The Copybook
Short passages for reading, drawn from history, legend, poetry and fiction.
Short passages for reading, drawn from history, legend, poetry and fiction.
Elfric, the tenth-century English abbot, suggests a practical way of thinking about the Presentation of Christ in the Temple.
Where ancient Judaism favoured the close regulation of society and individual actions by the state, Christianity emphasises individual responsibility, a major influence on the Britain’s famously liberal constitution. Elfric, Abbot of Eynsham in the reign of Æthelred the Unready, gave a rather clever example of how this works in a sermon for Candlemas, kept each year on February 2nd.
The story of the once magnificent Temple in Jerusalem, the city God chose for Israel’s capital.
All that remains of the Temple in Jerusalem is a 187ft section of the western wall, after the rest was destroyed during a rebellion against the Roman Empire in AD 66-74; the heart of the ruined Temple Mount is now occupied by a mosque. The Temple’s history reaches back to the tenth century BC and King Solomon, who first built a House for Israel’s God to dwell among his people.
The invention of the steamboat was a formidable challenge not just of engineering, but of politics and finance.
Steam power came to rivers and lakes even before it came to railways. Exactly who was ‘first’ is often debated, but the short answer is that a Frenchman was the first to try it, a Scotsman was the first to make it work, and an American was the first to make a profit from it.
All but forgotten today, the RCH was one of the most important steps forward in British industrial history.
The humble Railway Clearing House (RCH) brought real co-operation to Victorian Britain’s many different private railway companies, and gave yet further impetus to the country’s accelerating industrial revolution. Its success should be a reminder to private companies that they and their passengers actually share very similar interests.
A former convict told Henry Morley about his debt to Thomas Wright, the prisoner’s friend.
Thomas Wright (1789-1875) was a foreman in a Manchester iron foundry and a father of nineteen, who never earned above £3 10s a week in his life. But he helped hundreds of ex-convicts back into society, using his own money to indemnify their employers against any relapse.