Short passages for reading, drawn from history, legend, poetry and fiction.
By Joseph Nollekens (1737-1823), via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Pubic domain.
William Pitt complained that European politics offers only a choice of inhospitable extremes.
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© GraceKelly, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 3.0.
John Buchan compared how the Germans and the British understood their empires, and saw two very different pictures indeed.
By Ernest Brooks (1878–1957), via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.
John Buchan was moved by the way the nations of the British Empire volunteered for service in the Great War.
© Cristian Bortes, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC-BY-SA 2.0.
The French revolution failed because real liberty cannot be enforced overnight, or indeed enforced at all.
By John Constable (1776-1837), via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.
Some likened tax-and-spend to a refreshing shower of rain, but for William Cobbett the rain wasn’t falling mainly on the plain man.
© Nickolas Titkov, Geograph. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0 generic.
William Wordsworth watches a playful kitten, and makes himself a promise.