Read short passages similar to those NL Clay collected in his anthologies, to gain a feeling for the language, history and culture of the English-speaking world.
In The Copybook
Read short passages similar to those NL Clay collected in his anthologies, to gain a feeling for the language, history and culture of the English-speaking world.
In The Copybook
A February celebration for which the faithful have brought candles to church since Anglo-Saxon times.
Candlemas is the English name for a Christian feast also known as the Presentation of Christ, the Purification of the Virgin, and the Meeting of the Lord. It is kept on February 2nd, forty days after Christmas, and in Anglo-Saxon times was a night of candle-lit processions and carol singing almost on a par with Easter.
When Ranulf Flambard, Bishop of Durham, became the Tower of London’s first prisoner he did not intend making a long stay.
Ranulf Flambard followed William the Conqueror over to England, helped compile the Domesday Book, and collected eye-watering taxes for William II ‘Rufus’. On his accession in 1100, Henry I won many friends by making the abrasive and ambitious cleric, now Bishop of Durham, the Tower of London’s first prisoner.
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Cynewulf reflects on the mystery of the appearance of the angel Gabriel to Mary.
‘Christ’ is an Anglo-Saxon poem in three parts by Cynewulf (possibly the 8th century bishop Cynewulf of Lindisfarne, in the Kingdom of Northumbria). In this extract, the poet reflects on the visit of the angel Gabriel to Mary, to tell her that she is to become the earthly mother of the Son of God.
Arthur Clutton-Brock complained that idealising Shakespeare had made him dull.
Arthur Clutton-Brock was, for many years, art critic for the Times, and knew something of the artistic temperament. On the tercentenary of the death of William Shakespeare (1564-1616), he deplored the way that Shakespeare had been turned into a National Institution.
Lieutenant John Pasco not only flew the most famous signal in British history, he helped write it.
On October 21st, 1805, the Royal Navy crushed a French and Spanish fleet at Cape Trafalgar, Spain. This permanently deprived Napoleon Bonaparte, the French Emperor, of sea-power, and ended his hopes of conquering Britain. Though Admiral Nelson died that day, his call to arms remains one of the best-known sentences in the English language. Here, Lieutenant John Pasco recalls how it was made.
Prince Albert regretted the destructive power of the Art Critic.
On May 3rd, 1851, Prince Albert spoke at a dinner in honour of the recently elected President of the Royal Academy, Sir Charles Lock Eastlake (1793-1865). The present company, the Prince admitted, were better placed to judge Sir Charles as an artist. But thanks to working so closely with him, he had learnt something about their new President that they might not know: how kindly he dealt with other artists.
Robert Pierrepont called heaven to witness that he would never pick a side in the Civil War.
Robert Pierrepont (1584-1623), 1st Earl of Kingston-upon-Hull, sided with Charles I in the Civil War after much debate. Soon afterwards, on July 16th, 1643, he was captured by the Parliamentarians at Gainsborough, and died in a botched rescue attempt. When the war was over, and Charles II had been restored to his throne, Lucy Hutchinson added a strange detail to the Earl’s sad story.
Ben Jonson tells us how we should measure a life well lived.
Ben Jonson’s collection of short poems Underwoods was published in 1640, soon after he died. He tells us that it takes its title from a habit of classical poets, who liked to call their miscellanies ‘Woods’. If Jonson’s earlier poems were his woods, he said, then these little additions were shrubs on the woodland floor. The following lines are a reflection on the value of a life.
Thomas Jefferson recalls the virtues (and a few faults) of the first US President.
In 1814, former US President Thomas Jefferson (who had served from 1801 to 1809) wrote a letter to Walter Jones (1776-1861), a lawyer whom Jefferson had appointed US attorney for the District of Columbia in 1802. In his letter, Jefferson reminisced about George Washington, supreme commander of the American revolutionary army and first President of the USA.