The Copybook

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

Blog

Copybook

Think & Speak

Games

KJV Bible

1285

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.

Read

1286

© 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.

Read

1287

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.

Read

1288

© 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.

Read

1289

© 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.

Read

1290

© 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.

Read

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

© Nicholas Armitage / Clay Lane, 2025

May 19 NS

May 6 OS

The Road to Ruin : George Berkeley warned that industry, not financial speculation, was the guarantee of a nation’s wealth.
Signs of Command : Suggest publicly-displayed commands, and say how many of them are sentences.
My Native Notes : Scotsman James Boswell always spoke good English when in England, but he was careful to leave a little Scots in.
Hidden Message : Reveal the hidden message in a letter, and write a coded letter of your own.
The Great and the Good : Daniel Defoe wondered whether goodness was not preferable to greatness.
Statements, Questions and Commands : Choose a word from our list, and then use it in any one of the three basic types of sentence — if possible.
Sentegrams : These sentences, taken from English literature, have been jumbled up like an anagram; see if you can piece them back together.
Good Sense : Rewrite these sentences so that the word ‘unless’ is not used.
The Coronation of Anne Boleyn : The weight of the crown that Anne Boleyn wore proved too heavy to bear.
Abstract : Use these words in sentences as a Noun, Verb or Adjective.
Better By Example : Gregory urged the persecuted Christians of Nazianzus to be the better men.
Speed Clues : Help a friend to guess five words in under a minute.
Latest

Clay Lane Home

Search

Blog

The Copybook

Think and Speak

Comfortable Words

Word Games

Featured Authors

Featured Subjects

Search The Copybook

About Clay Lane

Close Menu