About Flint & Fable ?
To Charlotte Shaw Mason. 1842 – 1923.
Without her inspiration, this publication would not exist.
Flint & Fable is the home of Britain: The Story of an Island for Young Readers, a serialised narrative history of Britain for children aged 10 to 13, published weekly.
The British Isles has a fascinating history, and it deserves to be told as a story – not as a textbook or a revision guide, but as a living, breathing narrative that a child can enjoy.
These essays retell the history of Britain from the Anglo-Saxons to the Glorious Revolution in approximately fifty weekly articles across two volumes. They are written as a companion to Churchill’s History of the English-Speaking Peoples – the spine text used by families following the Ambleside Online curriculum in Years 7 and 8 – at a reading level that a ten, eleven or twelve-year-old can read with pleasure and without strain.
Each article is approximately 2,800 to 3,800 words – a natural fit for a Charlotte Mason reading session. The history is deliberately told as a continuous story: events happen to real people in real places. My ambition is for the children to be there, to smell the food, feel the cold, hear the rain.
These essays are written for any child who loves history as a good story – whether they are following a Charlotte Mason curriculum at a kitchen table in Virginia, or studying Key Stage 3 history in a classroom in Yorkshire, or simply reading for the pleasure of learning.
Flint & Fable – for stories, for children, for learning.
Flint & Fable is free.
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If you would like to support this work, paid subscriptions are available and gratefully received – but the essays are FREE for subscribers.
About the Author.
My name is Vincent Shaw-Morton. I write under the pen name Vincent Shaw.
I live in West Sussex, England, in the landscape where much of this history happened. Arundel Castle is half an hour’s drive away. William Blake’s cottage is in the nearby village of Felpham. And Chichester, with its magnificent cathedral, is ten minutes from the village where I live – the same city where Charlotte Mason undertook her teacher training at Bishop Otter College in the 1860s. I did not know that when I started this project. I like to think she would have approved.
I am also the author of Care & Craft, a Substack publication about why we all need something real in a world dominated by digital.
I am not a historian, but I am a writer who loves history and stories and believes that children deserve to be trusted with real ones – stories that tackle adventurous and beautiful ideas, but also, when the story demands it, challenging and difficult themes.
Flint & Fable is my attempt to tell the story of the island I live on, with care and craft, for the children who are ready to hear it.
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