The Copybook
Short passages for reading, drawn from history, legend, poetry and fiction.
Short passages for reading, drawn from history, legend, poetry and fiction.
Elizabeth Bennet began to wonder if being Mr Darcy’s wife might have had its compensations.
Elizabeth Bennet has recently turned down a proposal of marriage from Mr Darcy; now, having recently visited his snobbish aunt, Lady Catherine de Bourgh, she is on a guided tour round Mr Darcy’s own magnificent country house in Derbyshire, ‘Pemberley’.
Napoleon’s six-year-long campaign (1808-1814) to bring Spain and Portugal into his united Europe was frustrated by Arthur Wellesley.
Napoleon Bonaparte declared himself Emperor of the French in 1804, with the aim of bringing order to the chaos of a disunited Europe through his ‘Napoleonic Code.’ Spain initially welcomed Napoleon’s vision, but when his true ambitions became clear the Spanish appealed for help from Napoleon’s most powerful enemy: the United Kingdom.
Benjamin Jesty and Edward Jenner continue to save millions of lives because they listened to an old wives’ tale.
Surgeon Edward Jenner (1749-1823) and farmer Benjamin Jesty (1736-1816) are rightly credited with saving more lives than anyone else, by conceiving and demonstrating the principle of vaccination. What is less often emphasised is that it only happened because they listened respectfully to an old wives’ tale.
Mark Twain covets the supreme sensation of being a trailblazer.
On a visit to Rome, American novelist Mark Twain reflects (tongue-in-cheek) that everything in that ancient city has been seen before by someone. How much better, he suggests, to be an idle Roman, for then all the undiscovered secrets of the New World would be yours to find!