I HAVE A DREAM SPEECH

"I Have a Dream" is a public speech delivered by American civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on 28 August 1963, in which he called for an end to racism in the United States and called for civil and economic rights. Delivered to over 250,000 civil rights supporters from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., the speech was a decisive moment of the American Civil Rights Movement. 

A DEVASTATING AND HEARTBREAKING EARTHQUAKE

The earthquake that struck central Italy in the early hours of Wednesday has killed almost 300 people. Among scenes of devastation, dozens of emergency services staff and volunteers have been working night and day in the hope of finding people alive in the mangled wreckage of homes in demolished towns.

The earthquake was powerful enough to be felt in Bologna to the north and Naples to the south, both more than 220 km (135 miles) from the epicentre.

Here you can read Beppe Severgnini's article about "Italy's fragile beauty".

THE SECRET GARDEN

"The Secret Garden"  is a novel by  Frances Hodgson Burnett. It was initially published in serial format beginning in 1910, and was first published in its entirety in 1911.

It is now one of Frances Hodgson Burnett's most popular novels, and is considered to be a classic of English children's literature. 

Here you can find a simplified version of the novel and some activity worksheets here .

Click here to read a book review. Here you can find a  detailed analysis of the novel.

FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD

Thomas Hardy  was born on 2 June 1840 in the county of Dorset. His father was a stonemason and his mother educated him until age eight. His family was too poor to pay for university, so he became an architect's apprentice until he decided to focus on writing. His stories are generally set in the Dorset area. In 1874 he married Emma Gifford, and her death in 1912 had a profound effect on him. In 1914 he married his secretary, Florence Dugdale. His first few novels were unsuccessful, and even his later works were controversial and often censored. Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure drew strong disapproval  for their sexual frankness and social criticism that Hardy stopped writing fiction, focusing instead on his poetry. He is best known for Far from the Madding Crowd, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, and Jude the Obscure. He died in 1928, at the age of eighty-seven.

Virginia Woolf  noted some of Thomas Hardy’s enduring power as a writer: “Thus it is no mere transcript of life at a certain time and place that Hardy has given us. It is a vision of the world and of man’s lot as they revealed themselves to a powerful imagination, a profound and poetic genius, a gentle and humane soul.”

AUGUST