The Copybook

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

1171

By Staecker, via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.

The Blessings of Nicholas Mogilevsky Clay Lane

Passengers sharing Bishop Nicholas’s Moscow-bound flight found his blessings faintly silly — but that was when the engines were still running.

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1172

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

Dixie on Thames Richard Cobden

Victorian MP Richard Cobden offered a startling analogy for the American Civil War.

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1173

© Graham Horn, Geograph. Licence: CC-BY-SA 2.0.

The Reform Acts Clay Lane

Nineteenth-century Britain had busy industrial cities and a prosperous middle class, but no MPs to represent them.

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1174

© Robert Graham, Geograph. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0.

The Battle of Brunanburh Clay Lane

Athelstan confirmed himself as King of the English, and also reawakened a feeling that all Britain should be a united people.

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1175

© Leon Hawley, Geograph. Licence: CC-BY-SA 3.0.

St Chad and the Invisible Choir Clay Lane

Chad, the seventh-century Bishop of Mercia, seemed to be making a lot of music for one man.

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1176

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

The Night-time Disciple Clay Lane

Nicodemus did not allow intellectual doubts to get in the way of what he knew in his heart.

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