Short passages for reading, drawn from history, legend, poetry and fiction.
© mattbuck, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0.
As he sat in his guest room at Durham Abbey, Ranulf de Capella could think of nothing but finding someone to rid him of his painful toothache.
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By Isaac Fuller (1606–1672), via the National Portrait Gallery and Wikimedia Commons. Licence: ? Public domain.
In 1680, Samuel Pepys sat down with Charles II to record how, many years before, a bold double-bluff saved the King from Cromwell’s men.
By Liborio Prosperi (1854–1920), via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.
During his tour of England in 1782, Karl Philipp Moritz dropped in on the House of Commons, and thought the histrionics in the Chamber better than any play.
© David Dixon, Geograph. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0.
In the opening lines of The Cuckoo Clock, Mrs Molesworth paints a word-picture of a house so old that Time itself seemed to have stopped.
By John Singer Sargeant, via the National Portrait Gallery and Wikimedia Commons. Licence: ? Public domain.
Lord Cromer, a former Consul-General of Egypt, expressed his frustration at politicians who set too much store by Foreign Office briefings.
© TTC dude, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0.
When it opened in 1901, the Uganda Railway still wasn’t in Uganda, and Westminster’s MPs were still debating whether or not to build it.