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Recent Posts The Abuse of Literacy Among Old Friends A Reckless Indifference to Life Dear Anne Elliot
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Extracts from Fiction

Romance, adventure and comedy from the very best fiction writers, including Jane Austen, the Brontë sisters, Charles Dickens, John Buchan, and many more.

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7

On Having the Socks

By Samuel Butler

In Erewhon, apologise by saying you have the socks and everyone will understand.

Posted October 21 2024

8

A Time Like the Present

By Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens set his historical novel A Tale of Two Cities (1859) in the French Revolution seventy years before, but it was far from the dead past to him.

Posted May 30 2024

9

An Unlikely Heroine

By Jane Austen

When she was ten, Catherine Morland showed none of the qualities needed to impress the ladies who read romantic fiction.

Posted December 21 2023

10

Koré

By John Buchan

Sir Edward Leithen finds himself revising his opinion of the ‘detestable’ Koré Arabin.

Posted December 19 2023

11

Robinson Crusoe Goes to Sea

By Daniel Defoe

Hours after running away to sea, Robinson Crusoe was sorry he ever left home.

Posted November 10 2023

12

Silas Marner Misses his Gold

By George Eliot

Silas Marner, the weaver, plans to take a comforting look at his savings while he eats his dinner.

Posted October 2 2023

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Music Video Alexander Borodin: Petite Suite: VI. Rêverie

Posted Yesterday

Composition Make up sentences using these phrases, making sure you put plenty of action in.

Posted Yesterday • Think and Speak

Rhymes Suggest words that rhyme with ‘love’.

Posted January 13 • Think and Speak

The Abuse of Literacy Reading and writing should have taught the people more than name-calling and how to manipulate opinion.

Posted January 13 • The Copy Book

Among Old Friends ‘Alpha of the Plough’ hoped Sir Arthur Conan Doyle did not treat his old friends as he treated his favourite books.

Posted January 12 • The Copy Book

Music Video Orlando Gibbons: Thus Angels Sung

Posted January 12 • Comfortable Words

A Reckless Indifference to Life In eighteenth-century England, the death penalty was the solution to almost any crime.

Posted January 11 • The Copy Book

Music Video Sir Charles Villiers Stanford: Symphony No. 3 in F Minor, Op. 28 (Irish): II. Allegro molto vivace

Posted January 10

Vocabulary Express each of these phrases in a single word.

Posted January 10

Dear Anne Elliot Anne Thackeray saw something in Jane Austen’s heroines that she missed in their more modern sisters.

Posted January 4 • The Copy Book

The Three Bears The beginning of Robert Southey’s classic fairy tale.

Posted January 2 • The Copy Book

A Man Without a Price A Russian princess admitted defeat with a most gracious compliment.

Posted January 1 • The Copy Book

Music Video Henry Purcell: Rejoice in the Lord Alway (‘the Bell Anthem’)

Posted January 1

Homonyms Show that each of these words might mean different things to different people.

Posted January 1 • Think and Speak

Hair by Hair Governments must not use ‘the good of society’ as an excuse to run our lives.

Posted December 31 2024 • The Copy Book

Music Video William Byrd: The Bells

Posted December 31 2024

Hearken to the Solemn Voice A hymn looking to the coming of Christ in judgement, sung at the Wesleys’ New Year’s Eve watch-nights.

Posted December 30 2024 • Comfortable Words

One Last Look Edith Nesbit brings down the curtain on ‘The Railway Children’.

Posted December 30 2024 • The Copy Book

Rephrasing Cast Mr Perks’s words into good plain English.

Posted December 29 2024 • Think and Speak

The Illustrious Mourner In Russia, when a blind beggar is laid to rest even the Emperor knows for whom the bell tolls.

Posted December 29 2024 • The Copy Book