Jeremy Trafford, who has died aged 85 after contracting Covid-19, was a publisher, teacher and writer. I met him in the late 1970s, while supply teaching at the London Oratory school, in west London, where he taught English literature in the sixth form. He was a brilliant teacher, who inspired his pupils with his own enthusiasm, especially for Shakespeare, and also produced and directed plays at the school. Jeremy was married twice, once to a woman, the second time to a man; he was deeply in love with both of them. The first marriage, to Mary Hamilton, ended in divorce to the distress of both parties, but they remained lifelong friends. The second “marriage” was to Andrew Thomas, the son of a bus driver, in a commitment ceremony at City Hall in London in 2004. They were immensely happy until Andy died of lung cancer less than three years later, aged 51. The story of their relationship was told in a documentary film, Andrew and Jeremy Get Married, directed by Don Boyd, which previewed at the 2004 Toronto international film festival and was shown in cinemas in Amsterdam, Dublin and London the following year. Continue reading... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'
[ The Guardian | 2020-05-05 11:07:04 UTC ]
In September 1939, Elizabeth Hardwick took a Greyhound bus to New York to pursue a doctorate in 17th-century English literature at Columbia University. A few years earlier she had visited the city with two high school friends, staying at the Hotel Taft in Times Square. The women’s accents had... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2021-11-16 09:55:56 UTC ]
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A guide that can serve as a starting point to help you find interesting, relevant and fascinating free online english literature courses. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2021-09-21 10:40:00 UTC ]
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The Lit in Colour Pioneers programme, which supports UK schools in diversifying their English Literature curriculum, will be working with 119 cohorts from across the country this year, reaching almost 12,000 students. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-09-06 10:31:02 UTC ]
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This week we’ve published the findings of research conducted by Lit in Colour, a campaign run by Penguin Random House and The Runnymede Trust to make the teaching of English Literature more inclusive and representative of the myriad of different voices and narratives that make up Britain’s past... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-06-29 23:09:45 UTC ]
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Less than one percent of authors studied at GCSE English Literature are from an ethnic minority background. Continue reading at BBC News
[ BBC News | 2021-06-29 18:52:35 UTC ]
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Research commissioned by Penguin Random House has revealed only 0.7% of English Literature GCSE students in England study a book by a writer of colour while only 7% study a book by a woman. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-06-28 22:57:04 UTC ]
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‘Frailty, thy name is woman’ is one of dozens of famous expressions that have entered common speech, but which originated in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The old quip about Hamlet, that it’s ‘too full of quotations’, wittily sums up the play’s influence on not just English literature but on the... Continue reading at Interesting Literature
[ Interesting Literature | 2021-06-24 17:00:06 UTC ]
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It turns out 12th-century British scholars (monks, really, we’re mainly talking monks, here) had absolutely no problem borrowing “long passages” from whatever manuscripts they could get their hands on, and would freely plagiarize the writings of continental scholars. Of course, plagiarism then... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2021-05-11 14:10:25 UTC ]
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When compared with the sonnet, ballad, or even the villanelle, the pantoum verse form could hardly be called ‘popular’, and examples of pantoums in English literature are not exactly plentiful. Nonetheless, there are some fine instances of the pantoum – a distinctive and strict form which has... Continue reading at Interesting Literature
[ Interesting Literature | 2021-03-25 15:00:19 UTC ]
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New issue, dedicated to work by current and former prisoners, provokes uproar after it emerges one poet has served time for child pornography offencesThe US’s prestigious Poetry magazine has doubled down on its decision to publish a poem by a convicted sex offender as part of a special edition... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2021-02-03 16:08:52 UTC ]
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My assignment was to offer a survey course on the history of English literature in northeast China. I was paired with a young American teacher sponsored by the United Nations who was to teach phonetics and oral expression. We taught six days a week, and every Wednesday afternoon our students... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2021-01-15 09:49:40 UTC ]
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Lit in Colour, the publisher’s partnership with the Runnymede Trust, hopes to redress imbalances in English literature coursesThe book publisher Penguin Random House has teamed up with the thinktank the Runnymede Trust to boost diversity in reading lists in schools.The partnership – Lit in... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2020-10-24 16:11:09 UTC ]
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Selected by Dr Oliver Tearle English literature has a rich tradition of comic writing. From Chaucer’s ‘Miller’s Tale’ to Shakespeare’s Falstaff to the early comic novels of Smollett, Sterne, Fielding, and Swift, there are plenty of laughs to be had from the pages of the literary greats. But what... Continue reading at Interesting Literature
[ Interesting Literature | 2020-10-08 14:00:57 UTC ]
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BORN AND RAISED in Montenegro, Olja Knežević studied English literature at the University of Belgrade, Serbia, before completing her MA in Creative Writing at Birkbeck College, University of London, in 2008. Now living in Croatia, she is one of those effortlessly international authors whose... Continue reading at Los Angeles Review of Books
[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2020-10-02 12:30:19 UTC ]
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Interviews Randy Ribay was born in the Philippines and raised in the Midwest. He’s the author of After the Shot Drops and An Infinite Number of Parallel Universes. His latest book, Patron Saints of Nothing, is a powerful coming-of-age story about... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2020-09-29 13:14:12 UTC ]
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In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle enjoys the comic verse by one of the most ‘miserable’ poets in English literature ‘The Crocodile or, Public Decency’ is not one of the best-known poems of A. E. Housman (1859-1936), the classical scholar and poet who failed his […] Continue reading at Interesting Literature
[ Interesting Literature | 2020-09-18 14:00:40 UTC ]
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Veteran biographer A.N. Wilson takes on one of the most popular, prolific and puzzling writers in English literature in "The Mystery of Charles Dickens." Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2020-08-06 14:00:54 UTC ]
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After finding an anthology of English literature in the rubble of the Islamic University of Gaza during the 2014 Israeli bombing, Mosab Abu Toha had a dream: founding an English language library in one of the most confined, crowded, and isolated places in the world. According to the “We Are Not... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2020-07-22 08:47:29 UTC ]
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Traditionally, a ballad was a song that was designed to be danced to, as the etymology of the word, Provençal balada meaning ‘dance, song to dance to’, ultimately from late Latin ballare. The great British ballads – and we say ‘British’ because many of them were Scottish rather than English... Continue reading at Interesting Literature
[ Interesting Literature | 2020-06-14 14:00:45 UTC ]
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How many times have you heard someone say, ‘I don’t read poetry. I just don’t get it.’ Or perhaps, ‘Why can’t poets just come out and say what they want to say? Why say something in such a way?’ For many people, poetry is ‘difficult’. But whilst it’s true that […] The post 10 of the Most... Continue reading at Interesting Literature
[ Interesting Literature | 2020-05-30 14:00:36 UTC ]
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