Short passages for reading, drawn from history, legend, poetry and fiction.
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By William Brassey Hole (1846-1917), via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.
Agricola, tasked with subduing the people of Britain to Roman colonial government, persuaded them to wear servitude as a badge of refinement.
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© Andrew Shiva, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0.
Herbert Bury’s duties took him back to St Petersburg after the Russian revolution of 1917, but all he could think of was how it used to be.
George Cruikshank (1792–1878), via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 3.0.
Piqued by the way French and German literati mocked the English, Charles Dickens urged his compatriots to be the better men.
By Fanny Stevenson, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public Domain.
Shortly after meeting Fanny Osbourne, Robert Louis Stevenson reflected on the different ways in which falling in love affects a man.
By Giuseppe Castiglione (1688-1766), via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.
Following a historic embassy in 1792-93, Chien Lung, the Emperor of China, despatched a haughty letter rebuffing King George III’s offer of trade.
By William Alexander (1767–1816), via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.
Aeneas Anderson, who accompanied Lord Macartney on Britain’s first embassy to China, shared a tale illustrating the Qianlong Emperor’s notion of fair play.