WELCOME BACK TO SCHOOL!

REMEMBERING SEPTEMBER 11, 2001

SIEGFRIED SASSOON

Born on 8 September 1886, Siegfried Sassoon was an English writer and poet, WW I veteran. Read here and here.

He is best remembered for his angry and compassionate poems of the First World War, which brought him public and critical praise. Refusing the sentimentality and patriotism of other war poets, he wrote of the horror and cruelty of trench warfare and scornfully ridiculed generals, politicians, and churchmen for their incompetence and blind support of the war. 

MY SUNDAY MOVIE - MANSFIELD PARK

LONDON'S BIG BEN WILL BE SILENT UNTIL 2021

The iconic bell will only ring for special occasions over the next four years, such as New Year's Eve and Remembrance Sunday.  Read here and here.

SEPTEMBER

REMEMBERING DIANA, PRINCESS OF WALES

Today marks the 20th anniversary of the death of Lady Diana, never-to-be-forgotten Princess of Wales, in a Paris car crash.

Twenty years ago, her death stunned the world. From the shocking announcement of the news to her funeral procession lined by a million-strong crowd, that tumultuous week shocked Britain – and the monarchy. Read here. 

MIDNIGHT IN PARIS

This is a romantic comedy about a nostalgic screenwriter who is on a trip to Paris with his fiancée's family and has experiences there that change his life. In fact, he finds himself puzzlingly going back to the 1920s every day at midnight. Here you can read The New York Times review of the movie.

This film is sort of a daydream for American lit majors. It opens with a couple on holiday in Paris with her parents. Gil and Inez are officially in love, but maybe what Gil really loves is Paris in the springtime. He's a hack screenwriter from Hollywood who still harbors the dream of someday writing a good novel and joining the pantheon of American writers whose ghosts seem to linger in the very air he breathes: Fitzgerald, Hemingway and the other legends of Paris in the 1920s.  Continue reading here.

https://ling.online/en/video/films/midnight-in-paris-2011/

SILENT LETTERS IN ENGLISH

The English language has lots of silent letters which  cause difficulties for both native speakers and English learners, because they make the spelling of words different from their pronunciation. Read here.

AUGUST

BRAVE NEW WORLD

 

Brave New World is a novel written in 1931 by Aldous Huxley, and published in 1932. Set in London in the year AD 2540 (632 A.F. - "After Ford" - in the book), the novel anticipates developments in reproductive technology, sleep-learning, psychological manipulation, and classical conditioning that are combined to profoundly change society.

Here you can find a detailed analysis of the novel and here you can discover some interesting facts about its author.

The title derives from Miranda's speech in William Shakespeare's The Tempest, Act V, Scene I:

O wonder!

How many goodly creatures are there here!

How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,

That has such people in't.

REMEMBERING JANE AUSTEN 200 YEARS ON

JANE AUSTEN BEHIND CLOSED DOORS

Lucy Worsley explores the different houses in which Jane Austen lived and stayed, to discover just how much they shaped Jane's life and novels.

Here you can watch the video. 

MY SUNDAY MOVIE - A PROMISE

https://fsharetv.co/movie/a-promise-episode-1-tt2191082

Here you can read a review of the movie.

JULY

"That beautiful season the Summer! 
Filled was the air with a dreamy and magical light;
And the landscape
Lay as if new created in all the freshness of childhood."
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow