By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Love them or hate them, our schooldays are formative and, as the old cliché has it, make us what we are today, for good or ill. Many of the greatest and most famous popular songs written about schooldays don’t pull any punches about the harsh realities of school life – and one or two of the tracks I’ve chosen here see the teachers wielding their fists themselves.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Who is Hyperion? This is actually a harder question to answer than it might first appear. The name is familiar enough from classical mythology. Say it out loud, right now: it has that ring of familiarity, doesn’t it? Say it again, go on.
Oh dear. If you said it the way I’d been saying it, then – according to classical purists – you (and I) just said it wrong.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘Sheep in Fog’ is a poem by Sylvia Plath (1932-63), which was published in her posthumous second collection Ariel in 1965. For my money, it’s one of Plath’s finest poems, if not the finest. But it’s also a poem which conveys much by using very few words: unlike the transitional poems she wrote in 1961 – ‘The Moon and the Yew Tree’ springs to mind – ‘Sheep in Fog’ reflects a more pared-back, controlled, and focused style.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
What connects the word ‘female’ with ‘male’, etymologically speaking? How did these corresponding terms come about? The origins of the word ‘female’ are worthy of further inspection, because, as ever on this blog, there are some surprising facts to uncover in the etymology and history of ‘female’.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘The Triumphs of a Taxidermist’ is a short story by H. G. Wells (1866-1946), originally published in the Pall Mall Gazette in 1894. This year was something of an annus mirabilis for Wells’s fiction: The Time Machine, his first novel, was only a year away, and he published many of his best short stories in 1894. This is one of the shortest – and lightest.