Gabriel Josipovici's '100 Days'
Gabriel Josipovici’s 100 Days is an account both of the first three months of the pandemic, and of the author’s deep engagement with culture during his long life.
Read MoreEnglish Meet 2024
The third English Meet is being planned for Wednesday 1st May.
Read MoreEmma Smith on 'King Lear'
Notes on the ‘King Lear’ chapter of Emma Smith’s book This is Shakespeare.
Read MoreOn libraries: a personal history
A personal essay on the libraries I have used over the years.
Read MoreTralee Webinar: Cognitive Science in English
Notes and links from a Tralee Education Support Centre webinar to introduce the principles of cognitive science to English teachers in Ireland who are unfamiliar with them. January 2024.
Read MoreOn 'Notability' for teaching
A recommendation for my most-used classroom tool, the iOS app Notability.
Read MoreDonna Leon's 'Wandering Through Life'
Donna Leon, at the age, has written a ‘memoir’ in the form of 30 vignettes about her life and cultural interests.
Read MoreTom Needham's 'Explicit English Teaching'
Tom Needham’s Explicit English Teaching is a rare example of a book for our subject that is based on the principles of cognitive science.
Read MoreShakespeare: 'In Our Time'
A list of the BBC Radio 4 ‘In Our Time’ episodes about Shakespeare.
Read MoreBooks of the Year, 2023
My Books of 2023.
Read MoreReading Catch-up, December 2023
Some short reviews which first appeared in the Fortnightly since the summer.
Read More'Essential Grammar' by Jennifer Webb and Marcello Giovanelli
In Essential Grammar: the resource book every English teacher will need, Jennifer Webb and Marcello Giovanelli have written a helpful and practical guide to an area teachers often find difficult. It is their contention that far from being dry and pedantic, knowledge of how grammar works is liberating and opens up possibilities for pupils.
Read MoreOn Eclectic Reading
A reflection on reading eclectically, and on how books connect to each other in surprising and fruitful ways.
Read MoreChetna Maroo's 'Western Lane'
Chetna Maroo’s short tight début novel tells the story of an 11 year-old girl who has lost her mother, and the ways she, her sisters and father try to cope, especially through the unlikely medium of the game of squash.
Read MoreMartin Doyle's 'Dirty Linen'
Martin Doyle’s Dirty Linen: the Troubles in my Home Place is a powerful mixture of memoir, journalism and history. In it, the lives of people murdered in a single parish during the Troubles are given due attention.
Read More'Hamlet' webinar
Notes and links for a webinar via Tralee Education Support Centre, for teachers of Hamlet at Leaving Certificate.
Read More'Sentence Models for Creating Writing' by Christopher Youles.
Christopher Youles’s Sentence Models for Creative Writing is a useful short book for English teachers, properly sub-titled ‘A practical resource for teaching writing.’
Read MoreEmma Smith on 'Hamlet'
Notes on the Hamlet chapter in Emma Smith’s This is Shakespeare.
Read MoreRevising the sequence of 'Hamlet' 2
A simple way to help pupils understand which parts of a play are important for revising an individual character. Here, Hamlet, but any play by Shakespeare works.
Read MoreLaura Cumming's 'Thunderclap'
Laura Cumming’s marvellous Thunderclap: a memoir of art and life & sudden death mulls over our gaps in the knowledge of the artist Carel Fabritius, but it is about so much more, especially her father, the Scottish artist James Cumming.
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