Welcome

A cobweb in hoar frost, on a steppe near Lopukhovka, Saratov, Russia.

© Anastasia Vasilevna, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source

Solon of Athens ?630-?555 BC

Laws are like spiders’ webs, which stand firm when any light and yielding object falls upon them, while a larger thing breaks through them and makes off.

Diogenes Laertius (AD 180-240), Lives of the Eminent Philosophers.

Welcome to Clay Lane

Straightforward English

“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.

Get started with The Clay Lane Blog

About Clay Lane

VIPs: Very Important Posts

In Quotations: What We Stand For

Thomas Huxley on The Object of a Liberal Education

NL Clay on Straightforward English

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

Follow

The Blog

New and archive material, updated frequently. Passages for reading, brainteasers for solving, and music for listening.

Read English

The Copy Book

Browse hundreds of short passages from history, fiction, poetry and legend.

Write English

Think and Speak

Brainteasers for developing vocabulary, grammar and expression.

Ask your questions, and get personalised help with your English from me, Nicholas.

Play Games

Think and Speak

Puzzles with words and their letters, just for fun.

Read the Bible

Comfortable Words

The incomparable English of the King James Bible, the Prayer Book, and more.

From The Making of a Great Citizen

To tell of how he introduced schools, stopped child labor, planted flower beds and vegetable gardens, built houses and model tenements, and disciplined the workers without their knowing it, would require a book. Let the simple fact stand that he made the mill pay by manufacturing a better grade of goods than had been made, and he also raised the social status of the people.

Read

Homophones Find in Think and Speak

In each group below, you will find words that sound the same, but differ in spelling and also in meaning. Compose your own sentences to bring out the differences between them.

1. Jeans. Genes. 2. Step. Steppe. 3. Dual. Duel. 4. Cede. Seed. 5. Bazaar. Bizarre. 6. Hour. Our. 7. Marshal. Martial. 8. Councillor. Counsellor. 9. Aye. Eye.

Railways

Posts 37

Stories about the British transport revolution that changed the world, from the first locomotive and the first whistle to Flying Scotsman.

Character and Conduct

Posts 120

Stories illustrating noble deeds in matters both great and small, such as the noble gesture of Sir Philip Sidney, and the determination of Benjamin Disraeli.

Bible and Saints

Posts 211

Passages of history, wonder and spiritual counsel, drawn from the Bible and from the lives of the saints and martyrs, with a special attention to those of the British isles.

Myths, Fairytales and Legends

Posts 126

Stories of wisdom, wonder and imagination from the Fables of Aesop and the epics of Homer to the folklore of India, Japan, Russia and Britain.

Abolition of Slavery

Posts 36

Heart-breaking tales of slavery, in which Britain played a shameful part; and heart-warming tales of Abolition, in which she played a courageous one.

Poets and Poetry

Posts 60

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.

See All