Short passages for reading, drawn from history, legend, poetry and fiction.
© Reivax670, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 3.0.
Richard Hannay tracks a German spy down to a French château, but Hannay’s sense of fair play gives his enemy a chance.
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From Grace’s Guide. Licence: None stated (public domain assumed).
Sixteen-year-old John Wesley Hackworth brought a locomotive over to St Petersburg, and Russia’s railway revolution was ready for the off.
Engraving by William Nutter, based on a miniature by Samuel Shelley. From the National Portrait Gallery, via Wikimedia Commons.
A long-lived annual of riddles, rhymes and really hard maths aimed specifically at Georgian Britain’s hidden public of clever women.
Via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.
At fifteen John Dalton was a village schoolmaster in Kendal; at forty he had published the first scientific theory of atoms.
Abbot Elfric praised St Thomas for demanding hard evidence for the resurrection.
© Nchatzitou, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0.
Eurystheus pits his cousin against a son of Ares and some man-eating horses.