The Copybook

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

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KJV Bible

991

© Derek Harper, Geograph. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0.

All Things ‘Nice’ by Jane Austen

Henry Tilney teases a bewildered Catherine Morland for her lazy vocabulary.

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992

© Stephen Craven, Geograph. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0.

The Liberty-Lovers by Ralph Waldo Emerson

American essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson praises the English public for still loving freedom, despite their politicians.

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993

© Nationalmuseet (National Museum of Denmark), via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0.

The Supreme Indignity by Robert Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury

Lord Salisbury tells his fellow statesmen that no country should have its laws dictated from abroad.

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994

© T. R. Shankar Raman, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0.

Trunk and Disorderly by Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington

Arthur Wellesley watches on as one of his soldiers is rescued from a watery grave.

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995

Via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.

Never say ‘What, never?’ again by Charles Willeby

That infernal nonsense ‘Pinafore’ took America by storm.

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996

© Martin Jernberg, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.

Job’s City of Joy

The East India Company’s top agent in India was also the man who put Calcutta on the world map.

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

© Nicholas Armitage / Clay Lane, 2025

May 18 NS

May 5 OS

Crayke Abbey : The long-lost monastery at Crayke in North Yorkshire was home to two saints with different but equally valuable gifts.
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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