The Copybook
Short passages for reading, drawn from history, legend, poetry and fiction.
Short passages for reading, drawn from history, legend, poetry and fiction.
The first battle of the English Civil War was a cautious affair, but rumours persisted that it went on long after it had finished.
The Battle of Edgehill in Warwickshire on October 23rd, 1642, marked the opening exchanges in the English Civil War. It was indecisive, and neither side could have foreseen the military coup in December 1648 that would lead so quickly to a brief Republic. Indeed, following the skirmish King Charles was more interested in paranormal activity.
It is one of the world’s most recognisable works of art, and a symbol of God’s blessing on all Christian Rus’.
The Theotokos of Vladimir is an icon of Mary embracing her child Jesus, which came to Kiev from Constantinople in the 1130s. Not only has it become one of the world’s most recognisable works of sacred art, but on several occasions it has been credited with delivering the Christians of Rus’ from seemingly inevitable disaster.
An unknown Anglo-Saxon poet shares with us the grief of those whose homes and feast-halls were laid waste by Viking raiders.
The tenth-century Exeter Book contains a short soliloquy known as ‘The Wanderer’. It is set against the background of the reign of King Athelstan (r. 924-39), who united England and opened the way for the English to return to towns in the north and east ransacked by Vikings, now in silent ruin under freezing winter skies.
A fiery fanatic wins support for the suppression of Christianity in its very cradle.
The Apostle St Paul had been given the name Saul by his parents, after the first King of Israel, but he changed it to Paul in honour of his Roman patron Sergius Paulus, a Proconsul of Cyprus, whom Saul brought to Christianity. Saul’s own conversion, in about AD 33 to 36, had been altogether more dramatic.