Language use in the General Election

Listen to this abbreviated version of Gordon Brown calling the General Election and pay particular attention to the words he uses. Is there anything here that reminds you of Churchill? Any thoughts on why he finishes in the way he does?

We're not going to comment on the parties' policies or tell you how to vote but we are interested in how politicians use the English language. I had a leaflet through my door, for example, which said: Vote Yellow Get Brown (That's Vote Yellow Get Brown if the colours aren't showing up on your screen.) Which party would have used that slogan? What does it mean? How effective is it?

Now look at some of the other slogans the parties have used and think about the way they use the English Language: the Liberal Democrats; Labour; Conservatives; Plaid Cymru; the Scottish National Party. And, just by way of contrast, what on earth were the UK Independence Party thinking of when they created this poster?

A week is a long time in politics and the slogans have changed as the election has gone on: what do you make of this picture, for example? If you can, compare what you have seen here with the election material that has been coming through your letterbox. And if you have been struggling with some of the terms that have been floating around over the last few weeks, click here for a jargon buster.

We're swinging into top gear as we prepare for the general election and for the St Mary's mock election on Thursday 6th May. So here's some advice on how to vote, an explanation of what a hung parliament means and a few ways of crunching the numbers from the BBC.

You can also watch it happening live right here.

Great Political Speeches

With the general election coming up, now is a good time to analyse what makes a good political speech. Listen to this speech by Barack Obama given when he was just a warmup act to John Kerry at the Democratic Party Convention in 2004. Whatever you think of Obama's politics you can still be impressed by his oratory. As you watch and listen, try to work out what it is about his choice of words, his delivery and his gestures which makes it so impressive. Here's the transcript.

Now compare this speech with one of the great speeches from an earlier pre-TV age. Families used to gather around the wireless to listen to Mr Churchill and though his style now seems dated, there is no doubting the power of his words 70 years on. Here is a partial transcript of this speech and some other great Churchill speeches.

But don't worry if you have to give a talk: a speech doesn't need to be delivered with great passion to be successful. One of the most powerful political speeches I have ever heard was Geoffrey Howe's resignation speech which effectively ended Mrs Thatcher's time as Prime Minister. It was devastating precisely because it was delivered in so under-stated a manner. If you think it's boring then ask yourself whether it's better to live in a world dominated by soundbites.

Similarly, one of the most important speeches of the 20th Century was Nehru's speech on Indian independence which was heard on millions of crackly radios across the subcontinent. It now has iconic status but it was delivered with none of the obvious passion of an Obama. It's still well worth listening to though.

Votes at 16?

With the General Election only a matter of months away, now is the time to think about whether 16 year olds should be given the vote. A surprising number of politicians, including the Prime Minister, think that they should and there are plenty of campaigners who agree with them. Click here, for example, to find out more about one active campaign group.

But what are the arguments and how strong are they? Watch this video of two 17 year olds from Northern Ireland arguing that the voting age should be lowered to 16. Then look at this selection of opinions on a BBC website. What do you think?

GCSE and A Level Reading List

J.G. Ballard, Empire of the Sun

One boy’s experience of war in China during the 1940s. Bleak but moving.

John Buchan, The Thirty-Nine Steps

A rip-roaring adventure story from the master of the genre.

Tracy Chevalier, Girl with a Pearl Earring

A very accessible story about love and art in the Netherlands. Easy to read.

Louis de Bernières, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin

Get beyond the first few chapters and you’ll be hooked: love and loss during World War II in Greece.


George Mackay Brown, Beside the Ocean of Town

Time travel from the Vikings to the Nazis by one of Orkney's great writers.

G.K. Chesterton, Father Brown Stories

Detective stories with a twist: the detective is a priest.

Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

A profound and wonderful novel about London and Paris.

Roddy Doyle, The Commitments

A short, funny novella about an Irish band; also a great film.

Jostein Gaarder, Sophie’s World

A very clever and readable introduction to philosophy. Reads more like a story than a philosophical work.

George Gamow, Mr Tompkins

Mr Tompkins is a bank clerk whose fantastic dreams and adventures lead him into a world inside the atom. A very readable introduction to the wonders of Physics.

