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Melvyn Bragg discusses the history of the ancient genre of tragedy and examines whether we have a psychological need for it, either as catharsis or Schadenfreude.

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Melvyn Bragg discusses the history of the ancient genre of tragedy and examines whether we have a psychological need for it, either as catharsis or Schadenfreude.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history of the ancient genre of tragedy and examines whether we have a psychological need for it, either as catharsis or Schadenfreude. You could be forgiven for thinking that in our century, of all centuries, the notion of the death of a tragedy would be comical. But there is a view that in its broad theatrical sense, tragedy, as defined by Aristotle and accepted to the time of Racine, has indeed lost its place and power as a form. Aristotle in his poetics held that tragedy figured men and women, often greater than ourselves, heroic, whose fall excited sensations of pity and fear which purged the emotions in the spectator, provoking a catharsis. And Chaucer defined it as a story "of hym that stood in greet prosperitee/And is yfallen from heigh degree/Into myserie, and endeth wretchedly". Tragedy has been redefined many times and in many ages, but does it have a place in our own time? Or is the genre "dead for a ducat". Not in life - the twentieth century is a monument to tragedy - but in art.With Professor George Steiner, critic, Extraordinary Fellow, Churchill College, Cambridge and author of The Death of Tragedy; Professor Catherine Belsey, Chair of the Centre for Critical and Cultural Theory, University of Cardiff and author of The Subject of Tragedy.

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Melvyn Bragg discusses the history of the ancient genre of tragedy and examines whether we have a psychological need for it, either as catharsis or Schadenfreude. Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history of the ancient genre of tragedy and examines whether we have a psychological need for it, either as catharsis or Schadenfreude.

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Jeffrey Boakye’s article explores how Shakespeare’s Othello remains powerfully relevant today, revealing how race, masculinity, and mental health intersect in modern society, reflected vividly in the Globe’s 2024 production.

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The shortlist for this year's Booker Prize has been announced. As Roddy Doyle, Chair of the Booker Prize 2025 judges, says: ‘The six [shortlisted books] have two big things in common. Their authors are in total command of their own store of English, their own rhythm, their own expertise; they have each crafted a novel that no one else could have written. And all of the books, in six different and very fresh ways, find their stories in the examination of the individual trying to live with – to love, to seek attention from, to cope with, to understand, to keep at bay, to tolerate, to escape from – other people. In other words, they are all brilliantly written and they are all brilliantly human.’

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Welcome to the online home of the Booker Prize and the International Booker Prize, the leading literary awards for single works of fiction published in the UK in English.

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Ask your English teacher about the login details for JSTOR.

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This novel, set during WWI, comes highly recommended by Miss Heley and Mr Herbert. It is an epic, devastating, and beautiful novel about the relationship between two school friends against the backdrop of WWI. This is the Guardian's review: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/mar/12/in-memoriam-by-alice-winn-review-a-vivid-rendering-of-love-and-frontline-brutality-in-the-first-world-war

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WINNER OF THE WATERSTONES DEBUT FICTION PRIZE 2023

It was only because Gaunt knew he might die, that he could be so reckless as to kiss him.
'Assured, affecting and moving. Alice Winn has written a devastating love story between two young men on the Western Front' MAGGIE O'FARRELL, BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF HAMNET
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In 1914, war feels far away to Henry Gaunt and Sidney Ellwood. They're too young to enlist, and anyway, Gaunt is fighting his own private battle - an all-consuming infatuation with the dreamy, poetic Ellwood - not having a clue that his best friend is in love with him, always has been.

When Gaunt's mother asks him to enlist in the British army to protect the family from anti-German attacks, he signs up immediately, relieved to escape his overwhelming feelings. But Ellwood and their classmates soon follow him into the horrors of trenches. Though Ellwood and Gaunt find fleeting moments of solace in one another, their friends are dying in front of them, and at any moment they could be next.

An epic tale of the devastating tragedies of war and the forbidden romance that blooms in its grip, In Memoriam is a breathtaking debut.

THE TOP FIVESUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER, March 2023
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'One of the best debuts I've read in recent years: immersive, rousing, tender and devastating . . . please rush out and buy it' ELIZABETH DAY

'BIRDSONG for a new generation' JOANNA QUINN, AUTHOR OF THE WHALEBONE THEATRE

'Like looking at a black and white photograph which has been colourised . . . I was completely absorbed, moved, and transported' CLAIRE FULLER, AUTHOR OF UNSETTLED GROUND

'When was the last time characters in a novel seemed so real to me, so cherishable, so alive?' GARTH GREENWELL, AUTHOR OF CLEANNESS and WHAT BELONGS TO YOU

'A vivid rendering of love and frontline brutality in the first world war . . .In Memoriam is at once epic and intimate, humorous and profound, a vivid rendering of the madness and legacy of the first world war as seen through the lens of a schoolboy love affair' Observer

