Short passages for reading, drawn from history, legend, poetry and fiction.
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By James Bretherton (?1730-1806), after William Henry Bunbury (1750-1811), via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.
In the opening lines of Laurence Sterne’s Sentimental Journey, the narrator explains the perverse whim that led him to leave his home shores behind.
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By Willem van de Velde (1603-1707), via the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, and Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.
Samuel Pepys ran into a little knot of seafaring men at the Exchange, who told him some hair-raising tales about their time in Algiers.
© Andrey Mironov, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0.
When Rhoda, maid to John Mark and his mother, said Peter was standing at the gate, nobody in the house believed her.
By Jan Siberechts (1627-?1703), via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.
In 1720, Welsh promoter William Howell opened a pleasure garden at Belsize House, but the pleasures drew the magistrates’ frowns.
© Robin Stott, Geograph. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0.
On a countryside ramble in West Sussex, William Cobbett finds the weather turning against him.
© Dennis Jarvis, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0 generic.
In 1692, a girl of fourteen was left to defend her father’s manor from angry Iroquois raiders.