Hour Love’s time’s beggar, but even a single hour bright as a dropped coin, makes love rich. We find an hour together, spend it not on flowers or wine, but… Read More »AQA Carol Ann Duffy's 'Hour' – love's timely bargaining?
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
”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!
Private English tuition works because it allows the student full attention, a luxury impossible to sustain in any school class room or university or college seminar setting. This attention can… Read More »Private English tutoring-why it works.
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!
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.
Father’s Bedroom In my Father’s bedroom: blue threads as thin as pen-writing on the bedspread, blue dots on the curtains, a blue kimono, Chinese sandals with blue plush straps.… Read More »OXFORD ELAT English Paper example: Robert Lowell’s ‘Father’s Bedroom’.
‘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.
I have just started reading David Almond’s new novel The True tale of the Monster Billy Dean.It’s windy outside as Bolton gets the ‘tail’ end of Hurricane Katrina. Oddly enough… Read More »Reading The True Tale of the Monster Billy Dean by David Almond.
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…
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.
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.
Halted against the shade of a last hill, They fed, and, lying easy, were at ease And, finding comfortable chests and knees Carelessly slept. But many there stood still To… Read More »Wilfred Owen's Spring Offensive: a healing pause.
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?
The English Patient ‘If I gave you my life, you would drop it. Wouldn’t you?’ Set in post-war Italy, The English Patient focuses on four survivors coming to terms with… Read More »Cath Corri: Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient
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!
Yesterday I was fascinated by a pest controller telling me about cockroaches and their two brains. I do think Dr Who should maximise upon this enthralling fact! Today, I picked… Read More »Michael Morpurgo: A Elephant in the garden.
Daphne Du Maurier – “The Old Man” Being unfamiliar with Du Maurier’s work, I didn’t know what to expect from this short story, and, having scanned the contents page of… Read More »Daphne Du Maurier's 'The Old man' with Alison Ridyard
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.
Sometimes days become more fluid than chocolate milkshake! The other week I had the Emily Dickinson phrase, ‘started early, took my dog’ in my head in connection with the latest… Read More »Kate Atkinson and Jackson Brodie.
When You Are Old WHEN you are old and gray and full of sleep, And nodding by the fire, take down this book, … Read More »GCSE, A Level English Tuition: W B Yeats' When you are old.
My daughter and I were watching a sweet gathering of small birds on our bird table over breakfast today and I asked her what would happen if the birds decided… Read More »Daphne Du Maurier and The Birds!
Writers are often questioned about their early, formative ‘influences’ or about other writers who may have inspired their work. For students undertaking the entrance examinations for schools such as Bolton… Read More »English Entrance Examinations: The Creative Writing essay with a little inspiration from Neil Gaiman’s Graveyard Book.
English Tuition encourages confidence in YOU because YOU are the the main focus of your lesson. YOU are the centre of attention and this attention gives you the opportunity to ask… Read More »English tuition encourages greater confidence and articulacy.
Oddly enough many students feel under confident about the descriptive writing component of the GCSE English curriculum. I say oddly enough as my personal taste always veers strongly in the… Read More »English tuition and GCSE Descriptive writing.
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
