The Copybook
Short passages for reading, drawn from history, legend, poetry and fiction.
Short passages for reading, drawn from history, legend, poetry and fiction.
A man unjustly condemned to transportation finds that thieves thieve, but sometimes decency shines through too.
In a July 1852 issue of Charles Dickens’s ‘Household Words’, readers heard the true story of an innocent man sentenced to transportation. Even though the guilty party had now confessed, the life sentence stood, and on day two of his four-month voyage to Australia the nightmare had already taken a turn for the worse.
Under a moonlit sky in October 1942, Allied and Axis forces met in battle on the sands of the Egyptian desert.
The Second Battle of El Alamein in 1942 was a turning point in the Second World War. A German and Italian army was overwhelmed by British, Indian and Commonwealth forces, supported by the US from the air. Also fighting for the Allies was a British-trained brigade of Free Greeks, and (so it was said) an ancient Roman cavalryman.
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.
The story of Rip van Winkle was written in 1818 by Washington Irving, an American who was visiting England at the time. It tells of an obliging but ne’er-do-well farmer of Dutch descent living in colonial America, who falls asleep in the mountains one evening and consequently misses a rather important event.
James Tod brought order to Udaipur after years of turmoil, but not everyone appreciated him.
James Tod (1782-1835) was appointed Political Agent in the western Rajput states in 1818, but retired in 1822 on health grounds, after falling out with his superiors. Over in Calcutta, Bishop Heber had heard rumours, but a visit to Udaipur in 1825 cleared it all up.
Vijay Singh, Raja of Jodhpur, was left to fend for himself after his army deserted him.
The Kingdom of Marwar in Jodhpur (now in Rajasthan, northwest India) was noted for insubordination towards the fading Mughal Emperors, but in the 1750s it fell under the control of the Maratha to the south, paying a high price for their help in resolving a tangled dispute over the crown.
Prussia’s invasion of Silesia in 1740 plunged Europe into turmoil, and a French invasion of England became a very real threat.
The War of the Austrian Succession began as part of the seemingly endless German quest to gobble up the continent’s smaller states. It would not have involved Britain had King George II not been also Elector of Hanover, and if France had not seen it as an opportunity to expand her empire at Britain’s expense.