Welcome

Rupert Brooke 1887-1915

God! I will pack, and take a train,
And get me to England once again!
For England’s the one land, I know,
Where men with Splendid Hearts may go.

‘The Old Vicarage, Grantchester’ (1912)

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

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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 Order and Method

Embarrassed, obscure, and feeble sentences, are generally, if not always, the result of embarrassed, obscure, and feeble thought. Thought and language act and react upon each other mutually. Logic and rhetoric have here, as in many other cases, a strict connexion; and he that is learning to arrange his sentences with accuracy and order, is learning, at the same time, to think with accuracy and order

Read

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 Chair. Human. Painting.

2 Ball. Indeed. Letter.

3 Attention. Measure. Nice.

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.)

The British Constitution

Posts 33

Passages examining Britain’s sometimes baffling constitutional monarchy, and telling the story of its enemies, its champions, and its reformers.

Picture: © CJCS (USA). CC BY-SA 2.0.. Source.

Classical History

Posts 60

Tales of tragedy, ambition and heroism from the Battle of Marathon and Hannibal’s passage of the Alps to Caesar’s fateful crossing of the Rubicon.

Picture: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Public domain image.. Source.

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.

Picture: © Jonathan Keelty, CC BY-SA 2.0.. Source.

Poets and Poetry

Posts 61

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.

Railways

Posts 37

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.

Music and Musicians

Posts 64

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.

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