'A tender, affecting debut . . . Winn strikingly evokes the torment and brutality of life of the front' The Times

'Propulsive, visceral and heartrending . . . I can't remember the last time I was this invested in a love story' Sunday Telegraph

'A genuine page-turner'Sunday Times

'In Memoriam is gripping, tender, immersive and, most of all, completely unforgettable' i, Fiction Pick of the Month

'Alice Winn's devastating debut will smash your heart to smithereens . . . as thousands of young men die in the most horrific of ways, Gaunt and Ellwood attempt to survive the slaughter and keep their love alive' Daily Mail

'IN MEMORIAM is the story of a great tragedy, but it is also a moving portrait of young love, and there is often a lightness to the book, even humor. It's a difficult balancing act, but one that Winn, who is erudite, fast talking and very funny, pulls off' New York Times

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WINNER OF THE WATERSTONES DEBUT FICTION PRIZE 2023 It was only because Gaunt knew he might die, that he could be so reckless as to kiss him. 'Assured, affecting and moving. Alice Winn has written a devastating love story between two young men on the Western Front' MAGGIE O'FARRELL, BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF HAMNET ______________________ In 1914, war feels far away to Henry Gaunt and Sidney Ellwood.

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WATCH - Shakespeare's Sonnets: A Modern Love Story

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WATCH - Shakespeare's Sonnets: A Modern Love Story

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Twenty love poems are weaved together to create a fresh and original story set in contemporary Britain.

Including Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day and My Mistress’ Eyes are Nothing Like the Sun, four lovers show us how Shakespeare’s words, with their raw emotion and feeling, are as relevant today as they were more than 400 years ago. The four narrators’ relationships are at different stages, from falling in love to moving on.

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Shakespeare Sonnets: A Modern Love Story

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The best-known love poems are weaved together to create a fresh contemporary story.

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WATCH - Hugh Quarshie Remembers... Othello

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WATCH - Hugh Quarshie Remembers... Othello

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Hugh Quarshie looks back on his highly praised interpretation of Othello in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s 2015 production, directed by Iqbal Khan. He considers the extra responsibility a black actor must take on with a role that for centuries was played only by white performers wearing make-up. He recalls how he made the decision to join the cast after years of turning the play down and examines the frequently asked question ‘Is Othello a racist play?’, drawing on his experiences playing the Moor of Venice for his own conclusion.

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Hugh Quarshie looks back on his interpretation of Othello in the RSC's 2015 production.

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Listen to, and make notes on, the In Our Time episode about Siegfried Sassoon. What do you learn about Sassoon? What do you find interesting about his life and war poetry? How far do you agree with the ideas the critics suggest about his war poetry?

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Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the war poet Siegfried Sassoon; a homosexual war hero who became a bitter opponent of the First World War and a devout Catholic.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the war poet Siegfried Sassoon. In 1916 the Military Cross was awarded to a captain in the Royal Welch Fusiliers for "conspicuous gallantry during a raid on the enemy's trenches". The citation noted that he had braved "rifle and bomb fire" and that "owing to his courage and determination, all the killed and wounded were brought in". The hero in question was the poet, Siegfried Sassoon. And yet a year later, and at great personal risk, Sassoon publicly denounced the conduct of the war in which he had fought so well.Although famous for his bitter, satirical verses and his denunciation of the conduct of the war which landed him in Craiglockhart mental hospital there is much more to this man of contradictions. A mentor to Wilfred Owen, arch enemy of T.S. Eliot and the Modernist movement, his life included a string of homosexual affairs, a failed marriage, a religious conversion and several tumultuous arguments with literary friends. Notably Robert Graves. He was also an obsessive diarist and writer of autobiography and he continued to write poetry until his death, from cancer, in 1967. But how significant a poet is Siegfried Sassoon, what version of Englishness did this half-Jewish, homosexual cricket lover invent for himself and how do you explain the mind of a man who bitterly opposed the First World War, yet fought in it with an almost insane ferocity?With Jean Moorcroft Wilson, Lecturer in English at Birkbeck, University of London and a biographer of Sassoon; Fran Brearton, Reader in English and Assistant Director of the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry at the University of Belfast; Max Egremont, a biographer of Siegfried Sassoon

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BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, Siegfried Sassoon

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Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the war poet Siegfried Sassoon.

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Listen to, and make notes on, the In Our Time episode about Wilfred Owen. The website also has a useful reading list which you could refer to if you would like to do some further reading related to Wilfred Owen.

