There are a few changes in the LLCER 1ère set texts list for 2023-2026 and lots of you have been asking if we are going to publish a Reading Guide for Fahrenheit 451. The answer is yes, and we’re also going to publish our first Film Guide for 1ère: West Side Story. The updated list … Continue reading “LLCER Update and Two Upcoming Reading Guides”
The UK’s 2023 Women’s Prize has been awarded to Barbara Kingsolver for Demon Copperhead, her retelling of Dickens’ David Copperfield set in modern-day Appalachia. She is the first author to win the prize twice, after winning in 2010 for The Lacuna. Kingsolver also received the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for fiction for Demon Copperhead. She was … Continue reading “What the Dickens? 2023 Women’s Prize Winner”
Emily Brontë was one of the most extraordinary group of siblings in British literature. Although she wrote just one novel, Wuthering Heights, it has resonated across the world since 1847. A new biopic tries to imagine how Emily got inspiration for her Romantic classic. Emma Mackey (Eiffel, Death on the Nile) embodies the fierce, shy … Continue reading “Emily Brontë Biopic”
Under the pseudonym Henry Fuseli, Swiss artist Johan Heinrich Füssli, became one of the leading lights of the 19th-century British art world and a popular proponent of Romanticism and the Gothic. His many depictions of Shakespearean scenes, the supernatural, dreams and nightmares are rich food for the imagination. A new exhibition at the Musée Jacquemart … Continue reading “Gothic Nightmares: Fuseli”
It’s a very overused phrase to say that a series is eagerly awaited, but with The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, it’s completely justified. There were more than 250 million views of the teaser trailer in 24 hours after it aired during the Superbowl in February. The 8-part lavish first season of … Continue reading “Back to Middle Earth”
Saint-Maur-des-Fossés (94) is delighted to once again welcome dozens of authors from around the world to its festival St Maur en Poche from 24 to 26 June. There will be lots of Anglophone authors present, including the inimitable Maggie O’Farrell, winner of the 2020 Women’s Prize for Fiction for Hamnet, her imagining of the life … Continue reading “Paperback Festival in St Maur”
Britain’s Women’s Prize for Fiction has been awarded to a book narrated by a book. American-Canadian author Ruth Ozeki’s fourth novel has the philosophical title The Book of Form and Emptiness, perhaps no surprise from an author who combines writing, teaching and being a Zen Buddhist priest. The teenage protagonist Benny finds the Book when … Continue reading “Women’s Prize for Fiction Winner 2022”
As promised, our latest Reading Guide for Terminale LLCER, The Buddha of Suburbia by Hanif Kureishi Is at the printers and will be available at the beginning of March. Kureishi was already an established screenwriter and playwright when he published the novel in 1990. In the films My Beautiful Laundrette and Sammy and Rosie Get … Continue reading “New Reading Guide: The Buddha of Suburbia”
Not many countries have an annual celebration of their national poet. In fact not all countries have a national poet. But Scotland does and millions of people around the world celebrate him on Burns Night every 25 January. The adoption of Robert Burns (1759-1796) as national poet was a natural, organic process born or real … Continue reading “Toasting Robert Burns”
The father of the historical novel, author of Ivanhoe and the romanticised image of Scottish history portrayed in the Waverley novels, and a collector and preserver of ballads from the oral tradition, Sir Walter Scott was one major figures of Victorian Britain. This year, Scotland celebrates the 250th anniversary of his birth. Scott was born … Continue reading “Sir Walter Scott at 250”