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Short passages for reading, drawn from history, legend, poetry and fiction.

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1501
Pygmalion and Galatea by Clay Lane

Pygmalion discovered that prudishness is not the same as purity.

Pygmalion assumed that Aphrodite, goddess of pure love, would bless a romance free from fleshly passion, but he had misunderstood the true meaning of purity.

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1502
Damon and Pythias by Clay Lane

A tale of two friends with complete confidence in each other, and loyal to the death.

Dionysius, tyrant of the island of Sicily (probably Dionysius I, r. 405-367 BC), was deeply impressed by the bond of trust shared by Pythias and Damon. Given how he came to find out about it, though, it is understandable that they thought three would make a crowd.

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1503
The Gordian Knot by Clay Lane

Alexander fulfilled the letter of a prophecy and he did become ruler of the world, but it wasn’t quite fair.

To ‘cut the Gordian knot’ is to solve an apparently intractable problem simply, by lateral thinking. I’m not sure, however, that Alexander really ‘solved’ the problem at all.

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1504
The Midas Touch by Clay Lane

An ancient Greek myth about the dangers of easy wealth.

The ‘Midas Touch’ is the ability to make a success of anything to which you turn your hand, but the original myth carries a warning.

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1505
The Caucus Race by Lewis Carroll

Alice experiences for herself the very definition of a pointless exercise.

Alice and an assortment of animals have got very wet. A mouse tries to dry them out by reciting a passage from a dry history book, but when this doesn’t work, the Dodo suggests a Caucus Race.

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1506
‘The marriage cannot go on!’ by Charlotte Brontë

The cup of happiness is dashed from Jane Eyre’s lips.

Mr Rochester has proposed to his astonished but delighted governess, Jane Eyre, and the happy couple are now in church, ready to exchange their marriage vows.

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© Nicholas Armitage / Clay Lane, 2025

June 1 NS

May 19 OS

Dmitri of the Don : Grand Duke Dmitri of Moscow loosened the grip of the Tartar Horde on the people of Russia, but treachery robbed him of triumph.
The First Council of Nicaea : As soon the Roman Emperor Constantine declared religious liberty in his Empire, the Christian Church gave him cause for regret.
Wilfrid Israel : Wilfrid Israel used his Berlin department store as cover for smuggling thousands of Jewish children to safety in Britain.
The Glorious First of June : Admiral Lord Howe battered a French fleet far out in the Atlantic, and helped prevent the spread of bloody revolution.
The Coronation of Anne Boleyn : The weight of the crown that Anne Boleyn wore proved too heavy to bear.
Peggy’s Dog : Some lines from the comic verse of Thomas Hood, for reading aloud.
An Interruption : Report this conversation without using direct speech.
Tender Plants : Prince Albert regretted the destructive power of the Art Critic.
Lost for Words : Join these ideas together into a single sentence, using ‘although’ or ‘though’.
Loan Words : Match these words to the language they come from, whether Old Norse, Malay or Welsh.
Evidence : Join these ideas together to form a single sentence, using the relative pronoun ‘who’.
Fatal Vow : Robert Pierrepont called heaven to witness that he would never pick a side in the Civil War.
Lost and Found : What would you in these difficult situations?
They Might Not Need Me : Read these lines of verse out aloud.
The Turn : Ben Jonson tells us how we should measure a life well lived.
Music Video : Julius Benedict, Piano Concerto in E flat: II. Andante,
The Character of George Washington : Thomas Jefferson recalls the virtues (and a few faults) of the first US President.
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