Read short passages similar to those NL Clay collected in his anthologies, to gain a feeling for the language, history and culture of the English-speaking world.
In The Copybook
Read short passages similar to those NL Clay collected in his anthologies, to gain a feeling for the language, history and culture of the English-speaking world.
In The Copybook
When columnist ‘Alpha of the Plough’ was asked to select his most memorable moment of the Great War, he told the story of HMS Formidable.
Asked which event of the Great War had made the deepest impression on him, columnist ‘Alpha of the Plough’ recalled the fate of HMS Formidable, twice torpedoed by a German U-Boat during night-time exercises off the Devon coast on January 1st, 1915. The Captain, 34 officers and 512 crew died; 157 men were picked up from the water or made it ashore in two boats.
Within little more than half a century a British penal colony turned into a prosperous, free-trade democracy.
Australia is a partner to be proud of: a sovereign constitutional monarchy with our Queen as Head of State, a member of the Commonwealth of Nations, and a prosperous democracy built on and dedicated to free trade that gave us priceless support in two world wars.
For Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Christmas was a time to let the dead past bury its dead.
The death of Tennyson’s close friend Arthur Henry Hallam left familiar Christmas Eve customs such as the holly and the music and the dancing full of sad memories for him. He responded positively, however, embracing the deeper message of Christmas Day: a new beginning, a New Year.
Anglo-Saxon abbot Elfric tentatively likened the new-born Jesus to an egg.
In a Sermon for Christmas Day, Anglo-Saxon abbot Elfric of Eynsham likened the new-born baby in the manger to an egg. His purpose was serious: he wanted his congregation to understand that Jesus Christ was the incarnate Son, Word and Wisdom of God, not merely a prophet or good man that God loved like a son.
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One of the Emperor Galerius’s most trusted generals openly defied him.
At the end of the 3rd century, Christians of the pagan Roman Empire were comparatively free: they built churches, founded schools, and established networks of charity and goodwill that the authorities both envied and feared. One Emperor sent in the army to nip the flower in the bud, but George, one of his most senior military commanders, would have no part in it.
Arthur Clutton-Brock complained that idealising Shakespeare had made him dull.
Arthur Clutton-Brock was, for many years, art critic for the Times, and knew something of the artistic temperament. On the tercentenary of the death of William Shakespeare (1564-1616), he deplored the way that Shakespeare had been turned into a National Institution.
Lieutenant John Pasco not only flew the most famous signal in British history, he helped write it.
On October 21st, 1805, the Royal Navy crushed a French and Spanish fleet at Cape Trafalgar, Spain. This permanently deprived Napoleon Bonaparte, the French Emperor, of sea-power, and ended his hopes of conquering Britain. Though Admiral Nelson died that day, his call to arms remains one of the best-known sentences in the English language. Here, Lieutenant John Pasco recalls how it was made.
Prince Albert regretted the destructive power of the Art Critic.
On May 3rd, 1851, Prince Albert spoke at a dinner in honour of the recently elected President of the Royal Academy, Sir Charles Lock Eastlake (1793-1865). The present company, the Prince admitted, were better placed to judge Sir Charles as an artist. But thanks to working so closely with him, he had learnt something about their new President that they might not know: how kindly he dealt with other artists.
Robert Pierrepont called heaven to witness that he would never pick a side in the Civil War.
Robert Pierrepont (1584-1623), 1st Earl of Kingston-upon-Hull, sided with Charles I in the Civil War after much debate. Soon afterwards, on July 16th, 1643, he was captured by the Parliamentarians at Gainsborough, and died in a botched rescue attempt. When the war was over, and Charles II had been restored to his throne, Lucy Hutchinson added a strange detail to the Earl’s sad story.
Ben Jonson tells us how we should measure a life well lived.
Ben Jonson’s collection of short poems Underwoods was published in 1640, soon after he died. He tells us that it takes its title from a habit of classical poets, who liked to call their miscellanies ‘Woods’. If Jonson’s earlier poems were his woods, he said, then these little additions were shrubs on the woodland floor. The following lines are a reflection on the value of a life.
Thomas Jefferson recalls the virtues (and a few faults) of the first US President.
In 1814, former US President Thomas Jefferson (who had served from 1801 to 1809) wrote a letter to Walter Jones (1776-1861), a lawyer whom Jefferson had appointed US attorney for the District of Columbia in 1802. In his letter, Jefferson reminisced about George Washington, supreme commander of the American revolutionary army and first President of the USA.