I have spent the last few weeks marking AS level scripts for the new AQA English Literature exam, Paper LTA1B, about literature of the First World War. So I thought I’d put a few hints and tips from a marker here, for the benefit of any teachers or students who might happen to find this [...]
At the excellent Stoke conference, someone mentioned the novel The Feet of the Young Men, by Herbert Tremaine. It struck me that this was a book I had never looked at, and should have done.
It was published in 1917, by C. W. Daniel, an interesting firm which printed a mixture of Tolstoyan-pacifist writings, and what [...]
There’s an interesting article in the Telegraph about street shrines, in London and elsewhere, mostly commemorating the fallen, but sometimes simply honouring all those who went to fight.
I like this snippet of information:
This did not come without controversy. Prayers for the dead went against the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England. J H Kensit [...]
At the moment I’m marking A-Level papers on First World War Literature, which is an interesting job. When I’ve finished I’ll write a general piece with some hints and tips for students, and suggestions about how to avoid some common pitfalls.
The process has made me re-read carefully, for the first time in a long while, [...]
Tim Kendall, whose War Poets Blog is always worth reading, will be editing an anthology of WW1 poetry for the Oxford World Classics series. He has asked for suggestions of poems to include, so do send him some.
For my own part, I don’t really think much of any anthology that doesn’t include this poem by [...]
While I was off at the excellent Stoke conference the week before last, the BBC broadcast the climax of its poetry season, a long Arena programme about T.S.Eliot.
This was quite a good introduction for newcomers to the twentieth century’s most interesting poet, but there wasn’t much new, apart from a glimpse of the scrapbooks compiled [...]
Visiting London, I took the opportunity to book a research viewing at the British Film Institute, of a film I have wanted to see for years, Victor Savile’s 1933 version of The Good Companions.
It was as good as I’d hoped, and like so many other British movies of the period, left me wondering why nobody [...]
My visit to Stoke has got me thinking (even more than usual) about the way things were. Here is some film of London street scenes in 1903.
The film was posted on YouTube by the ever-excellent BFI, and I found it thanks to one of my very favourite blogs, the West End [...]
Technically I had been to Stoke before. Once back in the sixties, while I was at University in Manchester, I joined a coach trip to see a stirring production of Marlowe’s Jew of Malta at the theatre there. I can still recall images from the play, but remember nothing of the town.
So when I arrived [...]
I’ll be heading north to Stoke tomorrow, for the conference on Arnold Bennett and H.G.Wells, where I’ll be giving a paper about those two unappreciated works, Wells’s Boon and Bennett’s The Roll-Call.
Looking for a picture of Bennett to put on my PowerPoint slide, I came across this drawing by Max Beerbohm. I think Max found [...]
