The Long Arm of Rob Roy

By Dorothy Wordsworth

I recently added this post, The Long Arm of Rob Roy.

It is taken from an entry in Dorothy Wordsworth’s diary of a visit to Scotland in 1803, in the company of her brother, poet William Wordsworth, and their friend Samuel Taylor Coleridge. In this extract, Dorothy recalls the magical effect that the mere mention of Rob Roy MacGregor’s name had on their hosts, a family of kindly Scottish crofters living beside Loch Lomond.

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Manners Makyth Man

By Edmund Saul Dixon

I recently added this post, Manners Makyth Man.

The Revd Edmund Saul Dixon was a frequent contributor to Charles Dickens’s periodical Household Words. This extract comes from the start of what was really a review of several books on etiquette, from England, France, and French-colonial Algiers. Dixon was particularly impressed with those cultures in which class distinctions did not lessen the obligation to be courteous: he thought everyone should be polite to everyone else. The subject matter might have led to a rather preachy article but Dixon handled it with the kind of light touch that we would expect his editor to demand.

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The Blues, the Greens, and Belisarius

By Samuel Goodrich

I recently added this post, The Blues, the Greens, and Belisarius.

This is the story, told here by American author Samuel Goodrich, of the Nika Rebellion in AD 532, named after the repeated cry of the rebels: Nika! Conquer! The revolt broke out after two sets of rival sports fans in Constantinople, the capital of the Roman Empire, suddenly made common cause against the Emperor, Justinian. Fortunately, he had the rising young general Belisarius on his side, and even more fortunately Justinian’s wife Theodora thought of bringing him in.

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