[book review] Tracy Borman: The Private Lives of the Tudors

borman tudors cover

 

Tracy Borman, The Private Lives of the Tudors: Uncovering the Secrets of Britain’s Greatest Dynasty (Hodder & Stoughton: London, 2016)

A salutary warning for would-be 21st-century celebrities?

Francis Bacon calls it correctly, as he so often does:

Men in great place […] have no freedom; neither in their persons, nor in their actions, nor in their times. It is a strange desire, to seek power and to lose liberty: or to seek power over others, and to lose power over a man’s self. [a]

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QotW#76: 13 May 2019

bird fights snake
“… though she be but little, she is fierce”  A Midsummer Night’s Dream (III,ii)

Poor Isabella.

Not just married to Edward II.  Not simply denounced by history as the ‘She Wolf of France‘.  As if all that wasn’t enough, she was relegated to a footnote in last week‘s QotW.

It’s her turn.  Be afraid.

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How to … write a conclusion

godbyes
“Goodbye (sniff): I loved your essay so much I read it twice!”

If beginnings feel tricky (until you read this, naturally), then signing off an essay can feel just as daunting, and it’s equally important.  Faced with the time pressure of writing an additional half paragraph of analysis only to finish mid-

 

-sentence, or writing a strong conclusion, I know which one I’d choose every time.

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How to … write an introduction

readiness is all
‘the readiness is all’  Hamlet V.ii

It’s that time of year again.

OCR A Level English Literature (paper 1):  Thursday, 23 May, 13:30hrs

AQA GCSE English Literature (paper 1):  Wednesday, 15 May, 13:30hrs

as well as mocks for Y10 and Y12 students … and the most daunting thing of all is starting your answer. (For tips on how to end your essay, click here)

“Do I need an introduction?  Why?  What should be in it?”

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QotW (#75): 06 May 2019

trafficking

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 …

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[book review] Josephine Tey: The Daughter of Time

tey hospital bed man
No, Inspector Grant, you can’t get a hunchback from reading about it …

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

despair and die

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?

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6-minute Shakespeare

Time-limited tasks are like a triple shot of caffeine …

reservoir dogs

It’s human nature, you panic. I don’t care what your name is. You can’t help it. Fuck, man, you panic on the inside, in your head, you know? You give yourself a couple of seconds. You get ahold of the situation. You deal with it. What you don’t do is start shooting up the place and start killing people. (Reservoir Dogs:  Quentin Tarantino, 1992)

It’s less than a month to go before the Shakespeare exams my Y11s and Y13s will be taking.  The Y12s and Y10s have mocks broadly over the same period.

Today’s post relates to three things I often say in the classroom:

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[book review] Catharine Arnold: Globe

arnold cover

Catharine Arnold, Globe: Life in Shakepeare’s London (Simon & Schuster:  London, 2015)

 

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Happy Birthday*, both of us!

cakespeare olivia zampi the bakery lounge
image:  Olivia Zampi, The Bakery Lounge

*well aware, of course, that we don’t know Shakespeare’s exact date of birth.  Today’s as good as any other, I guess.

Subject to the above, Shakespeare would have hit 455 today.  Rather more reliably, WordPress tells me that The Boar’s Head is three today, my first post coinciding with the Shakespeare400 celebrations.  They seem half a lifetime away – remember them?

A few facts and figures from the blog:

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