The Copybook

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

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Via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

A Dream of Independence John Bright

In 1877, John Bright told a meeting of the Manchester India Association that he had wanted to put India on the path to independence nearly twenty years before.

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Photo by Elliott and Fry, from the National Portrait Gallery, via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.

The Repeal of the Corn Laws John Bright

Richard Cobden realised that John Bright, overcome with grief after seeing his young wife die, needed something worthwhile to live for.

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By William Hole (1846-1917), via the Scottish National Portrait Gallery and Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.

St Margaret of Scotland The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

When Malcolm III, King of Scots, met Princess Margaret of Wessex, he knew at once that he had found a woman capable of setting an example to a whole nation.

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© Matt Brown, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0.

Deep River William Charles Berwick Sayers

Berwick Sayers tells how his friend, the composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, set out on his last voyage.

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© Henry Hartley, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 3.0.

The Gettysburg Address Abraham Lincoln

Following a decisive victory in the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln urged his supporters to make sure that liberty’s advantage was not squandered.

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© Steven C. Berger, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 3.0.

The Battle of Gettysburg D. H. Montgomery

Two years into the American Civil War, the Union army responded to a dispiriting defeat at Chancellorsville with a decisive and historic victory at Gettysburg.

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