Short passages for reading, drawn from history, legend, poetry and fiction.
From the US National Archives and Records Administration, via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain. (Note: this is Richard Cobden, not ‘Richard Corden’ as given by NARA.)
Victorian MP Richard Cobden believed British politicians supporting the slave-owning American South had been led a merry dance.
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By Staecker, via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.
Passengers sharing Bishop Nicholas’s Moscow-bound flight found his blessings faintly silly — but that was when the engines were still running.
© Greg Willis, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC-BY-SA 2.0.
Victorian MP Richard Cobden offered a startling analogy for the American Civil War.
© Graham Horn, Geograph. Licence: CC-BY-SA 2.0.
Nineteenth-century Britain had busy industrial cities and a prosperous middle class, but no MPs to represent them.
© Robert Graham, Geograph. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0.
Athelstan confirmed himself as King of the English, and also reawakened a feeling that all Britain should be a united people.
© Leon Hawley, Geograph. Licence: CC-BY-SA 3.0.
Chad, the seventh-century Bishop of Mercia, seemed to be making a lot of music for one man.