Short passages for reading, drawn from history, legend, poetry and fiction.
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© Iain MacFadzean, Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 4.0.
Dostoevsky had to break it to Moscow’s students that ordinary Russians found their brand of politics patronising.
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After Thomas Miles Richardson (1784-1848), via the British Museum. © The Trustees of the British Museum, shared under licence CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.
On his visits to Durham Gaol, prison reformer John Howard found conditions that were all too familiar.
By Clara Taggart MacChesney (1860-1928), via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.
Reading and writing should have taught the people more than name-calling and how to manipulate opinion.
By Edward Hopper (1882-1967), via Wikimedia Commons. Photo © JJonahJackalope, CC BY-SA 4.0.
‘Alpha of the Plough’ hoped Sir Arthur Conan Doyle did not treat his old friends as he treated his favourite books.
By an anonymous artist, via the Wellcome Collection and Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 4.0.
In eighteenth-century England, the death penalty was the solution to almost any crime.
By James Peale (1749–1831), via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.
Anne Thackeray saw something satisfying in the self-control of Anne Elliot.