The Copybook

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

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907

© Maigheach gheal, Geograph. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0.

Daw Chorus by Ethel Smyth

Composer Ethel Smyth starts telling the Archbishop of Canterbury a joke, and then wishes she hadn’t...

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908

By John Everett Millais, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.

The Princes in the Tower from Holinshed’s Chronicles

Sir Thomas More gives his explanation for the mysterious disappearance of King Richard III’s nephews.

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909

© Kim Traynor, Geograph. Licence: CC-BY-SA 2.0.

A Real Soldier by Colonel Sir William F. Butler

Major-General Charles Napier, given the task of policing a Chartist rally in Manchester, was alarmed to hear the protestors had brought the big guns - literally.

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910

© Geof Sheppard, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0.

Flying Scotsman by Clay Lane

In 1928, a train service linking London and Edinburgh became the world’s longest non-stop run.

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911

© David Ingham, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0.

What the Signalman Saw by Charles Dickens

The guardian of a lonely signalbox recounts a truly haunting experience.

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912

© Joachim Huber, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0.

Thundering Smoke by David Livingstone

David Livingstone relives the historic moment when he became the first European to see the Victoria Falls.

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Clay Lane The Copybook
About Clay Lane nicholas@claylane.uk

© Nicholas Armitage / Clay Lane, 2025

May 17 NS

May 4 OS

The Road to Ruin : George Berkeley warned that industry, not financial speculation, was the guarantee of a nation’s wealth.
Signs of Command : Suggest publicly-displayed commands, and say how many of them are sentences.
My Native Notes : Scotsman James Boswell always spoke good English when in England, but he was careful to leave a little Scots in.
Hidden Message : Reveal the hidden message in a letter, and write a coded letter of your own.
The Great and the Good : Daniel Defoe wondered whether goodness was not preferable to greatness.
Statements, Questions and Commands : Choose a word from our list, and then use it in any one of the three basic types of sentence — if possible.
Sentegrams : These sentences, taken from English literature, have been jumbled up like an anagram; see if you can piece them back together.
Good Sense : Rewrite these sentences so that the word ‘unless’ is not used.
The Coronation of Anne Boleyn : The weight of the crown that Anne Boleyn wore proved too heavy to bear.
Abstract : Use these words in sentences as a Noun, Verb or Adjective.
Better By Example : Gregory urged the persecuted Christians of Nazianzus to be the better men.
Speed Clues : Help a friend to guess five words in under a minute.
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