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CONTRIBUTORS
Guy Cuthbertson at Liverpool Hope University Jane Potter at Oxford Brookes University Fran Brearton at Queen's University Belfast
Pat Barker, The Regeneration Trilogy (Penguin, 2014)

Guy Cuthbertson, Wilfred Owen (Yale University Press, 2014)

Santanu Das, ed., The Cambridge Companion to the Poetry of the First World War (Cambridge University Press, 2014)

Santanu Das, Touch and Intimacy in First World War Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2005)

Max Egremont, Siegfried Sassoon: A Biography (Picador, 2006)

Dominic Hibberd, Wilfred Owen: A New Biography (Phoenix, 2003)

Dominic Hibberd, Owen the Poet (Macmillan, 1986)

Tim Kendall, Modern English War Poetry (Oxford University Press, 2006)

Tim Kendall (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of British and Irish War Poetry (Oxford University Press, 2007)

Wilfred Owen (ed. John Bell), Selected Letters (Oxford University Press, 1998)

Wilfred Owen (ed. Jon Stallworthy), The War Poems of Wilfred Owen (Chatto and Windus, 1994)

Jane Potter and Jon Stallworthy, Wilfred Owen: An Illustrated Life (Bodleian Library, 2014)

Harry Ricketts, Strange Meetings: The Poets of the Great War (Chatto, 2010)

Jon Stallworthy, Wilfred Owen: A Biography (Oxford University Press, 1974)
The First World War Poetry Digital Archive The Wilfred Owen Association
Wilfred Owen - Wikipedia

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Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the outstanding poets of the First World War.

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COMPETITION - Tower Poetry Competition 2026

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COMPETITION - Tower Poetry Competition 2026

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The Tower Poetry Competition offers the UK’s most valuable prize for young poets. The competition is free to enter and it is open to students between 16 and 18 years of age who are educated in the UK.

The competition is judged by two guest judges and the Christopher Tower Student, Dr Anna Nickerson. Each year the theme is chosen with the intention of giving entrants free rein to interpret it as widely as they like.

The poet who writes the single best poem on the theme receives £5,000. There will be a second prize of £3,000, and a third prize of £1,500. Along with these, there will be ten runners up, who will each receive £500. The top three winners will also be offered a place on the Tower Poetry Summer School.

The 2026 Competition is now open. The theme is 'A Riddle'.

See the website for further details.

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The 23rd Christopher Tower Poetry Competition opened for entries on 10 October 2022, with students between 16-18 years of age challenged to write a poem on the theme 'The Planets.' The competition closed at 12...

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emagazine is a quarterly magazine which publishes articles and essays aimed at A Level English. Search for articles on the texts you are studying. Access the latest magazine, as well as the emagazine archive here: EMC Magazines | English & Media Centre. The username is: SJLEnglish; the password is EnglishSJL.

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English & Media Centre - The English and Media Centre is an independent educational charity with a national and international reputation as a Centre of Excellence. It is a development centre, serving the needs of secondary and FE teachers and students of English and Media Studies in the UK and beyond. We are unique in being a group of teachers, working in a voluntary sector organisation and able to draw on our close connections with colleagues in the classroom.

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Never Such Innocence run an annual competition where they ask students a different key question on conflict, and seek responses in the form of artwork, poems, speeches, or songs. The focus for the 23/24 will be announced in the autumn.

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Artwork Credits:
Top banner, left to right: From My Hands to Yours, Suha Suha Art Studio, USA; Life After Conflict, Jinghan Z, China; Metanoia, Ahyeon K, South Korea; Pray and Move Forward, Coco Y, USA; The Cost of Survival, Katie H, Scotland; Release, Zichang L, China.
9 Squares: 1- Life After Conflict, Jinghan Z, China; 3 - Ukraine, Artem G, Ukraine; 5 - Pray and Move Forward, Coco Y, USA; 8 -Christmas Truce, Yuheng Y, Canada; 9 -Untitled, Keda C, USA.

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Artwork Credits: Top banner, left to right: From My Hands to Yours, Suha Suha Art Studio, USA; Life After Conflict, Jinghan Z, China; Metanoia, Ahyeon K, South Korea; Pray and Move Forward, Coco Y, USA; The Cost of Survival, Katie H, Scotland; Release, Zichang L, China.

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Find reading inspiration by watching the BBC's book club programme, 'Between the Covers'.

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Sara Cox opens her book club with famous friends eager to share the joys of reading.

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READ - Careless People by Sarah Churchwell

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READ - Careless People by Sarah Churchwell

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Highly recommended wider reading for The Great Gatsby! This book can be found in our school library. Blurb below:

"Since its publication in 1925, The Great Gatsby has become one of the world’s best-loved books. Careless People tells the true story behind F. Scott Fitzgerald’s masterpiece, exploring in newly rich detail its relation to the extravagant, scandalous, and chaotic world in which the author lived.

With wit and insight, Sarah Churchwell traces the genesis of a masterpiece, mapping where fiction comes from, and how it takes shape in the mind of a genius. Careless People tells the extraordinary tale of how F. Scott Fitzgerald created a classic and in the process discovered modern America."

