The Copybook
Short passages for reading, drawn from history, legend, poetry and fiction.
Short passages for reading, drawn from history, legend, poetry and fiction.
Oliver was elected as the unwilling spokesman for all the hungry children.
After he was left orphaned by the death of his mother, little Oliver Twist was ‘cared for’ in a State-run workhouse. The officials who ran it were satisfied that the boys were fed according to Government guidelines, but if so the boys found the guidelines wanting. Eventually they decided they must do something about it — or at any rate, that one of them must do something about it.
Rudolf Rassendyll is on holiday in Ruritania when he stumbles across a plot by the King’s brother to steal the crown.
It is the eve of the coronation of the King of Ruritania, and his loyal courtiers have discovered him unconscious, drugged by his wicked brother Michael. But it just so happens that Rudolf Rassendyll, a British holidaymaker, is in the capital, and he looks exactly like the King...
What Dr Mortimer saw beside the body of Sir Charles Baskerville sent him hastily to London, to consult Sherlock Holmes.
The legend of the Baskerville hound, a ghostly dog haunting every generation of that respectable Devonshire family, was not the kind of thing a man of science like Dr Mortimer took seriously. Yet after Sir Charles Baskerville was found dead, something made him rush up to London to consult Sherlock Holmes.
Timothy Hackworth (1786-1850) turned steam locomotives into a reliable commercial success.
Timothy Hackworth (1786-1850) turned steam locomotives from a brilliant concept into a reliable commercial success. He is the man we have to thank for bringing mobility, jobs, and better lives to countless millions of people worldwide.
Josiah Wedgwood, a village potter whose disability meant he could not use a potter’s wheel, brought about a quiet revolution in English society.
The rich have always had nice things; what changed in the eighteenth century was that, because of private enterprise and the industrial revolution, the poor started to share them too. Josiah Wedgwood was one of the pioneers who changed the lives of the poor for the better.