Thursday, 13 September 2018

The launch of Penguin Books

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According to the founder of Penguin Books, Allen Lane, he was inspired to start publishing cheap paperbacks when he had time to kill on...
Saturday, 11 August 2018

Poets of the 1930s: what inspired them?

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The 1930s saw an explosion of poetic activity in Great Britain , with poets such as W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender, Louis MacNeice and...
Tuesday, 26 June 2018

There Was An Old Woman Who Lived In a Shoe: what does it mean?

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There was an old woman who lived in a shoe, She had so many children she didn’t know what to do; So she gave them some broth with...
Monday, 7 May 2018

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead: a play by Tom Stoppard

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Tom Stoppard took the title of his 1966 play from a line towards the end of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”. All the main characters are dead, w...
Tuesday, 3 April 2018

Winnie-the-Pooh was Canadian

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Winnie-the-Pooh is one of the best loved characters in children’s literature of all time. The writer A A Milne (1882-1956) wrote a s...
Thursday, 22 March 2018

Sing a Song of Sixpence: a traditional nursery rhyme

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Sing a song of sixpence, a pocketful of rye Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie When the pie was opened the birds began to sing ...
Wednesday, 21 March 2018

Rasselas, by Samuel Johnson

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“The Full History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia”, which is usually abbreviated to “Rasselas”, was the only novel written by Dr Samu...