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Newsletter Signup

<p>Join the Virago family and receive a 10% discount code!<br /> Plus news of new releases, author exclusives, competitions and the occasional survey.</p> <p> </p> <p>The data controller is <a href="https://www.littlebrown.co.uk/landing-page/little-brown-book-group/little-brown-book-group-company-information/?_ga=2.11145712.557978997.1611760884-1854158577.1603291283">Little, Brown Book Group Limited</a>.</p> <p> </p> <p>Read about how we'll protect and use your data in our <a href="https://www.littlebrown.co.uk/imprint/little-brown/page/privacy-notice-holder-little-brown">Privacy Notice</a>.</p> <p> </p> <p>You can unsubscribe at any time via the link in any email we send you.</p>

By clicking 'Sign Up,' I acknowledge that I have read and agree to Hachette Book Group's Privacy Policy and Terms of Use

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Since its publication in 1925, The Great Gatsby has become one of the world's best-loved books. Careless People tells the true story behind F. Scott Fitzgera...

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WATCH - Sarah Churchwell's lecture, titled 'F.Scott Fitzgerald's uncanny intuition and the dying of the American Dream in the 21st century'

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WATCH - Sarah Churchwell's lecture, titled 'F.Scott Fitzgerald's uncanny intuition and the dying of the American Dream in the 21st century'

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Churchwell's lecture explored how F. Scott Fitzgerald's critique of the flaws of the financiers who engineered the 1929 Wall Street Crash has clear parallels with the current world banking crisis in the USA and its continuing consequences for the world economy.

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Professor Sarah Churchwell - guest lecture

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READ - History and fiction: Regeneration and Birdsong

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READ - History and fiction: Regeneration and Birdsong

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Read and make notes on this essay about how how Pat Barker and Sebastian Faulks bring a modern perspective to their presentation of WW1.

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History and fiction in Regeneration and Birdsong

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READ - the Poetry Foundation's Love Poems collection

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READ - the Poetry Foundation's Love Poems collection

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Read, enjoy, think about, study, and analyse the poems in this collection. Try and find paired poems - poems that present the same aspect of love in similar/different ways - and compare them.

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Classic and contemporary love poems to share.

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LISTEN - Pat Barker discussing Regeneration with Professor John Mullan

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LISTEN - Pat Barker discussing Regeneration with Professor John Mullan

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Pat Barker, author of the first world war novel Regeneration, which became a trilogy of the same name, comes to a special session of the Guardian Book Club at the Edinburgh International Book Festival. She talks to Professor John Mullan.

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Presented by Claire Armitstead and John Mullan and produced by Tim Maby

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Guardian Edinburgh Book Festival podcast: Pat Barker discusses Regeneration at Book Club

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Pat Barker, author of the first world war novel Regeneration, which became a trilogy of the same name, comes to a special session of the Guardian Book Club at the Edinburgh International Book Festival. She talks to Professor John Mullan.

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Each week the poet Carol Rumens picks a poem to discuss. You could use this resource for unseen poetry practice: read the poem she's chosen yourself, think about what you find interesting about it, and then compare your ideas with Rumens'!

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Carol Rumens's poem of the week | Books | The Guardian

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Each week Carol Rumens picks a poem to discuss

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READ - wider reading list for The Great Gatsby

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READ - wider reading list for The Great Gatsby

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There have been some brilliant winners of The Women's Prize for Fiction. Dip into the list of previous winners, try a new author or book, and enjoy! Many of these books are in our school library.

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Women’s Prize For Fiction - Women’s Prize

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The Women’s Prize for Fiction is one of the most successful and influential literary prizes in the world, championing and amplifying women’s voices.

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Watch the film adaptation of Ian Hislop and Nick Newman's play, The Wipers Times.

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The Wipers Times (2013) | Full Drama Movie | Real Drama

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LISTEN - In Our Time, 'The Great Gatsby'

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LISTEN - In Our Time, 'The Great Gatsby'

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Listen to, and make notes on, the In Our Time episode in which Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby.

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Sarah Churchwell at the University of London
William Blazek at Liverpool Hope University Philip McGowan at Queen's University Belfast F. Scott Fitzgerald Society 'F. Scott Fitzgerald: That Sad Young Man' by John C. Mosher - The New Yorker, 1926 'The Serious Superficiality of The Great Gatsby' by Joshua Rothman - The New Yorker, 2013 The Great Gatsby - Wikipedia
Ronald Berman, The Great Gatsby and Modern Times (University of Illinois Press, 1994)

Ronald Berman, The Great Gatsby and Fitzgerald's World of Ideas (University of Alabama Press, 1997)

Harold Bloom (ed.), The Great Gatsby (Chelsea House, 2006)

J. Bryer and C. Barks (eds.), Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda: The Love Letters of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald (Scribner, 2002)

Sarah Churchwell, Careless People: Murder, Mayhem and the Invention of The Great Gatsby (Virago Press, 2013)

Maureen Corrigan, So We Read On: How The Great Gatsby Came To Be and Why It Endures (Little, Brown, 2014)

Kirk Curnutt, The Cambridge Introduction to F. Scott Fitzgerald (Cambridge University Press, 2007)

Scott Donaldson (ed.), Critical Essays on F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (G. K. Hall, 1984)

F. Scott Fitzgerald (ed. Matthew J. Bruccoli), A Life in Letters (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1994)

B. Mangum (ed.), F. Scott Fitzgerald in Context (Cambridge University Press, 2013)

Timo Müller (ed.), Handbook of the American Novel of the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries (De Gruyter, 2017), especially 'F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby' by A. Gross

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BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, The Great Gatsby

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Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Fitzgerald's celebrated novel of the Jazz Age.

