The Copybook: Readings in history and literature

❰

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160

❱

847

The Wars of the Roses by Clay Lane

A struggle between rival Royal Houses begins in 1455, after questions are raised about King Henry VI’s capacity to rule.

The ‘Wars of the Roses’ was coined by Sir Walter Scott as a romantic name for an off-and-on struggle for the English crown between 1455 and 1485. The rivals were the ‘white rose’ Dukes of York and the ‘red rose’ Dukes of Lancaster, and both traced their right to the crown to the sons of King Edward III.

Read

848

St Wilfrid’s Debt by Clay Lane

The Blessed Virgin Mary adds four years to the life of Bishop Wilfrid, and an angel suggests a suitable thank-you.

Wilfrid, bishop of Hexham, visited Rome in 703-704, to resolve an ongoing dispute with the King of Northumbria. On his way back, he fell ill.

Read

849

Mathieu Martinel and the Drowning Soldier by Clay Lane

A young French cavalry soldier took a tremendous risk to rescue a drowning man.

Mathieu Martinel enrolled in the French army in January 1816, at the age of sixteen. It was a time of relative peace, but opportunities for heroism appeared to come looking for him.

Read

850

Mathieu Martinel and the Blazing Barracks by Clay Lane

The soldier went quite deliberately into a burning room full of gunpowder and ammunition.

Mathieu Martinel was a cavalry soldier in the French army. At the age of twenty, he had already saved a fellow-soldier from drowning in the River Ill, but his heroic exploits were far from over.

Read

851

Mathieu Martinel and the Fireworks by Clay Lane

A firework display in Paris turned to tragedy in the narrow streets of the capital.

It is 1837, and Mathieu Martinel, a cavalry soldier in the French army, is now a senior officer in the military college in Paris. Fate, however, had not yet finished testing his mettle.

Read

852

The Iron Horse and the Iron Cow by Samuel Smiles

Railways not only brought fresh, healthy food to the urban poor, they improved the conditions of working animals.

In the 1850s, London could not house enough cows for its population, so dairymen watered down their milk from cholera-infested roadside pumps, adding snails or sheep’s brains to thicken it (more). No legislation could have solved that dilemma of supply and demand. But railways did.

Read

❰

❱

History