The face in the wall heard voices through the old plaster. Hoarse voices whose breathing came slowly and hard as if time was short. Houses like these carried memories deep… Read More »The Plasticine Men: The Changeover Day.
Tusi Notes Just the ideas you need to be different! ”This tender and elemental love poem to our first and most enduring love, that of the mother and child, is… Read More »Carol Ann Duffy’s ‘Before You were Mine’: A Tusi Note – Buy it Now!
Whitney Houston could bring down the rafters of her listener’s soul. I loved the sheer exuberance and innocent energy of her early singles; gospel had come to MTV and a… Read More »Whitney Houston: The Voice that soared!
Studying English Literature for GCSE can sometimes signal the death knell for reading for pleasure. For whilst reading may be regarded as fun, perhaps the detailed analysis of texts may corrode enthusiasm,… Read More »GCSE English Literature: A reader's dilemma?
Reading can be a sneaky business. Even now, I still get told, come on let’s DO something sometimes when I am ‘caught’ reading, as if reading is somehow a squandering… Read More »Nine Writers who changed my life: English tutoring Manchester and Bolton
Sometimes, not all times because Carol Ann Duffy is human and works hard and perhaps writes more than her energies allow, Duffy finds a word that changes everything in a… Read More »Carol Ann Duffy's Last Post: An Analysis Revisited.
Tuesday 7th February was Charles Dickens’ 200th birthday. Bolton School, Girls’ Division,celebrated the UK’s most famous novelist’s birthday in style, as all the pupils and the staff, came to school,… Read More »Dickens' Great Expectations: An analysis at Bolton School.
Yesterday I had the pleasure of exploring this poem in the AQA Anthology, where it is enjoying the attention of today’s students once again. It has a very particular, if… Read More »Robert Browning’s ‘My last Duchess’ : An analysis of this AQA poem-revisited.
Unlike so many books that explore the betrayal of friendship and of trust, this book upholds the precious sanctity of love that transcends even death. I can never read this… Read More »Private English Tutor/Tuition Manchester, Bolton, Bury: Shena Mackay's The Orchard on Fire: Descriptive Writing at its best!
I was just playing with the google search engines when I saw this entry about Carol Ann Duffy’s Education For Leisure on page two. Sometimes when I write something and… Read More »Carol Ann Duffy’s Education for Leisure: An Analysis Revisited
I am revisiting this analysis as I have just been reading through the AQA English Anthology and this Carol Ann Duffy poem is included in the ‘relationships’ section. The poem… Read More »Carol Ann Duffy’s ‘Hour’ An Analysis Revisited
Jane Eyre is one of my favourite books, with one of the most feisty and resourceful heroines in English literature. Virginia Woolf found the emotional lives of the characters in… Read More »Jane Eyre's first encounter with Rochester:Chapter 12- A short Analysis on the irony of retrospect!
Human intimacy can be fraught with misunderstanding and misgiving. We all feel D-R-E-A-D at times! This media age, with its obsession with texting, has escalated the dread of rejection, and… Read More »Carol Ann Duffy’s ‘Text’ from Rapture: An Analysis
Yesterday I explored AQA’s Anthology poem Quickdraw from Carol Ann Duffy’s Rapture collection. I did express my disappointment with that poem and perhaps its rather self conscious contrivance.The row didn’t… Read More »An Analysis of Carol Ann Duffy's Disgrace revisited.
Pip is a very susceptible and vulnerable young man, who reads his emotionally sabotaging companions, Miss Havisham and Estella, very hopefully indeed! I have talked in another blog post about… Read More »Dickens' Great Expectations Chapter 29(BkII,Chapter10)Brief Analysis- Pip misreads his destiny!
(For a stanza by stanza analysis and commentary on Quickdraw please click here. ) This poem is taken from Carol Ann Duffy’s collection Rapture, for which she won the T… Read More »AQA English Anthology: Analysis of Carol Ann Duffy’s Quickdraw.
PART ONE. On Saturday I was enjoying a thoughtful discussion of Susan Hill’s novel, The Small Hand. We were analysing the opening line of Susan’s Hill’s ghost story, and exploring several… Read More »AQA/WJEC/Undergraduate English Literature: Analysing a text
Rooms are places of deep psycholgical unrest in Dickens. People feel trapped in spaces where age old drama are played out again and again. Repetition signifies deadly stasis and sterility.… Read More »Dickens' David Copperfield: A brief analysis of rooms.
George knew all about rooms. He had read about rooms where people started to rot inside and stare at each other across furniture where dust sat waiting, denying them light.… Read More »The Plasticine men three: The importance of Rooms.
T S Eliot’s Little Gidding was his favourite poem. This section of the poem plays with our sense of orientation, our certainties around time and life’s direction. I find I… Read More »T S Eliot Little Gidding: Carol Ann Duffy Beyond the language of the Living?
This plasticine man was small and had a pair of purple legs with green feet and a very round yellow head with orange hair.The others were only one colour. Uniform and… Read More »GCSE English tuition Manchester, Bolton and bury: The plasticine men two.
If ‘home’ is often a place of comforting repetition and ritual, Pip’s home with the ‘rampaging’ Mrs Joe in Dickens’ Great Expectations is a place of imaginative improvisation and daily… Read More »Charles Dickens' Great Expectations Chapter 8:Pip and his beginner's mind!
I love dreaming. Our night walks with out limits. Coach trips with colour. None of those daily conventions like looking at your watch. Being tied to time. But dreams can be… Read More »Carol Ann Duffy's Night Writing: Images working their hearts out?
We came from our own country in a red room which fell through the fields, our mother singing our father’s name to the turn of the wheels. My brothers cried,… Read More »Carol Ann Duffy's 'Originally' poem from 'The Other Country' and 'Selected Poems':Stanza One.
A student studying at Winstanley College, Wigan, shared this tip yesterday and right in the middle of a mock English A level paper, I couldn’t help smiling out loud! For… Read More »English GCSE, GCE, postcard learning tip: How to focus your thinking!
It began when they moved house of course. They had all been quite settled as their Aunt Dorothy used to say to anyone who would listen during her weekly trips to the supermarket.… Read More »English Tuition in Manchester, Bolton and Bury: The Plasticine men.
Susan Hill’s novel The Woman in Black must be one of the most unsettling ghost stories ever written. It has a genuine darkness that eats away at your imagination, hijacking… Read More »GCSE descriptive writing: Susan Hill's short Masterclass of an opening!
It was then I began to understand that everything in the room had stopped, like the watch and the clock, a long time ago. I noticed that Miss Havisham put… Read More »Dickens' Great Expectations, Chapter 8: Why does Pip fall in love?
Great Expectations begins in a churchyard with a young boy called Pip trying to work out how he came to be born. He believes that he can begin to define… Read More »Great Expectations by Charles Dickens- A Revisited Review and analyis.
When the Present has latched its postern behind my tremulous stay, And the May month flaps its glad green leaves like wings, Delicate-filmed as new-spun silk, will the neighbours… Read More »Thomas Hardy: Afterwards Analysis and Thoughts.
