The Copybook

Short passages for reading, drawn from history, legend, poetry and fiction.

1633
Perfection is no Trifle Samuel Smiles

Michelangelo had a message for all serious entrepreneurs.

In business as in life, little things can make a big difference, as this story about Renaissance sculptor Michelangelo (1475-1564) shows.

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1634
John Harrison’s Marine Chronometer Clay Lane

When Harrison won the Longitude Prize, fair and square, Parliament wouldn’t pay up.

Yorkshireman John Harrison was a carpenter by trade, but he taught himself clockmaking to such a high standard that he came to the attention of the Astronomer Royal, Edmund Halley.

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1635
Ignaz Moscheles Clay Lane

Moscheles taught his adopted country how to write enchanting music for decades to come.

Ignaz Moscheles (1794-1870) was a Czech composer who came to England in the 1820s and instantly felt at home. England warmed just as quickly to him, and he became a kind of godfather to a generation of Victorian composers writing particularly tuneful music.

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1636
Cyril and Hypatia Clay Lane

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.

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1637
St Andrew, Patron of Scotland Clay Lane

Scotland’s association with the brother of Peter is down to an early 8th century Bishop of Hexham.

St Andrew the Apostle came to be the Patron Saint of Scotland through an early 8th century Bishop of Hexham. His feast day is the 30th of November, and he is patron also of Romania and Russia.

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1638
Fiddler Tam Clay Lane

An 18th century bon viveur and virtuoso violinist, Thomas Erskine is currently being ‘rediscovered’ by the classical music industry.

Thomas Erskine (1732-1781), 6th Earl of Kellie, was a Scottish musician and composer, who also founded a racy ‘gentleman’s club’ in Edinburgh called the Capillaire. His music has long been forgotten, and much of it is lost, but people are at last realising just how good some of it is.

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