Clay Lane

The Copy Book

A Library of History and Literature in English

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1513

The Birds

Two men fed up with Athenian politics decide to build a city in the sky.

Aristophanes’s absurd play is two and half thousand years old, but its satire is as fresh today as it ever has been.

1514

Black Agnes Dunbar

When Edward III sent the Earl of Salisbury to take her absent husband’s castle, Agnes brushed his attack aside - literally.

In the 14th century, Patrick, ninth Earl of Dunbar, found himself caught between the warring kings of England and Scotland, and survived by frequently changing sides. His wife was made of sterner stuff...

1515

The Boston Tea Party

In the time of King George III, Parliament forgot that its job was not to regulate the people, but to represent them.

Ever since the days of King James II, the East India Company had enjoyed a very cosy relationship with the Crown. When King George III came to the throne in 1760, many high-ranking Government officials now owed their salaries to it, and the Exchequer’s entire fiscal policy rested on it. Naturally, Parliament would do anything to protect it.

1516

Cain and Abel

Smarting for his outraged ‘rights’, Cain lost his reason — but not God’s pity and love.

Abel and his brother Cain were the sons of Adam and Eve. Theirs is a universal tale of what long-nursed envy and a sense of outraged ‘rights’ can lead us to do; but it is also an allegory of the deteriorating relationship between Judah and the ten tribes of northern Israel in the 8th century BC.

1517

The Character of George Stephenson

A self-made man who never forgot his humble beginnings.

George Stephenson (1781-1848) was an illiterate boy from the North East, who, through his pioneering railways and steam engines, became arguably the most important civil engineer in world history.

1518

Cyril and Hypatia

A ‘Christian’ mob kidnapped and murdered a much-loved professor of mathematics - for her politics.

Hypatia was head of the Philosophical School in Alexandria. She was a very likeable mathematician and astronomer, who numbered pagans, Jews, and several Christian clergymen among her past and present students.