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 ruthless diamond magnate and Prime Minister of the Cape divided opinion in his own lifetime as he still does today.
Basil Williams sat on the board of inquiry into the infamous ‘Jameson Raid’ of 1895 that was instigated by Cecil Rhodes (1853-1902) and helped to ignite the Boer Wars. He came to know Rhodes quite well, and just after the Great War published a biography of him in which he suggested ways for the reader to respond constructively to the challenge of Rhodes’s controversial life and vision.
General Gordon’s death was a sensation and a scandal in its day.
In 1884, General Charles Gordon was sent to the Sudan, then under British control, to deal with a revolt by Muhammad Ahmad, who claimed to be a figure of Islamic prophecy, the ‘Mahdi’. Gordon found himself cut off in Khartoum, and the events that followed forced Prime Minister William Gladstone to resign.
Only an anonymous tip-off prevented England losing her sovereignty as well as her King.
The Gunpowder Plot was an attempt to assassinate King James I and his entire government on the 5th of November, 1605. Had it succeeded, it would have ended English sovereignty and made England and Scotland junior partners to the great Catholic states of Europe.
Charles Dickens chastises those who alter the plots of classic tales to push some social agenda of their own.
Charles Dickens’s friend, the cartoonist George Cruikshank, rewrote various fairytales as propaganda for teetotalism. Dickens, however, soon appreciated the dangers in allowing social activists to indoctrinate children like this.