Saddled with you for the afternoon,me and Paul ambled across the threadbare field to the bus stop, talking over Sheffield Wednesday’s chances in the cup while you skipped beside us… Read More »Andrew Forster’s ‘Brothers’: An Analysis- how casual is betrayal?
Tightly-folded bud, I have wished you something None of the others would: Not the usual stuff About being beautiful, Or running off a spring Of innocence and love – They… Read More »Philip Larkin’s ‘Born Yesterday’: An Analysis-GCSE English AQA.
‘ Why is reading so important?’ This question needs a direct answer as it is one of the most important activities any human being, let alone ‘student’ can enjoy. Of course… Read More »Private English Tuition Bolton and Manchester: Why reading Dickens helps writing.
Valentine by Carol Ann Duffy is the most searched for Duffy poem on Google. The poem is a cyber space megastar and today I felt I would examine the poem… Read More »Carol Ann Duffy's Valentine: An analysis before a Tusi Note!
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
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
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.
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.
What do we really know of others or ourselves? I may sometimes complacently profess ‘self knowledge’ but very often I surprise ‘myself ‘ and I do believe we are all… Read More »Sheenagh Pugh's The Bereavement of the Lionkeeper poem
This poem declares its imaginative mission with a moving, compassionate simplicity, framed by the speculative, ‘If’. We enter the poem with this tentatively held permission to ‘tell it backwards’, after… Read More »Carol Ann Duffy's Last Post: An Analysis Revisited.
I read this shortly after W H Auden’s famous poem Funeral Blues -both deeply moving poems about monumental loss. Both poems suggesting that (like Mansfield’s story, The Life of Ma Parker) ‘There was nowhere’ left… Read More »Sheenagh Pugh: The Bereavement of the Lion- Keeper An Analysis
(I read this last night as part of a WJEC GCE past English paper. A lovely gift of a poem). I love this poem’s intimacy. The speaker grumbles his way… Read More »WH Auden: Roman Wall Blues Analysis and thoughts.
Great Expectations is being shown over Christmas. It’s a new version with Gillian Anderson playing Miss Havisham. I was struck by a comment about Ms Anderson’s portrayal, made in a Telegraph… Read More »Carol Ann Duffy's Medusa, Demeter, Havisham and Mrs Lazarus- Stones, Mourning and Identity!
New Tusi Note now available to download and buy. Just the ideas you need to be different! The idea of any existence before ‘me’ often seems rather weird- a try… Read More »Carol Ann Duffy :’Before you were mine’ An Analysis Revisited. FREE VIDEO!
Apparently this poem by Rosssetti and set to music by Holst, was voted the United Kingdom’s favourite carol . Today, walking my two dogs around a deserted park, I found myself singing the… Read More »Christina Rossetti and Carol Ann Duffy : In the Bleak Midwinter.
This is an old entry revisited where I ruminate over Carol Ann Duffy’s popularity in terms of her ability to make us feel nostalgic about experiences we may not have… Read More »Carol Ann Duffy's Stafford Afternoons: An another analysis-or why is Carol Ann Duffy so popular?
A Revisitation! Carol Ann Duffy’s poem Havisham was the very first poem I taught as a Private English Tutor and was the first poem I encountered from the AQA Anthology.… Read More »Carol Ann Duffy’s Havisham: An Analysis. FREE VIDEO!
George wanted some one to answer his question about love and Demeter, but his Aunt was dead and no one else knew his soul. So he leant against the kitchen… Read More »Writing Demeter: Looking for Sydney Carton
In the dining room of Isambard Dunstan’s School for Wayward children, all was not well. Shards of lightning blasted from a black morning sky and burst upon the heath outside.’… Read More »Bolton School Entrance Examination 11+ Tip Four: Are you word rich or word poor?
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.
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.
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!
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?
So Many routines and rituals bring you comfort. Yet they throw the world of others into chaos . Everything is black and white. Right or wrong. You are protected… Read More »Living with autism by Lorraine Farrimond
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.
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!
