Short passages for reading, drawn from history, legend, poetry and fiction.
© Ian Taylor, Geograph. CC BY-SA 2.0.
Travelling salesman Richard Cobden was still in his twenties when he bought a loss-making mill for a hundred times his annual salary.
Read
© Following Hadrian. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0.
The Romans did bring some blessings to Britain, but none so great as the one they did not mean to bring.
© Mobilus in Mobili, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0.
If Parliament is going to force its will on distant peoples, it must also give them the vote.
By Isaac Robert Cruikshank (1789–1856), via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.
Ralph Waldo Emerson wondered why New Yorkers elected to Congress the kind of man they would turn out of their own homes.
By Thomas Eakins (1844–1916), via Wikimedia Commons. Licene: Public domain.
When William Cobbett told his son James to be conscientious about his grammar lessons, he was drawing on hard-won experience.
United Kingdom Hydrographic Office, via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.
The study of history can distract us from pressing modern problems, but failing to study it is much worse.