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

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1279

Via Wikimedia Commons.

Wellington’s Secret by Samuel Smiles

The future hero of Waterloo dealt with political ambush as comfortably as he dealt with the military kind.

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1280

© Jakub-Hałun, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0.

A True Gentleman of Verona by Samuel Smiles

A young man from the Italian city on the Adige River demonstrates that class has nothing to do with wealth.

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1281

By Jules Girardet, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.

One Last Question by Charles Dickens

English lawyer Sydney Carton goes to the guillotine in place of a French aristocrat.

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1282

© Oliver Dixon, Geograph. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0.

Northumberland by Wilfrid Wilson Gibson

A poem of nostalgia for the sea breezes and yellow gorse of Northumberland.

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1283

© Janet Richardson, Geograph. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0.

‘Sussex’ by Rudyard Kipling

A meditation on our instinctive love for the place in which we live.

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1284

© Richard Crowest Licence: CC BY-SA 3.0.

Triumph in Adversity by Samuel Smiles

Two famous figures, one from the sciences and one from the arts, who turned suffering to advantage.

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Clay Lane The Copybook
About Clay Lane nicholas@claylane.uk

© Nicholas Armitage / Clay Lane, 2025

May 9 NS

April 26 OS

A Gallant Attempt for the Crown : Only months after kidnapping the Duke of Ormond, Irish radical Thomas Blood was at it again, this time attempting to steal the Crown Jewels.
Russia’s Heroic Stand : In 1941, with much of the West subdued, Adolf Hitler bent the full force of his hatred on Moscow.
A Thousand Commas : Assess the punctuation of this sentence, according to the author’s own principles.
Batter My Heart : John Donne gives God a free hand to do whatever needs to be done.
Window Seat : Describe the view from one of the following vantage points.
Repeat Offender :
In Two Minds : Join these ideas together to a form a single sentence, in at least two different ways.
The First Traffic Lights : The busy crossroads outside the Houses of Parliament was the testing ground for a new technology.
Good Companions : Explain what these wise classical authors are telling us.
The Rule of the Road : Being a free citizen doesn’t mean that everyone else has to get out of your way.
Blind Courage : George Santayana reprimanded politicians and military men who thought war was good for the country’s soul.
Patience : Make a single sentence out of these three ideas.
The Angel Cried : A hymn sung in the weeks after Easter, imagining how Gabriel brought the news of Christ’s resurrection to Mary.
She was a Phantom of Delight : Mary Wordsworth wasn’t pretty or bookish, but she was kind and vital, and William loved her.
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