'Who wants to live forever?', as Queen sang in 1986. On her birthday, let's explore that idea through Madeline MIller's retellings (with a little help from Tennyson, Edna St Vincent Millay, and Stephen King). buff.ly/5Q4RZ2T #NationalYearofReading2026 #Literature #MadelineMiller

The temperature’s dropped, storm clouds have suddenly covered the sun, and .. are those wolves I can hear in the background? We’ve entered classic Gothic territory, and this is going to be intense. How does du Maurier manage this in just 100 words? buff.ly/7yUkgpA #First100Words #Rebecca

'First Page Fear' doesn't just apply to writers. Readers can feel an inch tall when approaching a canonical text. Especially A-Level students. Can there by anything new to say? Of course! Starting tomorrow - new episodes on Friday evenings. buff.ly/FdXwfCL #CloseReading100 #CloseReading

How much should suspicion cost? What compromises become acceptable when poverty is waiting just outside the front door? Is to permit to promote? buff.ly/k6sJtpc #EnglishTutor #ShelfLife #Marginalia #TheLodger #MarieBellocLowndes #ClassicCrime #JackTheRipper #BookReview #ReadingCommunity

We probably all have a book or two we are frightened of reading. Exploring why makes me readier to hit 'The Road' with Cormac McCarthy. buff.ly/JG0Szu2 #AuthorAlmanac #CormacMcCarthy #TheRoad #StationEleven #Literature #PostApocalypse #ScienceFiction #ALevelEnglishLiterature #EnglishTutor

‘Shakespeare almost inevitably influences the authors who come after him, but a four-hundred-year-old play can also change, when we revisit it wearing Cold War glasses.’ This week’s theme is HOPE and DISAPPOINTMENT. When I got back from my travels in Eastern Europe, Ophelia was waiting for me with

On Jane Austen's anniversary, don't begin by rereading Austen. Read something she could never have imagined. Then come back. Here’s why: a-levelenglishlit.uk/2026/07/18/1... #EnglishTutor #EnglishLiterature #JaneAusten #Gothic #NationalYearofReading2026 #Literature #TeamEnglish

On Jane Austen's anniversary, don't begin by rereading Austen. Read something she could never have imagined. Then come back. Here’s why: a-levelenglishlit.uk/2026/07/18/1... #EnglishTutor #EnglishLiterature #JaneAusten #Gothic #NationalYearofReading2026 #Literature #TeamEnglish

Weird Fiction isn't about impossible worlds. Perhaps it's about discovering that we've been looking at the possible one through only a narrow slice of the spectrum. a-levelenglishlit.uk/2026/07/07/0... #ALevelEnglish #Literature #WeirdFiction #EnglishTutor #NationYearofReading2026 #SF

Where do we belong? Where is home? Mowbray helps us get to the heart of this. a-levelenglishlit.uk/2026/07/05/b... #Shakespeare #ShakespeareSunday #Literature #EnglishTutor #ALevelEnglish

Sometimes, control arrives wearing the face of kindness, certainty, and good intentions a-levelenglishlit.uk/2026/07/03/0... #NationalYearOfReading2026 #Literature #GothicLit #ALevelEnglish #EnglishTutor

Oops. Missed this yesterday. Just great crime, or stories about gravity and magnetism? Why not both? a-levelenglishlit.uk/2026/07/01/0... #NationalYearofReading2026 #CrimeFiction #Literature #ALevelEnglish #Englishtutor #EnglishTuition

Those moments when the penny drops? They're some of the most satisfying in my tuition work. a-levelenglishlit.uk/2026/06/29/h... #StudentSuccess #GCSEEnglish #ALevelEnglish #EnglishLiterature #CloseReading #LearningJourney #JoinTheConversation #StudySkills #EnglishTuition #UpstartEnglish

When Caesar describes Cassius as having 'a lean and hungry look', I don't think he's talking about ambition. a-levelenglishlit.uk/2026/06/28/b... #Shakespeare #ShakespeareSunday #Literature #ALevelEnglish #EnglishTutor

TL;DR? I built this page on my website because I want to spend less time explaining logistics, and more time talking to students about books, reading, and writing. And because the better you know me beforehand, the more likely we’re a good fit.

 One of the less glamorous jobs of running a tutoring

Can anything sting worse than rejection, when you are a father? Bob Dylan might have warned Falstaff, had he been alive. buff.ly/IEBBq46 #ShakespeareSunday #Shakespeare #EnglishTutor #Literature #FathersDay

On his birthday … I love Ian McEwan because I hate him. How twisted is that?

a-levelenglishlit.uk/2026/06/21/2... #EnglishTutor #ALevelEnglish #LIterature #EnglishLiterature

buff.ly/DZWHy79 As a teenager the world seems to talk AT you. Success in English often comes when someone speaks WITH you. #EnglishTutor #EnglishLiterature #Testimonials #Mentorship #ALevelEnglishLiterature

This week's #ShakespeareSunday theme is 'mythological creatures'. How on earth did I end up with the owl, Bladerunner, and Iron Maiden? wp.me/pfSqDG-fq

When people quote Yeats, it’s usually ‘The Second Coming’ that gets all the attention. Fair enough. Few poets have written lines that seem to reappear whenever the world feels as though it is coming apart at the seams. It’s either that or TS Eliot describing how the world ends, right?

Most ghost stories are about terror and fear. M. R. James understood that horror is something different. Terror is all about anticipation. Fear belongs to the moment itself: the sudden noise, the glimpse of a figure, the thing seen at the edge of the candlelight. Horror arrives later, when the

A small but exciting moment from this week's tutoring. The quotation eventually found its way into the essay. But first there had to be an idea. And before that, a feeling. #ALevelEnglish #EnglishLiterature #EnglishTutor #CriticalThinking #LiteraryAnalysis #TuitionInPractice

In 2018, I set a homework task so exciting, I decided to have a go at it myself. Not that Richard III needs jazzing up - it’s a glorious play and a privilege to teach. But there aren’t any rules that prevent homework being interesting, enjoyable even. So I set my A-Level class an essay with

For all the starships, artificial intelligences and galactic politics, Ian (M) Banks often returned to surprisingly human questions. This is one of my favourites: ‘We are what we do, not what we think.’ It suggests identity is something we create, not something we possess, or assume.

Before social media. Before smartphones. Before video calls. In The Machine Stops (1909), E.M. Forster imagined a world in which people lived in isolation, communicating through technology while becoming increasingly detached from direct human experience. Every few years someone seems to discover

When you’re a smallish boy, a short story which contains both dinosaurs AND time travel is almost too good to be true. Ray Bradbury’s 'A Sound of Thunder' was my introduction to Science Fiction, as far as I can remember. I credit it with sparking a love for the genre which has endured through

To be fair, I can see her point. #EnglishTutor #EnglishLiterature #Tutoring

There are books we admire, and books that quietly alter the way we see the world. For me, ‘The Mayor of Casterbridge' (1886) belongs to the second category. Reading it as a teenager, I encountered a form of tragedy very different from the grand falls of kings and heroes. Michael Henchard is

‘Just’: Villains in Twelfth Night I didn't feel celebratory at the end. Actually, I felt a little scared. At what point does a joke stop being funny? When the butt of the joke has had enough, is it already too late? This week’s #ShakespeareSunday theme: VILLAINS. Thanks - as ever - to

Most people remember at least one teacher who changed how they felt about a subject. Who was yours?