The Hero’s Landscape

Hubby and I were watching a ‘How It Should Have Ended ‘ video for ‘Man of Steel’. I have only seen the first half of the movie before I ended up in labour with number 3 (!), so didn’t understand the joke about breaking villains’ necks. To clear this up for me, we proceeded to…

On Eagles’ Wings – Launching today!

To celebrate the launch of my collection of essays on eucatastrophe in Tolkien’s work, I thought I would whet your appetite by reproducing the book’s preface here. If you like what you see, head on over to http://www.lunapresspublishing.com/ to pick up your copy!   The clouds were torn by the wind, and a red sunset slashed…

A Name to Watch: Discovering Beth Moran

  Here’s somethingthat I love: discovering a new, post-1830s writer (long in-joke story, to be dutifully explained another time!) who is talented, pithy, and not well known enough. So: this blog post is an attempt to redress that a little. And to write everything that I could not write in my word-limited commendation. I was…

11th Hour Notes: Last Minute Prompts for tomorrow’s Literature Exam (AQA i-GCSE)

This post is intended for my group of year 11s, who are tomorrow sitting the AQA i-GCSE English Literature examination, and need to answer questions on an unseen poem and Sheriff’s play, Journey’s End. If you’re not one of them, but you’re reading: welcome, and I hope this will help you, too! These notes cannot…

The Quest for Identity: Overthinking ‘Stick Man’

One of the joys of parenthood is coming back into contact with children’s books, and we are slowly building a collection of stories by Julia Donaldson. Having now devoured the Gruffalo (upon which I have already written a post, viewable here) umpteen times, we are just now in a ‘Stick Man’ phase. And it’s got…