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LISTEN - Frank Skinner talking about Alan Seeger's poem 'I Have a Rendezvous with Death'

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LISTEN - Frank Skinner talking about Alan Seeger's poem 'I Have a Rendezvous with Death'

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Frank Skinner talks about Alan Seeger's poem 'I Have a Rendezvous with Death' at 23:54. How far do you agree with his interpretations of the poem?

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Alans at War - Frank Skinner’s Poetry Podcast - Absolute Radio

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This week, Frank discovers two very different war poets, Alan Ross and Alan Seeger. The poems referenced are ‘Mess Deck’ by Alan Ross and ‘I Have a Rendezvous with Death’ by Alan Seeger.

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READ - Jon Silkin's introduction to a previous edition of The Penguin Book of First World War poetry

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READ - Jon Silkin's introduction to a previous edition of The Penguin Book of First World War poetry

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Read and make notes on Jon Silkin's introduction to a previous edition of The Penguin Book of First World War Poetry.

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WATCH - Shakespeare, Race and Performance

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WATCH - Shakespeare, Race and Performance

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Watch and make notes on Professor Farah Karim-Cooper's lecture on race and Shakespeare.

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Professor Farah Karim-Cooper

Farah Karim-Cooper is Professor of Shakespeare Studies, King's College London and Co -Director of Education & Research at Shakespeare's Globe.

Find out more

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How do Shakespeare's familiar plays Othello and Romeo and Juliet reflect the early modern preoccupation with race and emerging concepts of colour-based racism?

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Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the history of ideas - including topics drawn from philosophy, science, history, religion and culture. Use this index to navigate the episodes related to literature.

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There are a number of productions of Othello which you can watch via Digital Theatre Plus. Just log in using your school email address and password. Watch the whole production, or just pick key scenes and analyse the presentation of the play/key scene as you watch. What elements of the play/scene has the director/actors accentuated? What is interesting about how the play/scene has been interpreted?

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Rory Stewart explores the human phenomenon of arguing and why it matters so deeply to our lives. Starting in the ancient world, and progressing all the way to the present day, this podcast series is essential listening if you are interested in rhetoric, politics, and how humans influence each other.

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BBC Sounds - The Long History of Argument - Available Episodes

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Listen to the latest episodes of The Long History of Argument on BBC Sounds

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READ - Emma Smith's 'This Is Shakespeare'

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READ - Emma Smith's 'This Is Shakespeare'

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Emma Smith's book 'This Is Shakespeare' is an eminently readable and very interesting exploration of Shakespeare's plays, including a full chapter on Othello. It is available to borrow from the SJL library!

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outh is wasted on the young and so, in my case, was undergraduate education. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of lectures I attended during my three years, too busy with the more serious business of propping up bars and pursuing romantic complications. One of those whose lectures I studiously avoided 20 years ago was a relatively new employee of the university, Emma Smith, who must have been only a few years older than me. She has since become one of our leading Shakespeare scholars, publishing a brilliant, exhaustive history of the First Folio in 2016.

Like many, I regretted not applying myself more diligently to my studies, and so it felt like a second chance when, 10 years ago, Smith began to release podcasts of her undergraduate lectures online. These lectures have since become a staple of my cultural life, essential preparation for encounters with the Bard in theatre and film, pressed eagerly on friends real and virtual, shamelessly cribbed from whenever I review a Shakespeare play on the radio. There was a lovely moment on the train up to London late last year when, taking my 10-year-old son to his first Shakespeare - Christopher Eccleston's Macbeth at the Barbican - we shared an ear each of an Emma Smith podcast, and I felt as I always feel when I introduce someone to her work: as if I'm passing on a gift, one that simultaneously enchants and demystifies the work of our greatest literary genius.

