The Copybook

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

1621
The Siege of Arcot Thomas Babington Macaulay

Twenty-five-year-old Robert Clive’s extraordinary daring helped to prevent India falling into the hands of the French King.

In 1751, France, Holland and Britain were all vying for the friendship of India’s ruling princes. Chunda Sahib, Nawab of Arcot, backed by the French, had Britain’s ally Mohammed Ali pinned down in Trichinopoly; so Robert Clive persuaded his superiors to let him capture Arcot itself. Immediately, Chunda’s son Rajah brought ten thousand men to relieve it.

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1622
Angel Cat Jerome K. Jerome

Cats do have a conscience: it tells them when to look innocent.

According to Jerome’s friend Jephson, alongside Nonconformists cats are the only creatures in this world with a functioning conscience. ‘You might almost think they had a soul.’

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1623
Typical Cat! P. G. Wodehouse

When a cat comes into your life, resistance is futile.

Aspiring author Elizabeth had been needing a little bit of good luck, and finding a stray black cat she named ‘Joseph’ seemed like a good omen.

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1624
Cain and Abel Clay Lane

Smarting for his outraged ‘rights’, Cain lost his reason — but not God’s pity and love.

Abel and his brother Cain were the sons of Adam and Eve. Theirs is a universal tale of what long-nursed envy and a sense of outraged ‘rights’ can lead us to do; but it is also an allegory of the deteriorating relationship between Judah and the ten tribes of northern Israel in the 8th century BC.

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1625
Daniel in the Lions’ Den Clay Lane

The King who condemned him to the den of lions felt far worse about it than Daniel did.

Nebuchadnezzar II was King of Babylon (near to modern Baghdad) in the 6th century BC. Many Jews lived there, after Jerusalem was conquered by the Babylonians 587 BC.

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1626
Belshazzar’s Feast Clay Lane

Prince Belshazzar’s disrespectful behaviour left him facing the original ‘writing on the wall’.

Belshazzar was a prince in Babylon (near what is now Baghdad, Iraq) in the 6th century BC. While his father King Nabonidus was away, Belshazzar had the government of the Empire in his father’s stead.

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