As Easter approaches students are aware of the nearness of May with the GCSE, A Level and Undergraduate examinations. If you are facing any of these examinations and need a… Read More »English Tuition Manchester, Bolton and Bury: GCSE English Descriptive Writing Boost
Phoenix Writers’ Group Horwich, meets every Thursday between 10-12, except during school holidays at Horwich resource centre. Their book entitled Fleeting Moments has just been published and will shortly be available… Read More »Phoenix Writers' Group Horwich Bolton: Thursdays 10-12
Tusi Notes Carol Ann Duffy’s Havisham and Dickens’ Great Expectations. Carol Ann Duffy is an expert at exploring the uneasy aftermath of love. Both her poetry collections Mean Time and… Read More »Carol Ann Duffy's Havisham and Dickens' Great Expectations.
I am not sure if this is a great poem, I rather think it too abrupt and unfinished to linger on in the mind, as great poems tend to do. … Read More »Mary Coleridge's The Moment: An Analysis
If anyone had left the kitchen before coffee, Carla would have been discovered in the hall. But as fate would have it, they all remained together around the table, each… Read More »The plasticine men: Carla meets the face.
The red plasticine figure crouched besides the clock. She had taken her time to get here. But she had lots of time now she was reforming. Her shape and size… Read More »The Red Plasticine Figure: Carla's Revenge.
The hunchback in the park A solitary mister Propped between trees and water From the opening of the garden lock That lets the trees and water enter Until the… Read More »Dylan Thomas 'The Hunchback in the Park': An Analysis
The cemetery car park was choked with cars. Everyone was patient though most of Caroline’s friends were not patient by nature. But this was a sad afternoon and besides that, everyone… Read More »English tuition in Bolton, Manchester and the North West: Caroline's Do.
I have an affinity with rage on this blog! Medusa gets lots of attention and so does Miss Havisham and even David Almond’s The Savage. Perhaps it is the most… Read More »Dylan Thomas: Do not go gentle into that good night(Revisited)
A frosty sunshine made the fields glitter this morning as we drove to school up over the tops of Horwich and then down through Old Kiln Lane , passing silent… Read More »English tuition Bolton and Manchester: Bolton School, Jane Eyre and Rebecca!
I was walking Frankie, one of my dogs today and met a grandfather out with his brightly adorned grandaughter, who spotting ‘Frankie’ on her lead, held up her string-gloved hands… Read More »Private English tutoring in Bolton, Manchester and Bury: Katherine Mansfield’s At The Bay.
A Dangerous Method is an enjoyable film, especially in the context of today’s multiplex teen fodder; it fairly successfully manages to dramatise a clash of ideas and personalities, although it… Read More »A Dangerous Method One: A Film Review by Mark Wrigley
Over the next month this site will start selling Tusi Notes on Amazon Kindle and also as pdf downloads on this site. There is already a very stimulating and powerful… Read More »Robert Louis Stevenson's Kidnapped: Choosing black or white words?
‘ 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!
Medusa has been explored several times on this blog and I will be writing a full length, Tusi Note on the poem in the next few days. However Carol Ann… Read More »Carol Ann Duffy’s Medusa Analysis: Rage as petrification-FREE VIDEO!
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.
