The Copybook
Short passages for reading, drawn from history, legend, poetry and fiction.
Short passages for reading, drawn from history, legend, poetry and fiction.
Wonder spread through a Tyneside monastery after Bishop Cuthbert asked for a drink of water.
St Cuthbert was Bishop of Lindisfarne for just two years, but his overwhelming popularity did not come from high office. It came from his tireless journeys to forgotten villages in Northumbria’s bleak high country, taking the Christian message and a fatherly affection to every corner of the kingdom.
The East India Company installed Mir Kasim as Nawab of Bengal, only to find that he had a mind of his own.
Robert Clive’s victory against the Nawab of Bengal at Plassey in 1757 made him and his employers, the East India Company, quite literally kingmakers. But Clive now retired to London, leaving Bengal to the new Nawab, Mir Jafar, and Company policy to Henry Vansittart, Clive’s successor in Calcutta.
Joseph’s master finds his new servant indispensable, but unfortunately his wife finds him irresistible.
Young Joseph’s brothers have wearied of his dreams of glory and his position as their father Jacob’s favourite. So they have beaten him, stripped him of his fine coat, and sold him to a passing caravan of merchants bound for Egypt. The story for Jacob, however, is that a wild animal has killed his beloved son.
Pharaoh’s butler suddenly remembers his promise to mention Joseph to his master.
Joseph, sold into slavery in Egypt by his envious brothers, has been jailed by his master Potiphar on the malicious testimony of Potiphar’s wife. However, Joseph has become a popular trusty by interpreting troubling dreams on behalf of several inmates, including Pharaoh’s disgraced butler.
Joseph’s brothers are forced to travel to Egypt to buy corn, and the overseer of Pharaoh’s granaries recognises them at once.
Joseph has explained Pharaoh’s troubling dreams, and such is Pharaoh’s relief that he has appointed him to oversee the kingdom’s granaries. Now famine has brought Joseph’s brothers to Egypt to buy grain, but they have no idea that the aristocratic Egyptian before them is the brother they sold into slavery.