The Copybook

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

1057

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

Alice gets an English Lesson Lewis Carroll

Alice meets Humpty Dumpty, and it turns out that she has been using words wrong all her life.

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1058

© Optimist on the run, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC-BY-SA-3.0.

Thomas Brassey Clay Lane

The unsung surveyor from Cheshire, who built railways and made friends across the world.

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1059

Photo by Elliott and Fry, via the National Portrait Gallery and Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.

The Din of Diplomacy William Ewart Gladstone

William Gladstone warns voters not to leave foreign policy in the hands of interventionist politicians.

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1060

© Alex ‘Florstein’ Fedorov, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0.

An Exceptional Nation William Ewart Gladstone

William Gladstone explains that a truly ‘exceptional nation’ respects the equality and rights of all nations.

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1061

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

A Leader by Example Samuel Smiles

George Stephenson won the admiration of French navvies by showing them how a Geordie works a shovel.

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1062

© David Iliff, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC-BY-SA 4.0.

The Language of Balnibarbi Jonathan Swift

Lemuel Gulliver finds that the people of Balnibarbi just don’t appreciate their hardworking academics.

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