The Copybook

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

985

By Joseph Nollekens (1737-1823), via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Pubic domain.

The Temperate Zone William Pitt the Younger

William Pitt complained that European politics offers only a choice of inhospitable extremes.

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986

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

The Garden and the Machine John Buchan

John Buchan compared how the Germans and the British understood their empires, and saw two very different pictures indeed.

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987

By Ernest Brooks (1878–1957), via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.

The Avengers John Buchan

John Buchan was moved by the way the nations of the British Empire volunteered for service in the Great War.

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988

© Cristian Bortes, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC-BY-SA 2.0.

Raw Haste Sir Reginald Coupland

The French revolution failed because real liberty cannot be enforced overnight, or indeed enforced at all.

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989

By John Constable (1776-1837), via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.

Hard Rain William Cobbett

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.

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990

© Nickolas Titkov, Geograph. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0 generic.

The Kitten on the Wall William Wordsworth

William Wordsworth watches a playful kitten, and makes himself a promise.

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