Extracts from Literature
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Extracts from Literature’
Joseph Skipsey’s short poem evokes the last goodbye a Northumberland miner made each morning.
Northumberland miner Joseph Skipsey (1832-1903) won praise for his poetry from such famous names as Oscar Wilde and Alfred, Lord Tennyson. He could evoke in a few lines the harsh life of a northern collier, and the dangers and tragedies he faced every day.
Joseph Skipsey taught himself to read and write by candlelight, hundreds of feet below ground in a Northumberland pit.
Joseph Skipsey (1832-1903) taught himself to read and write down a Northumberland pit when he was just seven. He subsequently became a nationally-recognised poet, praised by Wilde and Tennyson, but it was an art born of hardship and personal tragedy.
No one is more dangerous than the man who thinks that it is his destiny to direct things for the common good.
The revolutionary Scottish philosopher Adam Smith did not like to hear politicians speaking of managing the national economy ‘for the common good’. Leaving ordinary people to manage their own affairs was, he said, far more beneficial to society at large, and much less of a temptation to susceptible politicians.
Queen Victoria assured her subjects that there were no second-class citizens in her eyes.
After the Indian Mutiny in 1857, some Indians were concerned that Britain intended to force them to convert to Christianity. However, Victoria reassured them that (in contrast to some Indian religions and laws) forcible conversion and ‘second-class citizen’ are both concepts alien to the British constitution.
Lady Blakeney agrees to spy for the French Revolutionary government in return for her brother’s life.
In exchange for her brother Armand’s life, Marguerite, Lady Blakeney, is reluctantly playing the spy at a society ball. Citizen Chauvelin, of the French Revolutionary government’s secret police, wants her to find out what she can about the mysterious ‘Scarlet Pimpernel’ who has been rescuing prisoners from the guillotine.
In a Christmas broadcast in 1940, actor Leslie Howard explained why British sovereignty was worth fighting for.
In a radio broadcast just before Christmas in 1940, British actor Leslie Howard spoke movingly of the remarkable and indeed unique character of his country, built on individual liberty and democratic government, and contrasted it with the ‘new European order’.