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Recent Posts The Abuse of Literacy Among Old Friends A Reckless Indifference to Life Dear Anne Elliot
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Extracts from Fiction

Romance, adventure and comedy from the very best fiction writers, including Jane Austen, the Brontë sisters, Charles Dickens, John Buchan, and many more.

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19

A Glide Into the Future

By H. G. Wells

A dinner host enthralls his guests with an extraordinary scientific experiment.

Posted November 9 2022

20

The Abduction of Tarzan

By Edgar Rice Burroughs

John Clayton, a British colonial official lost in the African jungle, is caught unawares by Kerchak, the gorilla.

Posted September 7 2022

21

Economy – With a Dash of Love

By Wilkie Collins

Gabriel Betteredge’s cottage was cosy, his employment rewarding and his status respectable, but his cup of happiness was not quite full.

Posted June 26 2022

22

Mrs Nickleby’s Cold Cure

By Charles Dickens

Charmed by their attentions to her daughter Kate, Mrs Nickleby rewards Mr Pyke and Mr Pluck with a reminiscence about her favourite home remedy for colds.

Posted December 1 2021

23

‘Have a Care What You Do’

By Charles Dickens

Lord George Gordon marched at the head of 50,000 protestors to the House of Commons, to demand that George III’s England did not become like Louis XVI’s France.

Posted November 8 2021

24

The Facts Factory

By Charles Dickens

Mr Gradgrind and a Government expert on education make sure that the children of Coketown have the right opinions about everything.

Posted October 13 2021

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Music Video Alexander Borodin: Petite Suite: VI. Rêverie

Posted Yesterday

Composition Make up sentences using these phrases, making sure you put plenty of action in.

Posted Yesterday • Think and Speak

Rhymes Suggest words that rhyme with ‘love’.

Posted January 13 • Think and Speak

The Abuse of Literacy Reading and writing should have taught the people more than name-calling and how to manipulate opinion.

Posted January 13 • The Copy Book

Among Old Friends ‘Alpha of the Plough’ hoped Sir Arthur Conan Doyle did not treat his old friends as he treated his favourite books.

Posted January 12 • The Copy Book

Music Video Orlando Gibbons: Thus Angels Sung

Posted January 12 • Comfortable Words

A Reckless Indifference to Life In eighteenth-century England, the death penalty was the solution to almost any crime.

Posted January 11 • The Copy Book

Music Video Sir Charles Villiers Stanford: Symphony No. 3 in F Minor, Op. 28 (Irish): II. Allegro molto vivace

Posted January 10

Vocabulary Express each of these phrases in a single word.

Posted January 10

Dear Anne Elliot Anne Thackeray saw something in Jane Austen’s heroines that she missed in their more modern sisters.

Posted January 4 • The Copy Book

The Three Bears The beginning of Robert Southey’s classic fairy tale.

Posted January 2 • The Copy Book

A Man Without a Price A Russian princess admitted defeat with a most gracious compliment.

Posted January 1 • The Copy Book

Music Video Henry Purcell: Rejoice in the Lord Alway (‘the Bell Anthem’)

Posted January 1

Homonyms Show that each of these words might mean different things to different people.

Posted January 1 • Think and Speak

Hair by Hair Governments must not use ‘the good of society’ as an excuse to run our lives.

Posted December 31 2024 • The Copy Book

Music Video William Byrd: The Bells

Posted December 31 2024

Hearken to the Solemn Voice A hymn looking to the coming of Christ in judgement, sung at the Wesleys’ New Year’s Eve watch-nights.

Posted December 30 2024 • Comfortable Words

One Last Look Edith Nesbit brings down the curtain on ‘The Railway Children’.

Posted December 30 2024 • The Copy Book

Rephrasing Cast Mr Perks’s words into good plain English.

Posted December 29 2024 • Think and Speak

The Illustrious Mourner In Russia, when a blind beggar is laid to rest even the Emperor knows for whom the bell tolls.

Posted December 29 2024 • The Copy Book