I love devouring anecdotes and ‘bits’ of real stories as they feed into all sorts of experiences and writings. Serge Lutens creates wonderful perfumes and the ‘genesis’ tale of his… Read More »Private English Tuition Manchester/Bolton/Bury: The scent of a good story
Writing an essay or a story under examination conditions can be stressful and mind draining! We can feel as if our words have left us-and fled to some faraway place… Read More »Bolton School Entrance Examination Tip Six: Word pools for essays
”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 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.
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!
Writing a story under examination conditions can seem daunting. You have just half an hour in which to show to the examiner that you can write effectively. You want to… Read More »Bolton School Entrance Examination Tip Two: Openings a short lesson with David Almond.
The Bolton School Entrance Examination gives students a timed opportunity to explore an essay question creatively and resourcefully under pressure. I have tutored many students over the years for entrance… Read More »Bolton School Entrance Examination Tip One: English Tuition
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!
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.
‘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.
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!
I first read The Master and Margarita at Liverpool University when I was studying Russian Studies with English. My tutor Professor Arnold McMillin found my reaction slightly bizarre. as I… Read More »Waking up with the Master and Margarita-Bulgakov's helter skelter tapestry of fantasy and pantomine.
WANDERING THROUGH (mothering) – WUTHERING HEIGHTS! It has only just struck me, that if writing is inevitably about life/lives and living – the birth of the novelist, historical documentation and… Read More »Cath Corri:Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights
Raynard Corri was the bastard offspring of Captain Africa (the lard mogul) and Tracy. The captain disappeared without Tracy, who perished alone , along with her diamond collection, the victim… Read More »Bern Corri by Cath Corri
I’d done it before (and doubtless I’ll do it again, sooner or later) woke up with a head on the pillow beside me -whose? – what did it matter? Good-… Read More »Salome by Carol Ann Duffy: the ‘soul-lessness’ of cliche?
It seemed that out of battle I escaped Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped Through granites which titanic wars had groined. Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned, Too… Read More »Wilfred Owen's Strange Meeting part one.
One Good Turn is the second novel in which Kate Atkinson featured her private detective, Jackson Brodie. Brodie is attractive, compassionate and flawed. Appealing of course, with the added attraction that he… Read More »One good Turn by Kate Atkinson; ‘A jolly Murder Mystery’ for Bolton, Bury and Manchester!
A NOISELESS, patient spider, I mark’d, where, on a little promontory, it stood, isolated; Mark’d how, to explore the vacant, vast surrounding, It launch’d forth filament, filament,… Read More »Soul adventures with Walt Whitman!
Tell all the Truth but tell it slant— Success in Cirrcuit lies Too bright for our infirm Delight The Truth’s superb surprise As Lightening to the Children eased With explanation… Read More »Emily Dickinson’s view of truth!
Carol Ann Duffy – “You” – The Volatile Nature of Love In a characteristic adaptation of the sonnet form, Duffy expresses the contrasting emotions of passion and passivity, and the… Read More »Carol Ann Duffy's You: The Volatile nature of Love by Alison Ridyard.
Carol Ann Duffy – “Havisham” Adopting the persona of Charles Dickens’s infamous spinster, ‘Miss Havisham’, and delivered in the form of dramatic monologue, Duffy offers an insight into the disturbed… Read More »Carol Annn Duffy's Havisham by Alison Ridyard
This poem, ‘You‘ begins Carol Ann Duffy’s sequence of love poems, unambiguoulsy called Rapture! Aliosn Ridyard’s commentary on this blog is excellent and discusses the techniques by which Duffy communicates… Read More »Carol Ann Duffy's You from Rapture: Commentary
CAROL ANN DUFFY (1955–present) In Mrs Tilscher’s Class You could travel up the Blue Nile with your finger, tracing the route while Mrs Tilscher chanted the scenery. Tana. Ethiopia. Khartoum.… Read More »In Mrs Tilscher's Class
Duffy’s “Crush” One of the consequences of the publication of Carol Ann Duffy’s Rapture has been—at least so far as I’m concerned—to review her early love lyrics. The reception… Read More »Crush by Carol Ann Duffy reviewed by Barry Wood
