The Copybook
Short passages for reading, drawn from history, legend, poetry and fiction.
Short passages for reading, drawn from history, legend, poetry and fiction.
Adam and Eve are set in a Garden of carefree delight, but the Snake swears they are victims of a cruel deception.
Early in the 6th century BC, the leaders of Jerusalem were forced out of their land and scattered across the Near East, as a punishment for ignoring God’s laws. It was then that they wrote the story of Adam and Eve, drawing on ancient traditions to fashion a profound reflection on the ongoing story of mankind’s troubled yet hopeful relationship with his Maker.
Even as a child, King Alfred couldn’t resist a challenge.
Alfred the Great was King of Wessex in southern England, from 871 to 899. By reclaiming the Midlands and East Anglia from pagan Danish invaders, he took a giant step towards the formation of a Kingdom of England, and ensured it would be a civilised, enlightened, Christian land.
Forced from his throne and threatened with murder, Edwin makes a curious bargain for his deliverance.
Deprived of his throne in about 604, King Edwin of Deira and Bernicia — later known as Northumbria — fled York and went south to Mercia, only to find his usurper, brother-in-law and mortal enemy, Æthelfrith, still pursuing him to the death. But a night-time visitor gave him a new hope, and a curious sign to remember it by.
The strange-but-true story of a Lady Day tradition.
In the days of King Stephen (r. 1135-1154), Lady Tichborne in Hampshire warned her heirs never to fail in their charity to the poor. To do so, she said, would be bring the family line to an abrupt end, and six hundred years and one meddlesome magistrate later, her unlikely fears came true.