The Copybook
Short passages for reading, drawn from history, legend, poetry and fiction.
Short passages for reading, drawn from history, legend, poetry and fiction.
Charles Dickens explains how King Alfred the Great overcame the Great Heathen Army in 878, with the help of a little music.
In 865, the Great Army of the Vikings from across the North Sea had been swarming over England, intent on all-out conquest of a country by then better known for its science and art than for its military readiness. But as Charles Dickens tells us, in 878 King Alfred of Wessex turned the tables on his enemy, and not just with battlefield courage.
Master-sweep Grimes meets a woman who knows more about him than he feels comfortable with.
Thomas Grimes, a North-country chimney-sweep, is on his way to an important job with his young apprentice, also called Tom, and (on the far side of the roadside wall) a barefoot Irish peasant woman, who has taken a shine to little Tom. The envious Grimes has gone so far as to wash his face in a nearby stream, which Tom is now desperate to try for himself.
A weary King Odysseus dozes off on his voyage home to Ithaca, but his crew are wide awake, wondering what is in his bag.
Odysseus, King of the island of Ithaca in the Ionian Sea, is on his way home after many years away fighting in the Siege of Troy. He has had a little trouble with one-eyed Polyphemus, the Cyclops, and a few weeks rest with the odd but hospitable family of Aeolus is just what he needs.
John Nyren tells us about one of cricket’s truly great batsmen, John Small.
John Small the Elder (1737-1826) was a truly historic figure of cricket, a supreme batsman credited with the first recorded century in a serious match, 136* for Hampshire vs Surrey on July 13th, 1775. He was also a gifted violinist and cellist, and on one occasion it quite possibly saved his life.
The simple folk of Brittany know what it means when a nobleman calls himself godfather to an unknown infant.
Rafael Sabatini’s ‘Scaramouche’ is the tale of Andre-Louis Moreau, a young lawyer of no great convictions who becomes caught up in the French Revolution of 1789 through loyalty to a friend. The novel opens by placing Moreau against his family background — a difficult matter, though Breton gossip thinks it has got it all worked out.
The Roman Emperor offered to unite the world’s squabbling churches – but it was the kind of offer you can’t refuse.
English bishops met at Hatfield in 680, on the eve of a major Church Council at Constantinople. In the Imperial capital, the talk was all of uniting the world’s churches, but Pope Agatho wanted Britain’s support for something more radical: he meant to declare the gospel, even if he went the way of his predecessor, Martin.