1297
Mr Snawley has two stepsons he would like to offload, and Mr Squeers seems just the right person to help him.
Mr Wackford Squeers, headmaster of Dotheboys Hall in Yorkshire, is in London looking for clients. He is approached at the Saracen’s Head by a Mr Snawley, step-father to two small boys, who is looking for a cheap, far-off boarding school with none of those ill-judged holidays ‘that unsettle children’s minds so’.
Posted July 10 2016
1298
Cuthbert trusted that keeping his promised fast would not do him any harm.
A shieling is a temporary stone hut, built for the summer months when sheep or cattle are taken to higher ground. Bede tells us that a near-contemporary, the seventh-century saint Cuthbert, once had a remarkable experience in one of these huts, as he was journeying across the empty moorland of Northumbria.
Posted July 10 2016
1299
If Britain is a chessboard, then politicians should remember that the ‘pieces’ are alive, and they generally play a better game.
In The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), Adam Smith has been discussing how the character of individuals may affect the happiness of wider society. He sets up a contrast between ‘the man of humanity and benevolence’, who respects others and tries to improve society by persuasion, and ‘the man of system’, who reaches out to move people and peoples around as if they were just pawns on a chessboard.
Posted July 9 2016
1300
Kate Nickleby must bite her lip as she experiences snobbery for the first time.
After falling on hard times, Kate Nickleby, daughter of a country gentleman, has gratefully accepted a job in a dressmaker’s. But a mother and daughter have come in, and being in an ill temper have chosen to take it out on the new assistant.
Posted July 9 2016
1301
From performance and composition to instrument-making, Clementi left his mark on British and European classical music.
Muzio Clementi (1752-1832) came from Rome to England as a boy, to become one of the most prolific of British composers, and an internationally respected teacher and performer. An able businessman, he also turned a bankrupt firm of London instrument-makers into a Europe-wide success.
Posted July 8 2016
1302
William the Conqueror’s purge of the English Church was halted by a humble bishop and a dead king.
After the Conquest in 1066, William of Normandy appointed an Italian, Lanfranc, as Archbishop of Canterbury, and set about clearing out the English bishops. Wulfstan was the last, stubbornly protecting the English from their new masters, and it seemed God was on the side of the old religion, too.
Posted July 7 2016