The Copybook

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

1159

By James Gillray. From the National Portrait Gallery, via Wikimedia Commons.

Honourable Mr Fox Samuel Smiles

The colourful Foreign Secretary humbly accepted a lesson in manners from a local tradesman.

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1160

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

St Erkenwald, Light of London Clay Lane

The seventh-century Bishop of London helped kings and clergy to shine Christian light into the darkness of mere religion.

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1161

© Reivax670, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 3.0.

Mr Ivery Gets Away John Buchan

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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1162

From Grace’s Guide. Licence: None stated (public domain assumed).

Russia’s First Railway Clay Lane

Sixteen-year-old John Wesley Hackworth brought a locomotive over to St Petersburg, and Russia’s railway revolution was ready for the off.

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1163

Engraving by William Nutter, based on a miniature by Samuel Shelley. From the National Portrait Gallery, via Wikimedia Commons.

The Ladies’ Diary Clay Lane

A long-lived annual of riddles, rhymes and really hard maths aimed specifically at Georgian Britain’s hidden public of clever women.

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1164

Via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.

John Dalton Clay Lane

At fifteen John Dalton was a village schoolmaster in Kendal; at forty he had published the first scientific theory of atoms.

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