Archive for the English category

Sixteen Year 11s and 12s descended on rural Shropshire in the first week of the summer holidays for a residential writing course run by the Arvon Foundation. Under the guidance of poets Vicki Feaver and Matthew Sweeney, we developed and flexed our poetic muscles; learned to eschew the lure of the abstract noun; and cooked gargantuan curries in the catering kitchen. The more intrepid among us ventured across the hills to Clun (one of ‘the quietest places under the sun’), before returning for surreptitious raids on the chocolate biscuit tin. An anthology of our poems from the week (‘Not too miserable’) is on the English department website, but savour the photos here for a sense of just how idyllic it all was.

This year we chose a new venue for our annual Y13 study weekend – the Medway district of Kent, famed for its connections with Dickens, and its proximity to Chaucer’s Pilgrims’ Way. On a sunny Friday afternoon, we wondered at the romance of Rochester’s Restoration House (Satis House in Great Expectations), and shared our thoughts on Pip’s first arrival at Miss Havisham’s, and Matilda’s experiences of Rochester in Lloyd Jones’ Mister Pip (later we played her game of spotting the local businesses that exploit the Dickens’ connection – an apple from Pips of Rochester anyone?). We followed up with hilarious readings of the opening of Coleridge’s ‘Christabel’, which we continued in appropriately poetic (doggerel?) fashion in the grounds of Rochester castle. In the cathedral crypt, we staged an impromptu performance of Doctor Faustus’ encounter with the Seven Deadly Sins.

Struck by the concrete expanses of ring roads, motorways and industrial estates in this part of the world, it was a relief to discover our youth hostel was in a little green oasis – and was in fact a former Kentish oast house. Our intrepid and forbearing coach driver Colin took us out after supper in the gathering gloom to the Kentish marshes; several wrong turns and an almost total bus-diagonally-wedged-in-right-angle-bend later, it was completely dark and we bailed out at Cliffe churchyard to read the opening of Great Expectations by torchlight. Esme Alleyn proved a terrifying Magwitch, especially as she had to compete for volume with the bell-ringing practice carrying on meanwhile. Buoyed by this unforgettable experience, we struck out on the marshes themselves, where a red moon brooded over the distant Thames estuary, and read the opening of Heart of Darkness.

Saturday took us to the Historic Dockyard at Chatham, which was holding a 40′s day with lots of splendid costumes, role play and entertainment. Under the canopy of one of the many huge warehouses, we read and performed extracts from Vanity Fair and Our Mutual Friend, before boarding a paddle steamer for a trip upstream to see the historic barracks, the Victorian rope factory (a whole lot more amazing than it sounds), and, yes, more examples of modern Kentish road-building. By now accustomed to concrete wasteland, the empty expanses of the North Downs in the afternoon were like a dose of Optrex. As we padded along the Pilgrims’ Way, we stopped to read extracts from Canterbury Tales; Mrs Redston treating us to her legendary Middle English. In a wide open field, we were indignant on behalf of John Clare’s Badger. In the evening, we shared our anthology pieces at the hostel – it has been great to see such variety in the students’ own choices of literature and in their approaches to them.

On Sunday we left Kent for London, and a bracing tramp on Hampstead Heath prepared us to be Freddy, George and Mr Beebe desporting themselves at the bathing pool, before being surprised naked by Lucy and her mother (we stopped short of total verisimilitude here). The beautiful Keats’ house was our final destination, where we reflected on his poignant letters to girl-next-door Fanny Brawne, before reading and discussing Ode to a Nightingale in the garden.

We returned in the afternoon, full of ideas to carry into our coursework study of Vanity Fair and Birthday Letters.

On a sunny Sunday in May, just before AS exams kicked in, Y12 English students enjoyed a leisurely afternoon in beautiful Rousham Gardens. The trip helped us to visualise the landscape gardens of Sidley Park in Tom Stoppard’s play Arcadia, and we were able to appreciate the great shifts in taste from the ornate Palladian garden to William Kent’s picturesque. We read poetry by Pope and Keats and extracts from Austen, before exploring the garden and sharing proposals for Noakes-style re-modellings of various corners along Romantic lines – something we accomplished very satisfactorily over an indulgent picnic tea.

On 11 May we welcomed the writer Charlotte Moore to the High School. She spoke at lunchtime to an audience of girls from Years 10 to 13 about the writing process and her own experiences as a writer of fiction, non-fiction and journalism. Everyone hugely enjoyed her insights into writing and asked lots of questions – even getting a novel and practical solution to writers’ block!

In the afternoon, Charlotte talked to the whole of Year 8 about the process leading to the writing of her latest novel, Milicent’s Book, a coming of age story based on real events in Charlotte’s family history at Hancox, the Tudor house where she grew up (and which is the subject of one of her adult books). She then led the girls in a writing exercise based on their imagined future selves. The girls responded enthusiastically, many leaving clutching signed copies of Milicent’s Book, to be read avidly during their double English lesson.

The Y13 study weekend has become a firm fixture in our A-level calendar. This year we were thrilled to return to Grasmere and the Lakes (the last two years have seen us in London and in Somerset), to explore the work of the Romantic poets and other writers in connection with our coursework study of the Self.

Our first day took in our now traditional ascent of Easedale, passing Churn Milk Gill and stopping periodically for dramatised readings including pieces from Wordsworth’s ‘Michael’, Shelley’s ‘Alastor’, and also from Frankenstein – which involved a good deal of striding the fells in the manner of the monster confronting Victor in the Alps. In the evening, we celebrated an 18th birthday in style in our youth hostel, and settled down to some serious literary discussion in the cosy sitting room, disentangling Wordsworth’s ‘Ode: Intimations of Immortality’, and bits of Rousseau’s Emile.

Saturday began with a walk into Grasmere for a tour of Dove Cottage, where we marvelled at Wordsworth’s twig toothbrush and admired his dog, Pepper, a present from Sir Walter Scott (Pepper’s portrait hangs in a ground floor room). On to the Wordsworth Museum next door, to contemplate the psyche of Dorothy Wordsworth through her endlessly intriguing journals – what does that one on Wordsworth’s wedding day say? We then began our second walk, taking the so-called Coffin route (an allusion to the lengthy walks with the dead from hill farms down to the church at Grasmere) towards Rydal. This walk formed an apt backdrop to our reading and discussion of Wordsworth’s ‘Lucy’ poems, which prompted lively discussion, and even some creative ripostes of our own to ‘Strange fits of passion’.

The afternoon involved some strenuous rowing on Grasmere lake, strenuous reading of the Prelude(boat-stealing, of course), and strenuous drinking of hot chocolate. In the evening, we gathered again in the sitting room at Thorney How to share our findings about objects in the Museum, and to read Keats.

On Sunday, a rainy start saw us hauling wheely cases down the hill from the hostel to our waiting coach, which whisked us off to Tatton Park (Cheshire), where the weather was a little brighter. We found spots in the greenhouses to read Elizabth Gaskell, and a fine prospect to dramatise the strawberry-picking at Donwell Abbey from Emma. Despite extensive searches, however, Mrs Runacres couldn’t find the perfect Grecian Urn for her teaching of Keats’ ‘Ode’ in the house itself, and had to be content with alluding to the artistic representation of an orgy, rather to the bemusement of other visitors.

We returned on Sunday afternoon, full of ideas to carry into our reflection on the self inEmma and Shakespeare’s Sonnets.