Alex Garland, The Beach

A real page-turner; Lord of the Flies for our times.


Rumer Godden, In This House of Brede

What is life really like in a convent? This novel gives one answer.

William Golding, Lord of the Flies

A beautifully written novel about a group of boys stranded on a desert island. Anything by Golding is worth reading.

Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

A wonderful story with an aspergic narrator. Very readable.

Thomas Keneally, Schindler’s Ark

Also sold as ‘Schindler’s List’; one man’s attempts to save Jews during World War II.

Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

A moving story of racism and growing up in 1930s America.

Laurie Lee, Cider with Rosie

The man writes like an angel; growing up in a Gloucestershire village.

C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet

If you have read the Narnia books, why not try his fiction for adults? This is the first in a triology: Perelandra and That Hideous Strength (the best of the three) are the next two.

Marina Lewycka, Two Caravans

A bitter-sweet story of migrant workers in the Kent countryside. Funny in parts, eye-opening in others.

Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom

Truly inspirational autobiography of one of the most remarkable men of our time.

Alexander McCall Smith, The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency

Light reading. Detective fiction with a twist.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Magic Realism at its best; one of the best South American novels of all times.


Flannery O'Connor, A Good Man is Hard to Find

Quirky short stories from the American South by arguably the greatest Catholic writer of the 20th Century.

George Orwell, 1984

A great novel about a possibly nightmarish future; any Orwell is worth reading.

Plato, The Apology of Socrates

This reading list has a horribly modern bias, so why not try out the father of modern philosophy. Surprisingly readable.

Oliver Sachs, The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat

Some case studies from a remarkable neurologist.

Oliver Sachs, Uncle Tungsten

A brilliant memoir about the wonders of Chemistry.

Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

Amazing what 19-year olds can produce when they put their mind to it. Forget the films: read the real thing.


Shen Congwen, Border Town

Love and loss from arguably China's greatest 20th Century author.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

A very short book about life in one of Stalin’s Siberian prison camps.

Muriel Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

A short novel about the powerful influence of a teacher in a Scottish girls school.

John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men

A profoundly moving (and very short) novella about America during the Great Depression.

Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

Short. Brilliant. Scottish.

Bram Stoker, Dracula

One of those books everyone knows and virtually no one has read. Really interesting.

Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels

Not for children: a brilliant satire. Another book everyone assumes they know. Another book everyone should know.


Antonio Tabbuchi, Pereira Declares

A postmodern classic by an Italian but set in Portugal. 

Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club

An intriguing book about American-Chinese families from different points of view.

Donna Tartt, The Secret History

A murder mystery set on an American campus; very readable.

J.R.R. Tolkien, Lord of the Rings

Forget the film; read the real thing.

Various, The Bible

Considering how influential it’s been, it’s amazing how little it is read; try one of the Gospels straight through or The Book of Ruth.

Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited

A wonderful novel about love etc in pre-war Oxford.

H.G. Wells, The War of the Worlds

The first science fiction writer; great stuff.

P G Wodehouse, Leave it to Psmith

This guy is funny. Try the Jeeves novels too. Great for escapism.

St Mary's and Wordfest

Cambridge Wordfest 2010 is about to arrive and with it a whole host of famous writers. We are delighted to be sponsoring the Writing History event on Saturday 10th April. Some of our 6th Form will be there with Man Booker Prizewinner Hilary Mantel and Rebecca Stott, a previous visitor to St Mary's. Check out the programme and book your tickets before they all get snapped up.

Midwinter Spring

Midwinter spring is its own season

Sempiternal though sodden towards sundown,

Suspended in time, between pole and tropic.

When the short day is brightest, with frost and fire,

The brief sun flames the ice, on pond and ditches,

In windless cold that is the heart's heat,

Reflecting in a watery mirror

A glare that is blindness in the early afternoon.

And glow more intense than blaze of branch, or brazier,

Stirs the dumb spirit: no wind, but pentecostal fire

In the dark time of the year. Between melting and freezing

The soul's sap quivers. There is no earth smell

Or smell of living thing. This is the spring time

But not in time's covenant. Now the hedgerow

Is blanched for an hour with transitory blossom

Of snow, a bloom more sudden

Than that of summer, neither budding nor fading,

Not in the scheme of generation.

