Character and Conduct

Anne Elliot resents being expected to court the society of anyone simply because of social status.

Anne Elliot’s snobbish father Sir Walter, of Camden Place in Bath, usually wastes no time on those who fall short of his exacting standards in beauty or manners. But as Anne complains to her attentive cousin, Mr Elliot, he makes a grovelling exception for his aristocratic relations, the Dalrymples.

Read

There is an art to making one’s compliments seem artless.

Mr Bennet delights in meeting ridiculous people. His cousin, the Revd Mr Collins, is a revelation, singing the praises of his snobbish neighbour Lady Catherine de Bourgh, and her smothered, chronically ill daughter Anne.

Read

Intellectual learning is to be respected, but it should never be confused with good character.

Samuel Smiles devoted an entire volume to the subject of character, appreciating that an education is only as good as the moral principles with which it is applied.

Read

Young Montague Bertie, Lord Willougby, tended his dying father behind enemy lines.

At eight o’clock on the morning of the 23rd of October, 1642, King Charles I gazed down on the field of Edgehill, and the Parliamentarian army that awaited him there. It was the start of the English Civil War, which would all but end with the King’s execution in January 1649.

Read

High praise from someone who knew him better than most.

The Revd Alexander Scott was the chaplain on Nelson’s ship, and was with him when the great Admiral died at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. This is what he wrote about his friend.

Read

A self-made man who never forgot his humble beginnings.

George Stephenson (1781-1848) was an illiterate boy from the North East, who, through his pioneering railways and steam engines, became arguably the most important civil engineer in world history.

Read