The Copybook

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

1393
Apple of Discord Clay Lane

Thetis snubs Eris, goddess of Discord, and sets off a series of events leading to the Trojan War.

The god Ares took the form of a bull and won a contest of strength against a majestic beast belonging to Paris, son of the King of Troy. The mortal’s grace in defeat impressed Zeus, but Paris (and many others) came to regret his new-found reputation on Olympus for sporting behaviour.

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1394
Florence Nightingale Clay Lane

Florence used her logical mind and society connections to save thousands of lives in the Crimean War.

By the time she was twenty-one, well-to-do Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) was sure that God wished her to exchange European society life for nursing. Her mother begged her to think again: her intellectual gifts and social position promised so much more. And in a way she was right.

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1395
Stick and Carrot Clay Lane

The Virgin Mary and her son team up to get the best out of some careless monks.

In this ‘good cop, bad cop’ story from the early 14th century, Christ and his mother team up to use a bit of psychology to get through to some beloved but sloppy monks.

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1396
The Battle of the Somme Clay Lane

A British victory at tragic cost, in which both sides had to learn a new way of fighting.

In February 1916, Germany launched an offensive at Verdun in Lorraine, near the German border with France. To relieve the French forces, the British tried to draw the Germans north to the River Somme in Picardy.

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1397
‘My Shadow’ Robert Louis Stevenson

An enduringly popular poem by the author of ‘Treasure Island’.

Robert Louis Stevenson, better known today for ‘Treasure Island’ and ‘Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’, first published ‘A Child’s Garden of Verses’ in 1885. He uses simple rhymes and a ‘rum-ti-tum’ rhythm to create a sense of childhood innocence, though he does not by any means romanticise childhood, and many poems in the set are tinged with sorrow.

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1398
The Fall of Constantinople Clay Lane

Hospitality and sympathy, but no help - the Byzantine Emperor learns a bitter lesson about western diplomacy.

Byzantium became the capital of the Roman Empire in 330, and was renamed Constantinople after the Emperor, Constantine. Its fall to the Ottoman Turks in 1453 was one of the great catastrophes of civilisation, yet England and the other powers of Europe stood and watched.

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