English Resources

BACK

There is a city surrounded by water with watery alleys that do for streets and roads and silted up back ways that only the rats can cross. Miss your way,… Read More »The Passion 1998

1. A Haunted House   WHATEVER hour you woke there was a door shunting. From room to room they went, hand in hand, lifting here, opening there, making sure—a ghostly couple.… Read More »A Haunted House – Woolf

Cities & Desire 5 From there, after six days and seven nights, you arrive at Zobeide, the white city, well exposed to the moon, with streets wound about themselves as… Read More »Winterson and Italo Calvino : Cities of Desire

Everything seemed possible. Everything seemed right. Just now (but this cannot last, she thought, dissociating herself from the moment while they were talking about boots) just now she had reached… Read More »Mrs Ramsay

How fresh like frilled linen clean from a laundry laid in wicker trays the roses looked; and dark and prim the red carnations, holding their heads up; and all the… Read More »Moments of being

Any thoughts on this magical novel? Worth it just for the conclusion to the Queen Of Sades section: ‘ If you should leave me, my heart would turn to water… Read More »The Passion by Jeanette Winterson

‘The only real purpose of a goal is to inspire youto fall more deeply in love with your life.’

The Artist“If life has a base that it stands upon, if it is a bowl that one fills and fills and fills—then my bowl without a doubt stands upon this… Read More »Sketch of the past – Woolf

Whilst looking at the opening to Our mutual friend a student asked why gaffer hexman’s vulture-like identity is only hinted at rather than told: The girl turned her face towards… Read More »A Quality Question on Our Mutual Friend

How can the bird that is born for joy Sit in a cage and sing ? (William Blake)

 DURING the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone,… Read More »Juxtaposition ( Continued)

Here are two famous openings to Nineteenth Century Stories. When they are brought together they can operate as critiques of each other and can thus generate excellnt ideas with ease!… Read More »Make connections:The Joy of Juxtaposition!

To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman. I have seldom heard him mention her under any other name. In his eyes she eclipses and predominates the whole of her… Read More »Sherlock Holmes : A Scandal In Bohemia

“For me the research that underlies the writing is the best part of the scribbling game. . . . On Jumbly shelves in my house I can find directions for… Read More »Four dimensional Thinking!

AS GREGOR SAMSA awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. He was lying on his hard, as it were armor-plated,… Read More »Is this the best opening ever ?

Mr and Mrs Veneering were bran-new people in a bran-new house in a bran-new quarter of London. Everything about the Veneerings was spick and span new. All their furniture was… Read More »the Veneerings: Chapter 2 Our Mutual Friend Dickens

A successful essay requires a very sharp focus  In fact it needs a very fixed even retentive focus. This is one area when retentiveness in terms of obsession is GREAT!… Read More »All you need is a word!

Henry James didn’t like Our Mutual Friend. And he never would or could have written it. So there! But one day will write a blog on the dishonesty of Henry… Read More »Henry James on Dickens

ON THE LOOK OUT In these times of ours, though concerning the exact year there is noneed to be precise, a boat of dirty and disreputable appearance,with two figures in… Read More »Our Mutual Friend – Dickens

It is now nearly 50 years since Fraser, who is 70 next Tuesday, published her first history book, a retelling of Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur. Amanda Foreman, whose 1998 life… Read More »Antonia Fraser

Her real relationship is with her daughter, her sister, her mother and with her garrulous women-friends and neighbours – all chattering, laughing and, at a funeral, mumbling prayers like a… Read More »Guardian on Almodovar – an extract from an excellent review

‘One sees a fin passing far out. What image can I reach to convey what I mean? Really there is none, I think.’ Woolf writing in her diary of 1925… Read More »To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf

Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself. For Lucy had her work cut out for her. The doors would be taken off their hinges; Rumpelmayer’s men were coming.… Read More »Mrs Dalloway

There is definitely a correspondence or synchronicity here.   “Until I was in the forties—I could settle the date by seeing when I wrote To the Lighthouse, but am too… Read More »Woolf and Almodovar

Coming back to La Mancha is always to come back to the maternal breast.During the writing of the script and the filming, my mother was always present and very near.… Read More »Almodovar on 'Volver'

All About My Mother (Todo Sobre Mi Madre) A sensational film. The past is only ever finished, never finished with! Like the wonderful ‘Volver’ this film suggests that nothing is… Read More »All About My mother – Pedro Almodovar