St John's English Podcast

NJJ pays tribute to the greatest - and funniest - English novelist of his generation

A podcast on the EDEXCEL A-Level poem 'Genetics' by Sinead Morrissey from the 'Poems of the Decade' anthology

A podcast on the EDEXCEL A-Level poem 'The Furthest Distances I've Travelled' by Leonita Flynn from the Poems of the Decade anthology

A review of why this line is so important in the novel, and the context that created such loneliness.

A short review of why this is such an important image within the novella, taking into account some of the views of other characters and some of the context behind the image.

NJJ explains so-called Queer Theory and takes a Queer lens to Rossetti and Twelfth Night

NJJ takes a feminist lens to the reading of Twelfth night. And bursts into song.

Our wonderful and inaugural Pupil Poet Laureate, Claudia Hollington, reads her poem entitled 'Childhood', the text of which is below:

Childhood

Marvelling at the many silvery trails

Traced on the leaf-lined bottles and pails

That we collected and built with care

for a clientele of snails.

A summer uniform striped in white and blue,

The smell of sunscreen in hazy air

And the soft song as the pigeons coo.

Feet tingling, feeling dizzy

Sat high on wooden beams

That we scaled in the playground

When the teachers couldn’t see.

A cross country run through frosty woods

Ducking branches and jumping roots

Lungs burning from the winter air,

Mud caked on all our boots.

Monsters meet Marxism in NJJ's latest slice of political criticism of a Gothic classic

NJJ interrogates Carol Ann Duffy's 'Mrs Sisyphus' from a Marxist perspective.  Roll up, roll up!