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

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841

By Egbert van der Poel, (16621-1664). Via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.

Playing with Fire by William Thomas Stead

William Stead warned his fellow-journalists to take care that their bellicose rhetoric did not end in a real war with Russia.

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842

By Gorgo, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain image.

Androcles and the Lion by Clay Lane

Gaius Caesar is disappointed with the quality of the entertainment on offer in Rome’s Circus Maximus.

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843

By A. D. Lewis, via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.

The Man who Made the Headlines by Clay Lane

William Stead conceived modern print journalism in the belief that newspapers could change the world.

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844

© Wellcome Images, via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.

Criminal Justice as told to William Moy Thomas

A man unjustly condemned to transportation finds that thieves thieve, but sometimes decency shines through too.

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845

From the Athens War Museum collection, via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.

The Miracle of El Alamein by Clay Lane

Under a moonlit sky in October 1942, Allied and Axis forces met in battle on the sands of the Egyptian desert.

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846

By Robert Pine (1730-1788), Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.

The Tale of Rip van Winkle by Clay Lane

A hen-pecked, ne’er-do-well farmer from New York took off into the Catskill Mountains, and fell in with some very odd company.

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Clay Lane The Copybook
About Clay Lane nicholas@claylane.uk

© Nicholas Armitage / Clay Lane, 2025

May 20 NS

May 7 OS

The Bishop and the Chatterbox : One week into a Lenten retreat with the Bishop of Hexham, a boy’s miserable life is turned right around.
The Battle of Nechtansmere : King Ecgfrith of Northumbria dismissed repeated warnings about his imperial ambitions.
Thick and Thin : Express each of these ideas as a single word.
Break : Explain what each of these common expressions means, and give examples.
Blind Guide : William Wirt recalls an overpowering sermon from a blind man in a little wooden chapel.
It’s All in the Delivery : Aeschines paid tribute to the oratory of his greatest rival — whether he meant to or not.
The Road to Ruin : George Berkeley warned that industry, not financial speculation, was the guarantee of a nation’s wealth.
Signs of Command : Suggest publicly-displayed commands, and say how many of them are sentences.
My Native Notes : Scotsman James Boswell always spoke good English when in England, but he was careful to leave a little Scots in.
Hidden Message : Reveal the hidden message in a letter, and write a coded letter of your own.
The Great and the Good : Daniel Defoe wondered whether goodness was not preferable to greatness.
Statements, Questions and Commands : Choose a word from our list, and then use it in any one of the three basic types of sentence — if possible.
Sentegrams : These sentences, taken from English literature, have been jumbled up like an anagram; see if you can piece them back together.
Good Sense : Rewrite these sentences so that the word ‘unless’ is not used.
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