The Copybook
Short passages for reading, drawn from history, legend, poetry and fiction.
Short passages for reading, drawn from history, legend, poetry and fiction.
The Revd Edmund Dixon urged young people to think about what a little politeness could do for them.
In 1855, the November 24th issue of Charles Dickens’s Household Words carried a long article on good manners. Written by frequent contributor the Revd Edmund Saul Dixon, it took a look at etiquette in England, France and Arab lands, and the Arabs were the clear winners. The opening lines impressed on young readers the importance of courtesy, in a fashion suggesting that Dixon had a quite remarkable pet dog.
The Nika Rebellion drew a rising Roman general against some rioting sports fans, and it was a tense game.
In a brilliant but turbulent career, Flavius Belisarius (?505-565) would recover North Africa from the Vandals and Rome from the Ostrogoths, and he would save Constantinople (the imperial capital) from the Huns. But before all this happened, he was involved in quite a different kind of campaign, the Nika Rebellion of 532, which began as a brawl amongst sports hooligans.
A half-starved cat is recruited by the Allies in the fight against Hitler.
In June 1941, some six months before the Japanese raid on Pearl Harbour brought the USA into the Second World War, the USSR declared herself for Britain and her Empire, at a time when European states from Finland to Greece had been unable to stem the Nazi tide. This little tale is based on events recounted by Ovadi Savich, originally in Soviet War News.
Some years before the Elgin marbles were put on display in the British Museum, rising artist Benjamin Haydon got a sneak preview.
In 1808, young Benjamin Haydon was an up-and-coming painter with a passion for lifelike figures. He had spent long hours sprawled on the floor painstakingly copying anatomical drawings instead of courting well-to-do patrons, and his father had declared him mad. Haydon called himself only exasperated: his attempts to paint Roman hero Dentatus were going badly.
Fame found Abraham Lincoln before he was ready for the scrutiny of the camera.
The Republican Party convention in Chicago, Illinois, on May 16th-18th, 1860, nominated lawyer Abraham Lincoln as candidate for the President of the USA, with Hannibal Hamlin of Maine as his running-mate. Some three years earlier, Lincoln (who had previously represented the city in Congress) had sat for photographer Alexander Hesler in his Chicago studio.
John Buchan, who was as close as anyone to the events, gave his assessment of how all Europe was plunged into war in 1914.
The Great War of 1914-18 was triggered by the assassination of the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, Franz Ferdinand. But as John Buchan explains here, the war had been coming for some time. Germany was ambitious for empire, and that meant taking empire from her neighbours. She was also anxious, sensing military threats and economic competitors on all sides. Her wisdom was to strike first, hoping that if she did she would not have to strike again.