Short passages for reading, drawn from history, legend, poetry and fiction.
© Velvet, via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 3.0.
George Stephenson was only too pleased to save the Government from its scientific advisers.
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© Evelyn Simak, Geograph. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0.
Fursey was a 7th-century Irish monk whose visions of the afterlife made a great impression on St Bede.
© Abdulquadir14, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC-BY-SA 4.0.
Oldham’s firebrand MP William Cobbett rips into the the City of London for blocking economic and political progress in India.
From the United States Library of Congress’s Prints and Photographs division, via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.
Henry Mayhew, co-founder of ‘Punch’, tells two anecdotes about the Victorian cabbie.
By Gottfried Mind (1768-1814), via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.
A stranger warns the people of Shorapur that they will come to regret their hospitality.
By Thomas M. Hemy (1852-1931), via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.
A fierce Victorian rivalry sprang up between two football teams from the industrial heartlands of the North East.