The Copybook

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

421

Rundle Burges Watson (1809-1860), via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

The First Opium War by Jawaharlal Nehru

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

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422

By Sir Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641), via wikimedia Commons. Licence: public domain.

The Time of Age by Edmund Waller

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

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423

© Sailko, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 3.0.

Vice and Virtue by Alexander Pope

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.

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424

By Vasily Polenov (1844–1927), from the Russian Museum via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.

The Woman Taken in Adultery from The Authorized Version

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.

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425

© Laura, Geograph. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0.

An Extraordinary Man by Benjamin Robert Haydon

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

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426

Jean-Baptiste Oudry (1686-1755), via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.

The Wolf and the Lamb by J.B. Rundell

A Wolf finds a series of reasons for making a meal of a little Lamb, but it turns out he did not really need them.

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© Nicholas Armitage / Clay Lane, 2025

April 24 NS

April 11 OS

Christ is Risen! : Felicia Skene recalls the Easter celebrations on one emotionally-charged night in Athens
Approachable : Replace the verb ‘can’ with these alternatives, and explain how the meaning of the sentence has changed.
The First Easter : In a translation from the Authorized Version of the Bible, published in 1611, St Mark recounts the discovery of Christ’s empty tomb.
A Collect for Easter Day : A short prayer from the Book of Common Prayer, for the day of Christ’s resurrection.
The Gambler : Which well-known expression is Dr Johnson talking about here?
If I Had But Two Little Wings : Samuel Taylor Coleridge holds on to those precious moments when loneliness is a problem for tomorrow.
Red Eye : Reconstruct the speaker’s original words from these reports.
Responsible : Combine each group of ideas into a single sentence, in as many ways as you can.
Opposites : Suggest words that seem opposite in meaning to the words in this list.
Three of a Kind : For each of these things, think of three different varieties of it.
The Son of God Goes Forth to War : A hymn in praise of St Stephen, the first Christian martyr.
Peace Plan : Report this brief exchange between Anna and M. Pierre and Tolstoy’s War and Peace
Metaphors : Choose one of these words and use it metaphorically, not literally.
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