The Copybook
Short passages for reading, drawn from history, legend, poetry and fiction.
Short passages for reading, drawn from history, legend, poetry and fiction.
Cuthbert would not go to King Ecgfrith, so King Ecgfrith and his entire court had to go to Cuthbert.
Sometime after 676, Cuthbert left his monastery on Lindisfarne and retired to the nearby island of Inner Farne, with thousands of seabirds for company. His quiet retirement was to be short-lived, however, as he discovered following a rare trip down the coast to Coquet Island to counsel Elfled, the King’s sister, about the royal succession.
Richard Cobden asked Parliament to make a better effort to understand the Russian mindset.
Back in 1801, Napoleon almost persuaded Tsar Paul I to invade India. Further lobbying fell on deaf ears but many in London still believed Russia was poised to invade India, and even Western Europe. After pre-emptive wars in Afghanistan (1838-42) and the Crimea (1853-56), Richard Cobden urged Westminster to get to know Russia better.
Kim O’Hara starts his apprenticeship as a British spy with a little competition.
In the city of Shimla, summer capital of the British Raj, a jeweller named Lurgan is schooling young orphan Kim O’Hara for intelligence work in Afghanistan. A Hindu boy already in his care has become so jealous of this ‘stranger’ that he has tried to poison Lurgan, and is now sobbing with remorse, which the canny Lurgan turns to advantage.
Christ’s cross promises to take away the fear of Judgment Day.
In ‘The Dream of the Rood’, Cynewulf (possibly the 8th century bishop of Lindisfarne) imagines the Cross of Christ finding voice and recounting the experiences that great Friday. Here, the Cross speaks of the Day of Judgment and the comfort and assurance the very thought of it brings to mankind even at that late hour.
Abbot Elfric explains the significance of Christ’s miracle at Cana.
St John tells us that at Cana in Galilee, the host of a wedding ran out of wine in the middle of the happy feast. Jesus and his mother were among the guests, and Mary prevailed on Jesus to change water into wine; and as tenth-century English abbot Elfric explained, Jesus hid a message in his miracle.