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 ]
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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In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle examines a famous phrase derived from Shakespeare The old line about Hamlet, that it’s ‘too full of quotations’, wittily sums up the play’s influence on not just English literature but on the everyday language we use. Many of us... Continue reading at Interesting Literature
[ Interesting Literature | 2020-05-29 14:00:47 UTC ]
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Guest Blogger: Prof Katy Shaw, University of Northumbria, Vice-Chair of BACLS – the British Association of Literary Studies – and executive committee member of University English, the national subject association. In recent years there has been a rapid rise in the teaching of English Literature... Continue reading at British Council global
[ British Council global | 2020-05-18 09:30:54 UTC ]
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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... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2020-05-05 11:07:04 UTC ]
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When we think of poems, these days most people probably automatically think of lyric poems: usually quite short poems which describe the poet’s (or an imagined speaker’s) thoughts and feelings. But from the epic poems of Homer to the Border Ballads of the Middle Ages to notable contemporary... Continue reading at Interesting Literature
[ Interesting Literature | 2020-04-29 14:00:40 UTC ]
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Literary criticism (or even ‘literary theory’) goes back as far as ancient Greece, and Aristotle’s Poetics. But the rise of English Literature as a university subject, at the beginning of the twentieth century, led to literary criticism focusing on English literature – everything from... Continue reading at Interesting Literature
[ Interesting Literature | 2020-04-15 14:00:07 UTC ]
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The sestina form is thought to have been created by Provencal troubadours – and possibly by one specific troubadour, Arnaut Daniel – in around 1200. However, it didn’t arrive in English literature until the late 1570s, when both Sir Philip Sidney and Edmund Spenser, poets at the court of Queen... Continue reading at Interesting Literature
[ Interesting Literature | 2020-03-04 15:00:47 UTC ]
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Below is the text of the 2020 Clark Lecture in English Literature instituted by Trinity College, Cambridge. * Thank you for inviting me to deliver this, the Clark Lecture, now in its 152nd year. When I received the invitation, I scrolled down the list of previous speakers, the many “Sirs” and... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2020-02-12 09:49:50 UTC ]
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The novelist on William Blake, crying through Greta Gerwig’s Little Women and an insightful poem about teenage masturbationBorn in Bury, Greater Manchester, in 1978, Emma Jane Unsworth studied English literature at the University of Liverpool and received an MA from Manchester University’s... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2020-01-26 10:00:20 UTC ]
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Da Chen, whose memoirs for both adults ('Colors of the Mountain') and young readers ('Girl Under a Red Moon') chronicled his experiences growing up during China's Cultural Revolution, died of lung cancer on December 17 in Temecula, Calif.; he was 57. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2020-01-02 05:00:00 UTC ]
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Adam Mars-Jones has won the 2019 Fitzcarraldo Editions Novel Prize for Box Hill, his "strangely tragic love story" set in the gay biker community during the late 1970s. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2019-09-22 18:21:05 UTC ]
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Executive vice president and publisher of Random House Susan Kamil, who published Salman Rushdie, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Elizabeth Strout, Sophie Kinsella, and Ruth Reich, among many others, died this weekend from complications relating to lung cancer, the AP reports. Random House president Gina... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2019-09-09 14:26:02 UTC ]
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Susan Kamil, publisher of Random House and a veteran publishing executive whose career spanned more than 40 years, died on Sunday, September 8, from complications from lung cancer. She was 69. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2019-09-09 04:00:00 UTC ]
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Interviews Carolyne Larrington Audible’s new fiction podcast, Hag, launching August 29, features eight reimaginings of traditional British folktales by eight contemporary female writers, with folktales chosen from across the UK. The collection will be... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2019-08-30 14:21:50 UTC ]
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After decades of gathering Spanish-language magazines and newspapers in his office—thousands of them—Kirk Whisler started looking around for a more formal place to archive this collection. Whisler is president of Fallbrook, Calif.-based Latino 247 Media Group, a founding member of the National... Continue reading at Advertising Age
[ Advertising Age | 2019-08-13 13:31:00 UTC ]
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Interviews Shelly Bhoil Tenzin Dickie is a Tibetan writer and translator and editor of The Treasury of Lives, a biographical encyclopedia of Tibet, Inner Asia, and the Himalayan region. Her edited anthology, Old Demons, New Deities: 21 Short Stories from... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2019-06-25 14:25:59 UTC ]
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Art Kunkin at a Los Angeles bookstore in 1999 with a special edition of The Los Angeles Free Press, the weekly newspaper he started in 1964. It ceased publication in the late 1970s, but Mr. Kunkin was later involved in revivals. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2019-05-08 00:00:00 UTC ]
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When Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh defended selling her “Healthy Holly” books to the University of Maryland Medical System, she made one specific claim that touched off concern at City Hall. Pugh told The Baltimore Sun on March 20 that she had not sold her books beyond those she provided to... Continue reading at Baltimore Sun
[ Baltimore Sun | 2019-04-30 00:00:00 UTC ]
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