Fiction
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Fiction’
Maria Montessori takes some of her pupils up onto a roof terrace, and witnesses a eureka moment.
Whereas many educators in her day ran classrooms like battlegrounds between teachers and unwilling pupils, Italian doctor Maria Montessori (1870-1952) was convinced that children rejoice in learning so long as teachers do not meddle. The following anecdote appeared in a pamphlet written for the Board of Education in 1912, and shows that joy in abundance.
William Shakespeare in sombre mood clings to love as the only changeless thing in a world of decay.
Sonnet 116 was published in 1609, when William Shakespeare was forty-five and still working as an actor in London. The capital was ravaged that year by particularly relentless outbreaks of plague, which perhaps helps to explain the sombre tone of his poem about love, the one constant in a world of sickness, age and death.
Jaikie has just graduated from Cambridge, and Alison wants to know what he has gained from his experience.
John ‘Jaikie’ Galt has taken Alison Westwater to dinner at a palatial London hotel to celebrate his graduation from St Mark’s College, Cambridge. Alison wants to know what Jaikie has learnt at University, and it isn’t anything found on a modular ‘Outcomes’ statement.
Kitty Beighton enters an archery contest where the prize is one very beautiful bracelet and one very ugly Commissioner.
Kitty Beighton has entered an archery contest in Shimla. First prize, officially, is a diamond bracelet. Unofficially, it is Commissioner Barr-Saggott. Mrs Beighton wants Kitty to win; young Cubbon of the Dragoons definitely doesn’t. But Kitty’s first shot has hit in the gold and unwisely, Barr-Saggott (already no oil painting) allows himself a smirk...
Sir Thomas Smith, one of Elizabeth I’s diplomats, explains how in her day criminals were brought to trial.
In the 1560s, Sir Thomas Smith wrote a guide to the Kingdom of England, in which he detailed some of the country’s customs and laws. Among them, was the ‘hue and cry’, the pursuit and apprehension of thieves and murderers, which was not the responsibility of law officers only, but the collective responsibility of all.
Davy Copperfield is not pleased at having to compete for his mother’s affection with Edward Murdstone.
Young Davy Copperfield never knew his father, who died before Davy was born. There came a time when his shy but pretty mother began staying out to dinners, and after one of them she was brought home by a raven-dark-haired gentleman, whom Davy recalled seeing the Sunday before.