Thinking AloudEnglish Blog

Theatre is meant to take risks - and a production so joyous and kinetic is a gift.  It’s smart, messy, generous, and completely alive.  It’s Midsummer. It’s Madness.  It’s exactly the kind of anarchic disruption Shakespeare deserves.

So, where do all the important characters go? Romeo’s parents.  When their son is busy running around with the boys, getting married at 16, killing his rival, and being banished from the city, where are Lord and Lady Montague?  Busy with dinner plans?  

If you (or your teenager) are studying Edexcel A Level after the summer, you might be tackling the full Romantics selection - or just Keats.  For AQA, OCR, or IB, one or more of these revolutionary poets are likely to appear.  These long holidays offer the perfect opportunity to deepen understanding without cracking open another anthology... just yet.

You can always spot a Romantic.  They’re the heart-first thinkers who refused to believe that God or logic alone could explain the world.  The ones who turned away from convention and wrote about imagination like it mattered more than politics. Which, for many of them, it did.

Welcome to the strange twilight zone that is mid-May - the middle of exam season.  You may be starting to feel like you live with a ghost who only emerges for snacks, sighs a lot, and occasionally mutters something about "how many exams are left?".   Days are counted in exam papers.  Life is looking endlessly bleak.  Hurrah, it’s the mid-point moan: the bit where adrenaline has worn off, motivation is flagging, and no one’s quite sure what day it is (without looking at an exa

While much of Hong Kong enjoys the serenity of Buddha’s Birthday, lotus lanterns, temple visits, maybe even a rare moment of peace, parents of exam-taking students are more likely lighting incense in the vague hope it will cleanse the air of teenage angst and essay-induced doom.

I was working with one of my lovely A Level students the other day, and we were deep into our discussion of Hamlet - when it happened.  I got it. I got Hamlet.

There are some decisions in life that require deep contemplation.  Applying for a job.  Choosing a partner.  Picking your Desert Island Discs.  And then, there’s naming a puppy. 

Easter is nearly upon us, hurrah, up to three weeks for your child to revise for their exams.  Are you ready?  Are they? 

Rejection: the gut-punch every writer faces.  History is full of books dismissed before becoming literary classics. 

For those of us in the business of literature, St Patrick's day is a chance to celebrate Ireland’s unrivalled literary legacy.

Reading a book or watching a film and a dog appears, steel yourself. It is most likely about to be devastating shorthand for human despair.

Fear not.  Be it GCSE, IB, or A Level English Language and/or Literature, here are a few survival strategies... chocolate is involved.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that an English student in possession of a novel must be in want of the right answer.

While Western culture often casts snakes in a sinister light (looking at you, Bible), the Chinese interpretation is far more nuanced...

If I Am, I Am, I Am is about the individual’s fight for survival, Hamnet is about the collective weight of loss. 

There’s nothing quite like a Francis Bacon exhibition to remind you that life is equal parts grotesque, tragic, and utterly captivating. 

Because here’s the thing: good literature essays demand a belief in your argument.

So, your child’s slogged through the mock exams and the results are in.  You’re feeling a rollercoaster of emotions about them.

Let’s be honest - securing those top grades at A Level or IB English Lit isn’t about your child nodding earnestly at Hamlet.