Where is the summer, the unimaginable

Zero summer?




Want to read more? Click here for the rest of T.S. Eliot's 'Little Gidding'.

Right, get writing!

Did I forget to mention that there's money to be won? The Transition Tales Writing Competition, for example, is offering £750 in prizes for a story about Cambridge in 2050, while the Young Writers' Mini Sagas Competition is offering up to £1750. And there's the simple pleasure of writing well. And the added benefit of possibly seeing your work in print. And the joy of breaking rules like not starting sentences with 'and'.

If you want some advice about how to write well you could do worse than try out these pages from The Guardian newspaper or these ones setting out the Ten Rules for Writing Fiction.

weRead

There are also useful reviews and discussions about a whole range of books on the weRead site.

World Book Day

World Book Day is coming this Thursday. To discover more, see videos, read extracts and find out about competitions click here.

Meet an Endangered Language

It is important to remember that English is not the only language spoken in the UK (or in England for that matter). Unfortunately some languages, including Manx Gaelic, are under threat. To find out more you might want to look at the website of the Endangered Languages Week at SOAS. According to SOAS, half of the world's 7000 languages are under threat.

Kipling and Indian Literature

There was an interesting discussion yesterday about Rudyard Kipling on The Today Programme. The BBC describe it in this way:

British author and poet Rudyard Kipling is known for his love of India, but his reputation in the country remains controversial.

Plans for a museum commemorating Mr Kipling's Mumbai home have been shelved over concerns that it would be politically unpalatable, as he was a renowned imperialist, fierce opponent of independence and a chronicler of the British Raj

Andrew Lycett, Mr Kipling's biographer, and Aravind Adiga, and Indian journalist and author who won the 2008 Man Booker prize for his works The White Tiger, reflect on Mr Kipling's relationship with India.

Tune in for some great American literature

There are some interesting programmes being broadcast in the next few days on BBC Radio 4. Mark Lawson's History of Modern American Literature sounds like it will be worth listening to. And if you fancy a modern American Book at Bedtime there are some great ones coming up too. There are also feature length interviews with American authors now online.

If you just want something to read then look at this useful article from The Guardian.

Websites - Books: Books - Websites

Want to find a good book but don't know where to look? You might want to check out these websites from Booktrust, Oxford University Press and the Guardian

Robert Burns

Just in case you're preparing for Burns Night and are looking for a grand, wee poem ...

Authors' websites

An awful lot of authors now have their own websites. So if you are interested in Stephenie Meyer, J.K. Rowling, Judy Blume or Terry Deary you might want to check out their sites.

Obviously, as an English teacher, I'm also going to point you in the direction of some less populist authors. Why not look at the website, for example, of the poet Michael Symmons Roberts or the novelist Ian McEwan?

Writing Letters

Dear Readers,

             Today we are going to cover letter writing. Or should that be...

Dear Readers

Today we are going to cover letter writing???

See what the BBC thinks by clicking here for a simple, interactive exercise. Then get some useful advice from the people behind the Oxford Dictionaries by clicking here. If you need a sample letter then click here.

Yours sincerely (or should that be faithfully ... or lots of love ... or with my warmest regards ...?)

Who was the author of 'Alice in Wonderland'?

Charles Dodgson or Lewis Carroll? The Oxford Mathematician or the reclusive writer? To find out more about this fascinating man you might want to look here or here.

Demeter and Persephone

Year 7 to 6th Form



The 6th Form have been studying Carol Ann Duffy's poem about Demeter from The World 's Wife. It's a great myth and here's a fun cartoon version of it. Or click here for Tennyson's version.

Catherine Tate, David Tennant and Shakespeare

We have posted this at the special request of Year 7. You can see the Red Nose Day sketch here. The poem Catherine Tate quotes with amazing skill (in the end) is Shakespeare's Sonnet 130 which you can read below:

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;

Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress when she walks treads on the ground.
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.

Another (less comic) version can be seen here.

"A goodly rotten apple" is a (mis)quotation from The Merchant of Venice, Act 1, Scene 3 and "That which we call a rose / By any other name would smell as sweet" is a quotation from Romeo and Juliet. Just so you know.