Smith's written voice, like that of her lectures, is disarmingly frank, refreshingly irreverent, full of pop culture

Now Smith has turned 20 of her Approaching Shakespeare podcasts into a book, expanding upon and weaving together her original lectures to create This Is Shakespeare, already burnished with glowing praise from Hilary Mantel and James Shapiro. In her epilogue, Smith imagines other books she might have written that are "present in the archaeology of this one". She summons the beautiful image of the ghost buildings and settlements revealed by the "long, dry summer" of 2018 to trace these works buried within her own book. She might, she tells us, have composed a literary biography of Shakespeare (like we need another one of those), or a theatrical study of his work in performance, or a historical treatise exploring ideas of "Elizabethan succession politics, religion, social organisation and city life". What she is doing by conjuring up these unwritten books is subtly reminding you that her book is all of these and more. This is the power of her central thesis: we find Shakespeare not in speculative biopics or the reductive quibbling of academic exegesis, but rather in the work itself. This, she is saying, is Shakespeare; he is his plays. "There's nothing more to say about the facts of Shakespeare's own life, and vitality is a property of the works, not their long-dead author."

Smith's written voice, like that of her lectures, is disarmingly frank, refreshingly irreverent, full of pop culture, from Homer Simpson to Friends to screwball comedy. "Confession: I don't really care what he might have meant, and nor should you," she says at one point. Smith claims she wants the book to appeal to everyone: "Readers, theatregoers, students and all those who feel that they missed out on Shakespeare at some earlier point and are willing to have another pop at these extraordinary works." To achieve this, she sets about slaughtering a whole herd of sacred cows, holding up for examination many of the pieties about Shakespeare that we are taught to observe at school.

The central idea behind This Is Shakespeare is that it is the "sheer and permissive gappiness of his drama" - what Smith calls the "radical uncertainties" in Shakespeare's plays - that makes it so universal, so consistently relevant to its times. It is the gaps he leaves for readers, actors, directors and audiences to inhabit that gives these "partial, shifting, unstable survivals from a very different world... the extraordinary ability to ventriloquise and stimulate our current concerns". The gaps are also why it's a mistake to seek definitive answers from a Shakespeare play. "I don't think Shakespeare writes his plays to convey messages," Smith says. "He asks questions rather than answers them."

Taking a cue from this, Smith structures the book as a series of questions asked in turn to each of the 20 plays. She asks, what happens if Katherine and Petruchio don't kiss at the end of The Taming of the Shrew? What if Isabella refuses to marry the Duke at the end of Measure for Measure? What if we don't buy into the twee Victorian vision of A Midsummer Night's Dream and see it, instead, as the "much darker, sexier" play that it is? How have world events altered the status of King Lear in our cultural consciousness? Why does Coriolanus forget the name of the "poor man" who sheltered him during the Volscian war? What does the contemporary belief that The Tempest comes late in Shakespeare's canon do to our understanding of the play?

These questions are brilliantly illuminating and serve both as introductions to the plays for those in need of a refresher and prompts for deeper thought for those more familiar with the work. There's a huge amount of other criticism here, both historical and contemporary, but This Is Shakespeare is far more than merely synoptic. Smith's own close reading of Shakespeare's plays is dazzling, her original research - on doubling, on the crossing of generic boundaries, on male friendship - totally convincing. What This Is Shakespeare gives the reader most of all, though, is a licence to enjoy the plays without the cultural and historical baggage they so often carry. Smith is, above all else, great fun, and it's impossible not to get carried along on the tide of her enthusiasm. This Is Shakespeare is the best introduction to the plays I've read, perhaps the best book on Shakespeare, full stop.

With the monstrosity of that sham-intellectual buffoon Boris Johnson's book on the Bard lurking just over the horizon (although apparently still unwritten), this is like an anticipatory reprimand, a model of unpretentious, deeply researched, profoundly approachable criticism. It's a book to give to anyone who loves Shakespeare, but particularly to those who think they don't.

This Is Shakespeare by Emma Smithis published by Pelican (£20). To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £15, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99

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This Is Shakespeare by Emma Smith review - the Bard without the baggage

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outh is wasted on the young and so, in my case, was undergraduate education. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of lectures I attended during my three years, too busy with the more serious business of propping up bars and pursuing romantic complications.

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From the University of Oxford's Approaching Shakespeare lecture series, in this podcast Emma Smith explores the central question of race and its significance in Othello.

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In this thirteenth lecture in the Approaching Shakespeare series the focus is on the inevitability of the ending of Richard III: does the play endorse Richmond's final victory?

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READ - The Games Poets Play - Subverting the Conventions of English Love Poetry

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READ - The Games Poets Play - Subverting the Conventions of English Love Poetry

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Judy Simons explores the paradoxes in love poetry – the tensions between the personal and the public, the formal and the uncontrolled, the ways in which it operates within conventional constraints and tears up the rule book. Useful for Y13 as revision, and as pre-reading for Y12 before you study the pre-1900 love poetry.

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WATCH - Terence Davies's biopic of Siegfried Sassoon 

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WATCH - Terence Davies's biopic of Siegfried Sassoon 

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This sombre, melancholy film portrays the life of war poet Siegfried Sassoon. It is currently streaming on Netflix.

