Last week’s pre-exam discussions with Year 13 looked again at how we might adopt a Feminist critical stance to our exam texts. The fabled AO5, I hear OCR students gasp …
Category: Bookshelf
[book review] Josephine Tey: The Daughter of Time
Is this the ultimate ‘cold case’?
The Daughter of Time arrives with some hefty baggage in terms of its critical reception.
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QotW (#74) 29 April 2019
I shall despair; there is no creature loves me,
And if I die no soul shall pity me. (Richard III: V.iii) [a]
No matter how many times I watch it – with Y9, 12 and 13 classes, or alone – Benedict Cumberbatch can move me to tears, delivering what I think are the saddest lines in Shakespeare.
The saddest lines … by arguably the biggest villain?
[book review] Catharine Arnold: Globe
Catharine Arnold, Globe: Life in Shakepeare’s London (Simon & Schuster: London, 2015)
QotW (#73) 22 April 2019
To begin, a little quiz. What connects the following texts?
- Ian McEwan: On Chesil Beach (2007)
- Alfred, Lord Tennyson: ‘Maud’ (1855)
- Christopher Marlowe: Edward II (1592)
- William Shakespeare: Richard III (1592), and
QotW (#72): 08 April 2019
subtitled: ‘Sir’s rule number 1‘ …
‘Who’s there?’
‘Nay, answer me. Stand and unfold yourself.’ [a]
Bernardo and Francisco have a point. The entire path of the scene is determined by who is on stage. Think of the ways the conversation could go if instead of Bernardo, another unknown Dane approaches Francisco’s guard-post, or one of Fortinbras’ troops.
From Hamlet to real life, and the idea of decorum – behaving or speaking appropriately to the circumstances and audience.
[book review] Shirley McKay: Hue & Cry
Although this novel (published 2011) begins the Hew Cullan mysteries, I arrived having read the latest, ‘1588: A Calendar of Crime‘ (2016) – whose review you can read here – first.
In many ways, therefore, this felt like a prequel, assembling the cast and creating several relationships I’d already become familiar with.
Think a far superior version of Star Wars episodes I-III …
[book review] Patricia Finney: Firedrake’s Eye
I came to this novel via Finney’s nom-de-plume, PF Chisholm, and her entertaining Sir John Carey novel, A Famine of Horses.
Appropriately enough, Firedrake’s Eye is an entirely different beast …
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Book Review: Marianne Novy’s Shakespeare & Outsiders
Only a short book, yet once I’d understood its central premise, it felt too long.
Far too long.
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Book Review: Shirley Mckay’s 1588 – A Calendar of Crime
As we hit mid-March, and I hit 25 books (about half of which have, unusually, been historical fiction set in the Tudor period), this is my favourite read of 2019 so far.
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The Boar's Head, Eastcheap 