”Such a staircase, with its accessories, in the older and more crowded parts of Paris, would be bad enough now; but, at that time, it was vile indeed to unaccustomed… Read More »Charles Dickens’ Masterclass on place in A Tale of Two Cities.
A lonely country house with roving wild animals. A rampaging, ill tempered medical man with a beautiful step daughter he cannot abide. Mysterious, violent death is stealthily moving towards a… Read More »Tusi-bites with Janet Lewison: The Speckled Band of Conan Doyle.
A Wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other. A solemn consideration, when I enter a great… Read More »The enigma of identity: Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities.
I have read The Doll’s house. It’s one of my favourites. I love its timelessness – haven’t we all been told of children we aren’t to play with because of… Read More »Tusi-bites with Alison Ridyard: Katherine Mansfield' The Doll's House.
Everyone has a taste for villainy in fiction or films. Even good characters have flaws or imperfections so that they do not seem too far away from us. Shakespeare gave… Read More »Bolton School Entrance Examination Tip Five: Create a Villain!
Private English Tutoring improves your learning. It empowers you as it gives you the opportunity to ask any questions you want and to get individual advice and attention for your… Read More »Private English Tuition: How can you enjoy better marks and grades for your English studies?
Private English tuition works because it allows the student full attention, a luxury impossible to sustain in any school class room or university or college seminar setting. This attention can… Read More »Private English tutoring-why it works.
Rose Tremain takes us to France in this novel. Rural Cevennes where a collection of rather unhappy characters have assembled to start again, though not necessaily with the consent of… Read More »Rose Tremain’s Trespass: Secret hatreds in rural France.
On they went together. Rose and this strange boy and his dog. It felt like a pilgrimmage somehow, but no one had a notion why they had decided to take… Read More »Refuge: Surprise
I have always believed that certain things are only ever finished never finished with and when I was reading Carol Ann Duffy’s ‘Scheherazade’ poem in her new collection The Bees, I… Read More »Carol Ann Duffy's Scheherazade with a hint of Rapture's Give!
Even now If my girl with lotus eyes came to me again Weary with the dear weight of young love, Again I would give her to these starved twins of… Read More »'Black Marigolds' translated from Sanskrit by E Powys Mathews: A favourite Love poem of Carol Ann Duffy.
I do like this breadth and the looming intimacies made accessible perhaps through this breadth. Human beings are so perversely paradoxical that sometimes intimacy is most intensely experienced when we… Read More »The Bees by Carol Ann Duffy: Retrospect and Spots of time?
Bees Here are my bees, gold blurs on paper, besotted; buzzwords dancing their flawless airy maps. Been deep, my poet bees, in the parts of flowers, in daffodil, thistle,… Read More »Bees by Carol Ann Duffy in her latest collection: The Bees!
The UCAS Personal Statement is a very powerful means of revealing to the University Admissions’ Tutor just how YOU are the very student they want to see in a seminar… Read More »UCAS Personal Statement: Expert Advice and Help.
Promise: Katherine Mansfield’s Final Adventure. These pieces were scattered about on my blog and I felt they needed uniting with each other in order to make more sense and coherence… Read More »Promise: Katherine Mansfield's Final Adventure?
Rose’s mother was called Carol and she spent most of her day in a large airy office at the top of the house, guarded from her family by a stained glass… Read More »Refuge: Rose’s Mother.
I wrote The Face in The Wall as a sketch a few years ago on the Tusitala blog, under the category Writing Demeter. This category has a whole series of fragments… Read More »Reflections on Writing The Face in the wall and Katherine Mansfield too!
A courier knocked at my door just after midday and presented me with the slim parcel that revealed itself as Carol Ann Duffy’s brand new collection-The Bees. Hurrah for ebay… Read More »Carol Ann Duffy's The Bees! New book of poetry from the poet Laureate.
Alfred was watching the smoke raise from his cooking. Surrounded by sand. He stood tall on his two legs, both paws deeply accustomed to the soft sand and the sea… Read More »Alfred's beach barbecue: Refuge
Father’s Bedroom In my Father’s bedroom: blue threads as thin as pen-writing on the bedspread, blue dots on the curtains, a blue kimono, Chinese sandals with blue plush straps.… Read More »OXFORD ELAT English Paper example: Robert Lowell’s ‘Father’s Bedroom’.
‘The Signalman’ – the kids at my old school enjoyed it (year 10 set 3). It’s a good story for discussion because it raises more questions than it answers. Dickens’… Read More »Dickens' The Signalman: the ambiguity of signs! by Alison Ridyard.
Three steps ahead of her lay an adventure. It just needed a shape. She set off down the lane towards the sea, pleased with her boots. Bees and wasps attacked the… Read More »English Tutor Manchester, Bolton and Bury: Rose meets the boy at the stile.
The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. It is very seldom that mere ordinary people like John and myself secure ancestral halls for the summer. A colonial mansion, a hereditary… Read More »Cath Corri and Gillman's Yellow Wallpaper: A Nightmare Destined for…?
Here is the rubric from an ELAT sample paper: Select two or three passages(a) to (f) and compare and contrast them in any ways that seem interesting to you, paying… Read More »ELAT English Entrance Examination: Practical Criticism tests your close reading confidence?
I have just started reading David Almond’s new novel The True tale of the Monster Billy Dean.It’s windy outside as Bolton gets the ‘tail’ end of Hurricane Katrina. Oddly enough… Read More »Reading The True Tale of the Monster Billy Dean by David Almond.
UCAS application season is upon us. I have been reading the Sunday Times’ Guide to British Universities today( more on that tomorrow) and was inspired to seek out the very… Read More »So you want to go to Oxbridge? Tell me about a banana…
Here we go with a close reading and analysis of Susan Hill’s Strange Meeeting, where the two protagonists, Hilliard and Barton discover, and create, a deep and enduring connection. … Read More »Waiting for connection in Susan Hill’s Strange Meeting:A short analysis.
English students at all levels, but particularly at GCSE, A Level and Undergraduate levels are faced by the challenge of close textual analysis or ‘Practical Criticism’ as it used to… Read More »Analysing a novel: Susan Hill's Strange Meeting.
Susan Hill’s beautiful and most affecting novel Strange Meeting ends with the word ‘ahead’- a very poignant conclusion to her tenderly composed exploration of friendship during the first world war.… Read More »Strange Meeting by Susan Hill: why the word 'ahead' lifts the novel out of despair?
Rose was watching the small rabbit who had been playing on the lawn for an hour. Rose wondered about the second rabbit from yesterday but closed her mind to its… Read More »Refuge: Prologue-part one!