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BENEDICTION Trailer (2022) Jack Lowden, Peter Capaldi Movie

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WATCH - Create a Massolit account so you can watch video lectures on the texts you're studying

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WATCH - Create a Massolit account so you can watch video lectures on the texts you're studying

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How to sign up to a MASSOLIT school or college account – MASSOLIT
Massolit contains video lectures for all of the texts you will study for your English Literature A Level. Follow the instructions on the link above to create an account. Make notes as you watch about what you find interesting.

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First of all, your school or college must have an active subscription to MASSOLIT in order to register for a user account.

Then click on Subscriptions in the navigation menu and select Create Free Account in the drop down menu. Or click here to go straight there.

Now you can select to create either a Student or Teacher account. In order to create a Teacher account, you will need to know your MASSOLIT account code - ask your school or college's account administrator for this info or contact the MASSOLIT Support Team.

The first text box will allow you to search for your school or college - as you type, you will be presented with suggested accounts.

Then complete the rest of the form, ensuring you use your account-affiliated email address to register.

When you click SIGN UP you will be sent an email to confirm your email address. You can then log in and use MASSOLIT!

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How to sign up to a MASSOLIT school or college account

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First of all, your school or college must have an active subscription to MASSOLIT in order to register for a user account. Then click on Subscriptions in the navigation menu and select Create Free Account in the drop down menu. Or click here to go straight there.

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READ - The 100 best books of the 21st century

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READ - The 100 best books of the 21st century

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The 100 best books of the 21st century | Books | The Guardian

Many of these books are in the school library!

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Perhaps better known for her screenwriting ( Silkwood, When Harry Met Sally, Heartburn), Ephron's brand of smart theatrical humour is on best display in her essays. Confiding and self-deprecating, she has a way of always managing to sound like your best friend - even when writing about her apartment on New York's Upper West Side. This wildly enjoyable collection includes her droll observations about ageing, vanity - and a scorching appraisal of Bill Clinton.
Read the review

The Congolese writer says he was "trying to break the French language" with Broken Glass - a black comedy told by a disgraced teacher without much in the way of full stops or paragraph breaks. As Mabanckou's unreliable narrator munches his "bicycle chicken" and drinks his red wine, it becomes clear he has the history of Congo-Brazzaville and the whole of French literature in his sights.
Read the review

A Whitbread prizewinning memoir, full of perfectly chosen phrases,
that is one of the best accounts of family dysfunction ever written.
Sage grew up with her grandparents, who hated each other: he was a drunken philandering vicar; his wife, having found his diaries,
blackmailed him and lived in another part of the house. The
author gets unwittingly pregnant at 16, yet the story has a happy
ending.
Read the review

Set in an alternative Britain, this groundbreaking piece of young adult fiction sees black people, called the Crosses, hold all the power and influence, while the noughts - white people - are marginalised and segregated. The former children's laureate's series is a crucial work for explaining racism to young readers.

This may not be the only account of living in a religious household in the American midwest (in her youth, the author joined a group called God's Gang, where they spoke in tongues), but it is surely the funniest. The author started out as the "poet laureate of Twitter"; her language is brilliant, and she has a completely original mind.
Read the review

Melancholic and transcendent, Chiang's eight, high-concept sci-fi stories exploring the nature of language, maths, religion and physics racked up numerous awards and a wider audience when 'Story of Your Life' was adapted into the 2016 film .
Read the review

An eye-opening study, based on overwhelming evidence, which revealed
that among rich countries, the "more equal societies almost always do
better" for all. Growth matters less than inequality, the authors
argued: whether the issue is life expectancy, infant mortality, crime
rates, obesity, literacy or recycling, the Scandinavian countries,
say, will always win out over, say, the UK.
Read the review

Jemisin became the first African American author to win the best novel category at the Hugo awards for her first book in the Broken Earth trilogy. In her intricate and richly imagined far future universe, the world is ending, ripped apart by relentless earthquakes and volcanoes. Against this apocalyptic backdrop she explores urgent questions of power and enslavement through the eyes of three women. "As this genre finally acknowledges that the dreams of the marginalised matter and that all of us have a future," she said in her acceptance speech, "so will go the world. (Soon, I hope.)"

The Spanish master examines chance, love and death in the story of an apparently random killing that gradually reveals hidden depths. Marías constructs an elegant murder mystery from his trademark labyrinthine sentences, but this investigation is in pursuit of much meatier questions than whodunnit.Read the review

One of Canada's most celebrated poets examines love and desire in a collection that describes itself as "a fictional essay in 39 tangos". Carson charts the course of a doomed marriage in loose-limbed lines that follow the switchbacks of thought and feeling from first meeting through multiple infidelities to arrive at eventual divorce.

Photograph: Robert Macfarlane's Underland (Hamish Hamilton).

