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883
Season of Goodwill by Clay Lane

‘Goodwill’ was on everyone’s lips, but the Roman Emperor and the God of Israel had very different ideas about it.

Jesus was born in Bethlehem, the ancient birthplace of his distant ancestor King David. He would have been born in Nazareth, had Joseph not been summoned to Bethlehem to swear loyalty to the Roman Emperor.

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884
The Disaster of the White Ship by Clay Lane

The loss of the heir to the throne threw England into crisis.

William Adelin was the only male heir to the throne of his father, King Henry I. On a journey back from France in 1120, William was lost at sea, throwing the country into turmoil.

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885
The Fleming Valve by Clay Lane

A Victorian children’s book inspired the birth of modern electronics.

Sir Ambrose Fleming (1849-1945) was a Lancashireman who invented the vacuum-tube diode or ‘valve’, for fifty years the essential component of modern electronics.

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886
Bird’s Custard by Clay Lane

Alfred Bird’s wife could eat neither eggs nor yeast. So being a Victorian, Alfred put his thinking-cap on.

Alfred Bird (1811-1878), a Birmingham pharmacist, did not invent egg-free custard powder to make a fortune (though he did), or because dietitians disapproved of eggs. He did it so he could enjoy eating pudding with his wife.

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887
The Alleluia Victory by Clay Lane

How hard-pressed Christians on the Welsh border won a battle without bloodshed.

In the 5th century, the spread of Christianity was a growing threat to the pagans’ hold of fear and ignorance over ordinary people. The pagans’ answer was (as always) violence.

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888
The Hermit of Handbridge by Charlotte Yonge

King Harold died at the Battle of Hastings in 1066. Or did he?

Harold Godwinson was killed at the Battle of Hastings on England’s south coast in 1066, pierced through the eye by an arrow. But that wasn’t the tale they told up north in the city of Chester...

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June 18 NS

June 5 OS

The Button Man of Waterloo : Amid all the confusion of the Battle of Waterloo, the Duke of Wellington spotted a man in civilian clothes riding busily around on a stocky horse.
The Two Shakespeares : Arthur Clutton-Brock complained that idealising Shakespeare had made him dull.
Fairway : Use each noun below in two sentences, first as the subject, and then as the object of a verb.
England Expects : Lieutenant John Pasco not only flew the most famous signal in British history, he helped write it.
Running Late : Use these adverbial clauses in your own sentences.
Peggy’s Dog : Some lines from the comic verse of Thomas Hood, for reading aloud.
An Interruption : Report this conversation without using direct speech.
Tender Plants : Prince Albert regretted the destructive power of the Art Critic.
Lost for Words : Join these ideas together into a single sentence, using ‘although’ or ‘though’.
Loan Words : Match these words to the language they come from, whether Old Norse, Malay or Welsh.
Evidence : Join these ideas together to form a single sentence, using the relative pronoun ‘who’.
Fatal Vow : Robert Pierrepont called heaven to witness that he would never pick a side in the Civil War.
Lost and Found : What would you in these difficult situations?
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