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!
Dickens was an energetic walker and more than an occasional insomniac. His esssay ‘Night walks ‘ collected in The Uncommercial Traveller explores the experience of sleepnessness as experienced by a… Read More »Charles Dickens' Night Walks: Analysis and thoughts.
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.
A Saturday Morning revisitation. The exotic security of primary education is superbly captured in this poem. This seemingly oxymoronic combination fosters learning of the most enduring kind, as the… Read More »Carol Ann Duffy’s In Mrs Tilscher’s Class Analysis and thoughts: Revisited! FREE VIDEO!
Pablo Neruda’s poem embraces the suffering endured by human beings because they choose to differentiate themselves so keenly and resolutely from one another. The I/thou relationship so fraught with misunderstanding,… Read More »Pablo Neruda: Too many Names- a tusi bite.
Someone might have come along that way who would have asked him his trouble, and might have cheered him by saying that his notions were further advanced than those of… Read More »Jude The Obscure Book One Chapter IV: Hardy's own bleak house of despair?
Carol Ann Duffy’s bleak retrospect below on a finished love affair, justifies very clearly the title of the poem and collection: ‘Mean Time’. The loss of love’s ‘light’ and time’s… Read More »Carol Ann Duffy's Mean Time: Night walks for hearts.
She asked me to luncheon in fur. Far from the loud laughter of men, our secret life stirred. I remember her eyes, the slim rope of her spine. This is… Read More »Carol Ann Duffy's Oppenheim's Cup and Saucer: the erotics of lunch!
Lock the door. In the dark journey of our night two childhoods stand in the corner of the bedroom watching the way we take each other to bits to stare… Read More »Close by Carol Ann Duffy: Intimacy lost and found.
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.
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?
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.
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
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.
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!
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?
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
‘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.
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?
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…
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!
I was terrified by Susan HILL’S The Woman in Black. My Boxing Day was frosty in every way! So when I bought The Mist in the mirror for a week… Read More »Susan Hill's The Mist in the Mirror: the dangers of a neutral narrator?
JUST FOUND THIS POEM OF MINE – WRITTEN IN 1980 – 31 YEARS AGO – AGED 23 – UNTITLED PEOPLE EVERYWHERE IN LIFE FROM EVERY WALK AND STATION FROM EVERY… Read More »Cath Corri: An untitled poem.
