Extracts from Literature
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Extracts from Literature’
Unlike some of his fellows in Westminster, Scottish statesman Henry Dundas made no attempt to make himself sound more ‘English’.
Henry Dundas (1742-1811) was one of Georgian Britain’s most influential Scottish statesmen, who served officially in William Pitt’s cabinet as Home Secretary, President of the Board of Control, Secretary of State for War, and First Lord of the Admiralty, but unofficially as ‘The Uncrowned King of Scotland’. Some fellow MPs from north of the Border tried to blend in with our English ways, but not Dundas.
Among the oldest surviving fragments of Norse poetry are some lines of rugged common sense which any age would do well to heed.
What follows is a selection of proverbs from The Guest’s Wisdom, which Frederick York Powell traced to western Norway in the eighth century. He saw in their spirit something ‘essentially British’: a people steady and sturdy, fast in friendship and fair-minded, but a little grim, neither putting on airs, nor shirking the responsibilities of civilisation.
Henry VIII and his mistress Anne Boleyn were disappointed once again in their hopes of catching Thomas More with his fingers in the till.
After the breakdown of Henry VIII’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon, the King and his new love Anne Boleyn explored every avenue to the removal of Henry’s Chancellor Thomas More, who was the country’s chief judge and Catherine’s most outspoken champion. William Roper tells us that they hoped to catch him out in accepting some bribe, however small, but were never able to do so.
French travel writer Pierre-Jean Grosley toured Georgian London just in time to witness a culinary revolution: the sandwich.
In 1770, Frenchman Pierre-Jean Grosley delighted French readers with his account of a visit to London and of the habits of its citizens high and low. Two years later, Thomas Nugent translated it, and Grosley’s impressions found an equally delighted audience on this side of the Channel. It is to this work that we are indebted for an eyewitness account of the ‘sandwich’ and its ... spread.
Two former soldiers in India find British bureaucracy cramps their style, so they set off to become kings of their own land.
It is the days of the British Raj, and the editor of a newspaper in Lahore has done a favour for fellow freemasons ‘Peachey’ Carnehan and his inseparable companion Daniel Dravot. Now the two ex-army men have crammed themselves into the paper’s tiny, stuffy office to share with him a resolution. “We have decided” said Carnehan “that India isn’t big enough for such as us.”
Demosthenes was about sixteen when he decided he wanted to be a lawyer, but he was the most unpromising advocate imaginable.
Demosthenes (384-322 BC), the Athenian, is a household name for his eloquence, but brilliance came by labour. When he began his legal career, his weak and stuttering voice, poor breath control, gawky gestures and muddled sentences caused much amusement among seasoned advocates. Then one day he bumped into an actor named Satyrus, who had him repeat a few lines from Euripides.