A beautifully written and profound book, which takes the form of a
series of (often hair-raising and claustrophobic) voyages underground
- from the fjords of the Arctic to the Parisian catacombs. Trips below
the surface inspire reflections on "deep" geological time and raise
urgent questions about the human impact on planet Earth.
Read the review

Based on Beard's lectures on women's voices and how they have been silenced, Women and Power was an enormous publishing success in the "#MeToo"' year 2017. An exploration of misogyny, the origins of "gendered speech" in the classical era and the problems the male world has with strong women, this slim manifesto became an instant feminist classic.
Read the review

Satrapi's autobiographical graphic novel follows her coming-of-age in the lead up to and during the Iranian revolution. In this riotous memoir, Satrapi focuses on one young life to reveal a hidden history.

The author of The Big Short has made a career out of rendering the most opaque subject matter entertaining and comprehensible: Moneyball tells the story of how geeks outsmarted jocks to revolutionise baseball using maths. But you do not need to know or care about the sport, because - as with all Lewis's best writing - it's all about how the story is told.
Read the review

Set around the unlikely bond between two wartime friends, Smith's debut brilliantly captures Britain's multicultural spirit, and offers a compelling insight into immigrant family life.

In this exquisite family memoir, the ceramicist explains how he came to inherit a collection of 264 netsuke - small Japanese ornaments - from his great-uncle. The unlikely survival of the netsuke entails De Waal telling a story that moves from Paris to Austria under the Nazis to Japan, and he beautifully conjures a sense of place. The book doubles as a set of profound reflections on objects and what they mean to us.
Read the review

This startling work of autofiction, which signalled a new direction for Cusk, follows an author teaching a creative writing course over one hot summer in Athens. She leads storytelling exercises. She meets other writers for dinner. She hears from other people about relationships, ambition, solitude, intimacy and "the disgust that exists indelibly between men and women". The end result is sublime.
Read the review

The first instalment of Knausgaard's relentlessly self-examining six-volume seriesMy Struggle revolves around the life and death of his alcoholic father. Whether or not you regard him as the Proust of memoir, his compulsive honesty created a new benchmark for autofiction.
Read the review

Emerging from Solomon's own painful experience, this "anatomy" of depression examines its many faces - plus its science, sociology and treatment. The book's combination of honesty, scholarly rigour and poetry made it a benchmark in literary memoir and understanding of mental health.
Read the review

Fifteen-year-old Christopher John Francis Boone becomes absorbed in the mystery of a dog's demise, meticulously investigating through diagrams, timetables, maps and maths problems. Haddon's fascinating portrayal of an unconventional mind was a crossover hit with both adults and children and was adapted into a very successful stage play.
Read the review

The science journalist examines with clarity and memorable detail the current crisis of plant and animal loss caused by human civilisation (over the past half billion years, there have been five mass extinctions on Earth; we are causing another). Kolbert considers both ecosystems - the Great Barrier Reef, the Amazon rainforest - and the lives of some extinct and soon-to-be extinct creatures including the Sumatran rhino and "the most beautiful bird in the world", the black-faced honeycreeper of Maui.
Read the review

Powerfully intimate and unashamedly domestic, the first in Ferrante's Neapolitan series established her as a literary sensation. This and the three novels that followed documented the ways misogyny and violence could determine lives, as well as the history of Italy in the late 20th century.

Sebald died in a car crash in 2001, but his genre-defying mix of fact and fiction, keen sense of the moral weight of history and interleaving of inner and outer journeys have had a huge influence on the contemporary literary landscape. His final work, the typically allusive life story of one man, charts the Jewish disapora and lost 20th century with heartbreaking power. Read the review

From his 1989 Booker winner The Remains of the Day to 2015's The Buried Giant, Nobel laureate Ishiguro writes profound, puzzling allegories about history, nationalism and the individual's place in a world that is always beyond our understanding. His sixth novel, a love triangle set among human clones in an alternative 1990s England, brings exquisite understatement to its exploration of mortality, loss and what it means to be human.
Read the review

The Belarusian Nobel laureate recorded thousands of hours of testimony from ordinary people to create this oral history of the Soviet Union and its end. Writers, waiters, doctors, soldiers, former Kremlin apparatchiks, gulag survivors: all are given space to tell their stories, share their anger and betrayal, and voice their worries about the transition to capitalism. An unforgettable book, which is both an act of catharsis and a profound demonstration of empathy.

To order any of these titles go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £15, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99.

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Perhaps better known for her screenwriting ( Silkwood, When Harry Met Sally , Heartburn), Ephron's brand of smart theatrical humour is on best display in her essays. Confiding and self-deprecating, she has a way of always managing to sound like your best friend - even when writing about her apartment on New York's Upper West Side.

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As you read this interview with Shakespeare scholar Ayanna Thompson, make notes on what you find interesting.

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LISTEN - In Our Time, Thomas Hardy's poetry

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LISTEN - In Our Time, Thomas Hardy's poetry

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BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, Thomas Hardy's Poetry

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BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, Thomas Hardy’s Poetry

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Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hardy’s goal of being a great poet and how he succeeded.