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)
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New and archive material, updated frequently. Passages for reading, brainteasers for solving, and music for listening.
Latest • February 26
Latest • February 25
Latest • February 23
Spinners Find in Think and Speak
For each group of words, compose a sentence that uses all three. You can use any form of the word: for example, cat → cats, go → went, or quick → quickly, though neigh → neighbour is stretching it a bit.
The words in this puzzle are taken randomly from a list of 927 common words. You can change e.g. cat → cats, go → went, quick → quickly.
1 Decide. Sound. Tend.
2 Nation. Receive. Specific.
3 Account. Lead. Summer.
Variations: 1. include direct and indirect speech 2. include one or more of these words: although, because, despite, either/or, if, unless, until, when, whether, which, who 3. use negatives (not, isn’t, neither/nor, never, nobody etc.)
Stories from the ancient and mighty civilisation of India, from classical mythology to the Mughal Emperors, the East India Company and the British Raj.
Picture: © Pmsarangi, CC BY-SA 4.0.. Source.
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.
Picture: © Jonathan Keelty, CC BY-SA 2.0.. Source.
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.
Picture: © Saffron Blaze, CC BY-SA 4.0.. Source.
Tales from our cousins to the West, telling of their independence from Britain, their bloody civil war, their runaway prosperity, and the slender thread by which it hangs.
Picture: © U.S. Department of Defense. Public domain.. Source.
Fables and true tales about animals, including a dog who regularly commuted to Matlock, a horse who didn’t approve of bad language, and a cat who saved her owners from an earthquake.
Picture: © Luis García. CC BY-SA 3.0.. Source.
The passages in this section illustrate how people have thought of the Englishman over the centuries. They include the impressions of writers from England and also from abroad.
Picture: © Trevormeisel, Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 3.0.. Source.