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 chapel of Bede’s monastery in Sunderland was full of the colours and sounds of the far-off Mediterranean world.
In 678, the new Pope, a Sicilian Greek named Agatho, decided to continue a recent trend of introducing Greek elements into Roman worship. St Benedict Biscop, an English abbot who visited Rome for the fifth and final time the following year, brought the sights and sounds of the eastern Mediterranean back home.
Thomas Clarkson believed that Africans were being forced into slavery in the West Indies, but could he prove it to the British public?
In 1790, many people still sincerely believed that African slaves in the West Indies went there voluntarily. Thomas Clarkson did not; and when a friend told him of a sailor who had seen the kidnappings with his own eyes, he set out to get his testimony. Unfortunately, Clarkson did not know this man’s name, his ship, or even his home port.