The Copybook
Short passages for reading, drawn from history, legend, poetry and fiction.
Short passages for reading, drawn from history, legend, poetry and fiction.
A quick overview of the Kings and Queens of England from Victoria in 1837 to Elizabeth II in 1952.
Below is a brief overview of the Kings of England from Queen Victoria in 1837, Empress of India and the first ruler of a truly modern, industrialised Britain, to Elizabeth II in 1952, Queen regnant of a sovereign nation weary of its European neighbours’ thirst for superpower.
A quick overview of the Kings of England from Henry IV in 1399 to Henry VI in 1422.
Below is a brief overview of the Kings of England from Henry IV, who acquired the throne almost by accident when trying to regain the title of Duke of Lancaster, to Henry VI, who forfeited the crown of France won by his famous father.
The people of Penzance in Cornwall did not think an Algerian corsair much better than a French warship.
It may seem quaint that Cornish villagers ran home to lock up their daughters when they heard of shipwrecked sailors on the beach. But this was 1760, when everyone was braced for a French invasion in the Seven Years’ War, and when Algiers was the centre of a miserable human-trafficking industry which specialised in ‘goods’ from Christian Europe.
Britain’s ties to the rulers of Russia go back to the time of the Norman Invasion.
The story of Russia began when Vikings established a Princedom in Great Novgorod just across the Baltic Sea. At the same moment, the Vikings’ Great Army was also swarming over England, and King Alfred the Great was preparing to do battle; but a Viking past is not all that the two nations have in common.
In John Buchan’s story about the Great War, Richard Hannay must watch as his friend sacrifices his life for the Allies.
In the Great War, RAF pilot Peter Pienaar endures being shot down, lamed and kept as a prisoner of war with the help of Bunyan’s ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’. He has been free only a matter of days when despite his injury he steals a plane to take out the Germans’ flying ace Lensch, by ramming him in mid-air.