Clay Lane

The Copy Book

A Library of History and Literature in English

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355

Banner of Liberty

In 1840, Secretary at War Thomas Macaulay treated the Union Jack like a bully’s visiting card, but backbencher William Gladstone believed it deserved better.

356

The First Opium War

In 1840, the British Government declared war on the Chinese Empire over their harsh treatment of drug smugglers from Bengal.

357

The Time of Age

Seventeenth-century poet and statesman Edmund Waller reflects on the benefits of advancing years.

358

Vice and Virtue

Vice is a fact of life, wrote Pope, and God can even bring good out of it; but vice is never a virtue and in tackling vice together we make our society stronger.

359

The Woman Taken in Adultery

The Pharisees conspire to put Jesus in a seemingly impossible situation, by inviting him to take sides in the bitter politics of Jew and Roman.

360

An Extraordinary Man

Artist Benjamin Robert Haydon laments the passing of Lord Egremont, whose generosity and good judgment reached far beyond his support for struggling artists.