The Copybook
Short passages for reading, drawn from history, legend, poetry and fiction.
Short passages for reading, drawn from history, legend, poetry and fiction.
In John Buchan’s story about the Great War, Richard Hannay must watch as his friend sacrifices his life for the Allies.
In the Great War, RAF pilot Peter Pienaar endures being shot down, lamed and kept as a prisoner of war with the help of Bunyan’s ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’. He has been free only a matter of days when despite his injury he steals a plane to take out the Germans’ flying ace Lensch, by ramming him in mid-air.
George Stephenson argued that his steam engines were solar-powered.
Today’s enthusiasts for ‘renewable energy’ have brought Britain’s once-mighty coal industry to an end. Yet judging by George Stephenson’s exchange with William Buckland, the eccentric but brilliant Oxford geologist, there may have been a serious misunderstanding...
Roman Emperor Julian was ready to destroy an entire Christian community over his wounded pride.
This story was told to his congregation by Elfric of Eynsham (955-1010) on the Feast of the Dormition of Mary. It is quite true that in 363, Julian the Apostate, pagan Emperor of Rome and cruel persecutor of Christians, was mortally wounded by an unknown assailant wielding a spear.
Elfric imagines how the Virgin Mary went to her eternal home.
When Elfric, Abbot of Eynsham near Oxford during the reign of Ethelred the Unready (r. 978-1916), came to preach on August 15th, the Feast of the Repose of Mary, he was unusually tightlipped. Some of what was passed around he regarded as legend, but he was sure of one thing: that Mary did not go home to heaven all on her own.
The Scots paid a heavy price for honouring their ‘Auld Alliance’ with France.
In September 1513, King James IV of Scotland found himself torn between ties of family and obligations of state. He chose the latter, and on a cold and lonely field in Northumberland, James and thousands of his loyal subjects paid dearly.