The Copybook
Short passages for reading, drawn from history, legend, poetry and fiction.
Short passages for reading, drawn from history, legend, poetry and fiction.
A man who seems to have everything loses his good looks to a dreadful disease.
In 1165, a priest came all the way to Durham from Lytham on the Lancashire coast, to give thanks at St Cuthbert’s shrine for several remarkable miracles experienced by members of his parish. He told the stories to Reginald of Durham, including this one about a man with a gruesome disfigurement.
A boy goes bird-nesting in Cuthbert’s church, and finds himself all in a heap.
In 1165, a priest came to Durham from Lytham, where his little parish had experienced a number of miracles at the hands of the patron saint, Cuthbert of Lindisfarne. Reginald wrote them down as he heard them, and one tale in particular stands out for the level of eye-witness detail.
A cat belonging to a Carthusian monastery in Paris gets a free lunch, but who is exploiting whom?
In his little book about cats, Victorian cartoonist Charles Ross describes the criminal career of a cat attached to a Carthusian monastery in Paris. His story confirms that cats are adept at all kind of thievery and opportunism, but also reminds us that they are not the only ones.
Young inventor James Watt’s life in London was overshadowed by the perpetual fear of being snatched.
In 1756, James Watt was not yet the creator of the first commercial steam engine, but a lowly maker of scientific instruments in London. The Seven Years’ War was just getting under way, and Watt was so afraid of being scooped up for service at sea or in some colonial plantation that he dared not go out of his door.
Michael Faraday’s tour of Europe included a ‘picturesque’ multicultural event on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius.
In November 1813, Napoleon Bonaparte, smarting from his humiliating Retreat from Moscow, was waging war across Europe. This did not stop Sir Humphry Davy (who called him ‘the Corsican robber’) going to Paris to receive the Napoleon Prize, or young Michael Faraday from going with him, and afterwards they went on to the Kingdom of Naples, then under French control.