About Clay Lane

My great-uncleMY GREAT-UNCLE, N. L. Clay, was a Yorkshire schoolmaster whose textbooks on English language and literature were used in schools and homes across the country from the 1920s to the 1960s. He believed that mass media and entertainment were a danger to England’s enviable tradition of plain speaking and free thinking, a danger even to democracy and freedom, and offered to help us reply to the noisy columnists and radio voices in what he called ‘straightforward English’.

This ‘straightforward English’ is clear and plain, the product of careful thought, diligent research, and a sympathetic understanding of the person to whom it is addressed. It is not rude or truculent; it avoids slogans, jargon, and ‘tabloid thinking’. It impresses on the reader firm convictions; it does not try to daunt, dazzle or entrap him. That we need it today, and urgently, hardly needs to be stated.

Clay Lane is my way of carrying on Norman Clay’s work. I’ve collected short, annotated extracts for you to read, from fiction and fable to poetry, biography, and eyewitness history, and crafted some little exercises in composition similar to those Clay gave to his pupils. The topics range widely, but the thread that runs through them all is his conviction that, as he put it back in 1949, “Tom Smith and his wife are better citizens if they have learned to value and practise straightforward English”.

Unlike my uncle, I’m not a teacher, and this isn’t a course or a tutoring service. I know very little about modern educational methods or grades; but I am a native speaker of English, and I’ll do my best to answer any questions you have about what’s on my site. You can get in touch through the crowdfunding site Buy Me a Coffee. There’s no registration required, and there’s nothing to pay. In fact, everything on Clay Lane is completely free of charge. But I wouldn’t say no to a cup of coffee!