Bücher von Julian Lovelock

Who were Shakespeare¿s ¿Friend¿ and the ¿Dark Lady¿? Why did Donne risk his life and ruin his career for a seventeen-year-old girl? Why did Wordsworth¿s sister retire to her bed on his wedding day?Writing never takes place in a vacuum and much of the finest poetry in the English language has been inspired by particular people - patrons, spouses, lovers, friends, or just casual acquaintances. Whether relegated to an obscurity they do not deserve or thrust into prominence they did not seek, their importance to the creative process is inescapable.In Where All the Ladders Start, Julian Lovelock discusses with characteristic incisiveness and enthusiasm nine major British poets and the real lives behind their most significant works. Along the way he shows how poetry has developed over the past four hundred years and provides suggestions for further reading, while for convenience all of the relevant poems and extracts are reproduced in full. Written for both the seasoned reader and the student encountering these poems for the first time, Lovelock¿s analysis will inspire and entertain in equal measure.

The stories we read as children are the ones that stay with us the longest, and from the nineteenth century until the 1950s stories about schools held a particular fascination. Many will remember the goings-on at such earnest establishments as Tom Brown’s Rugby, St Dominic’s, Greyfriars, the Chalet School, Malory Towers and Linbury Court.In the second part of the twentieth century, with more liberal social attitudes and the advent of secondary education for all, these moral tales lost their appeal and the school story very nearly died out. More recently, however, a new generation of compromised schoolboy and schoolgirl heroes - Pennington, Tyke Tiler, Harry Potter and Millie Roads - have given it a new and challenging relevance.Focusing mainly on novels written for young people, From Morality to Mayhem charts the fall and rise of the school story, from the grim accounts of Victorian times to the magic and mayhem of our own age. In doing so it considers how fictional schools not only reflect but sometimes influence real life.This captivating study will appeal to those interested in children’s literature and education, both students and the general reader, taking us on a not altogether comfortable trip down memory lane.