Clay Lane

The Copy Book

A Library of History and Literature in English

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1183

The Battle of Flamborough Head

When captain Richard Pearson of the Royal Navy surrendered to American revolutionary John Paul Jones, Jones naturally assumed that meant he had won.

Following the Declaration of Independence in 1776, American resentment towards King George III’s dastardly oppression reached such a pitch that they made common cause with that champion of republican liberty, King Louis XVI of France. One mustard-keen revolutionary, John Paul Jones, even buccaneered around Britain’s coastline harassing merchant shipping convoys, until the Royal Navy stepped in.

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Picture: © Paul Allison, Geograph. Licence: CC-BY-A 2.0.. Source.

1184

Life’s Infantry

However obscure a man may apparently be, his example to others inevitably shapes the future of his country.

In his famous ‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’ Thomas Gray lamented that lives of obscure people blossom only to ‘waste their sweetness on the desert air’. Samuel Smiles, by contrast, used a military analogy to argue that the everyday sacrifices made by ordinary people have far-reaching effects on the country.

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Picture: Photo by Lt John Warwick Brooke, via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.. Source.

1185

Persian Treasures

‘Be careful what you wish for’, they say, and there could be no more endearing example.

Four suburban children (two girls and two boys) have discovered a Phoenix wrapped up in a Persian carpet. The fire-bird, proud of its homeland, has encouraged them to send the magic carpet back to fetch Persia’s ‘most beautiful and delightful’ produce, and the bulging carpet has just returned.

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Picture: © Bambooo, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC-BY-SA 4.0.. Source.

1186

Alan Blumlein

Railway enthusiast, music lover, and the man who gave us stereo sound.

Alan Blumlein (1903-1942) is the acknowledged father of stereophonic sound recording. There were others working on stereo, notably Arthur Keller in the USA, but Blumlein was the first man to patent stereo recording equipment, and the man whose ideas best stood the test of time.

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Picture: © Claudia Yang, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0.. Source.

1187

Tom and Terrier

A fox terrier spies what looks like a hapless victim – until he gets up close.

Jerome K. Jerome’s comic travelogue ‘Three Men in a Boat’ is subtitled ‘to say nothing of the dog’. In this extract, the dog Montmorency - a fox terrier - plays a starring role, but unfortunately not a particularly glorious one.

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Picture: © Nick MacNeill, Geograph. Licence: CC-BY-SA 2.0.. Source.

1188

The Tragedy of King Oedipus

Oedipus flees home in an attempt to escape a dreadful prophecy, unware that it is following at his heels.

One of the great myths of ancient Greece, the tragedy of Oedipus tells how the King of Thebes and a shepherd boy each tried to evade their destinies, and how their destinies refused to be changed.

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Picture: Via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.. Source.