literature and history, many of them chosen to provide a commentary on modern events and opinions. Or try your hand at puzzles in grammar and vocabulary like those Clay set for pupils aged 12-16. How would you have got on in the fourth form?
This site is for people who appreciate our heritage of strong, plain-spoken English from Shakespeare and the King James Bible to Austen, Dickens and Kipling, who take pride in the courage and vision of our country’s heroes both small and great, and who enjoy playing with words, sentences and ideas.
Materials for the study of good, correct, straightforward English.
Traditional, pre-Sixties methods and content.
Read interesting passages from history and literature.
Practise writing your own English sentences.
Ask for help if you need it.
“If ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’ are to be more than catchwords, clear communication must be the rule, and not the exception. Do we want a society in which placid masses take their orders from bosses? The alternative to government by force is government by persuasion. The latter must mean that the governed can talk back to the governors.”
NL Clay, Straightforward English (1949)
Post Box : Get In Touch
New and archive material, updated frequently. Passages for reading, brainteasers for solving, and music for listening.
Latest • February 21
Latest • February 20
Latest • February 15
Post Box : Just ask for help
From A Glide Into the Future
“Now I want you clearly to understand that this lever, being pressed over, sends the machine gliding into the future, and this other reverses the motion. This saddle represents the seat of a time traveller. Presently I am going to press the lever, and off the machine will go. It will vanish, pass into future Time, and disappear.”
Confusables Find in Think and Speak
In each group below, you will find words that are similar to one another, but not exactly the same. Compose your own sentences to bring out the similarities and differences between them, whether in meaning, grammar or use.
Stories about our friends across the Channel, from Roman times to the Hundred Years’ War, her bloody Revolution, and the giddying rise and fall of Emperor Napoleon.
Picture: © Patrick. CC BY-SA 2.0.. Source.
The artistic struggles and triumphs of composers from the British Isles and abroad, many in their own words — and accompanied by their music.
Picture: © Colin, CC BY-SA 4.0.. Source.
Stories about the British transport revolution that changed the world, from the first locomotive and the first whistle to Flying Scotsman.
Picture: © Daniel Kraft, CC BY-SA 2.0.. Source.
Passages from English verse, from Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf to Shakespeare’s sonnets, Tennyson’s Charge of the Light Brigade, Kipling’s If and many more.
Picture: Photo by Elliott & Fry. Public domain image.. Source.
Tales about the cradle of Western civilisation, from Socrates and the first democracies to the fall of the Roman Empire, the Ottoman yoke, and Britain’s part in the fight for independence.
Picture: © brunobarbato. CC BY-SA 3.0.. Source.
Stories from our cousins in the East, from Rurik the Viking and the Baptism of Rus’ to trade with Ivan the Terrible, a visit from Peter the Great, and the last Emperor.
Picture: © Красный. CC BY-SA 4.0.. Source.