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ISBN: 978 1 4718 6707 1

© Susan Elkin Ltd 2017

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Acknowledgements

Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked,
the Publishers will be pleased to make the necessary arrangements at the first opportunity.

p4 Reproduced with permission of Curtis Brown Group Ltd, London on behalf of The Chichester Partnership. Copyright © The Chichester
Partnership, 1938 p5 ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’ by John Keats (public domain) p17 Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell (public domain) p19
‘Goblin Market’ by Christina Rossetti (public domain) p20 ‘If you drop litter, you're an idiot and must be punished’ © Telegraph Media
Group Limited 2014 (used with permission) p27 ‘Tm called little Buttercup’ from HMS Pinafore by W S Gilbert (public domain) p52
Bleak House by Charles Dickens (public domain) p29 ‘November’ by Ted Hughes published by Faber & Faber Ltd (permission sought)
p30 ‘November’ by Thomas Hood (public domain) p42 Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope (public domain) p43 ‘My Last Duchess’ by
Robert Browning (public domain) p45 ‘Sweeney Todd Chichester festival theatre review’ © Telegraph Media Group Limited 2011 (used
with permission) p55 Lives by Thomas North (public domain) p55 Anthony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare (public domain) p56
‘The Wild Swans at Coole’ by W B Yeats (public domain) p69 From GRASSHOPPER by Barbara Vine (Penguin Books 2001). Copyright
© Barbara Vine 2001. Reproduced by permission of Penguin Books Ltd. p71 ‘The Lotos-Eaters’ by Alfred Lord Tennyson (public domain)
p73 ‘Sacked over ‘elf and safety, teacher who took two boys of 15 sledging as part of technology lesson’ by Andy Dolan. Copyright
© Daily Mail p&4 Turbulence by Jan Marks published by Hodder Children’s Books (permission sought) p85 ‘We Are Seven’ by William
Wordsworth (public domain) p87 From CLINGING TO THE WRECKAGE: A PART OF LIFE by John Mortimer (Penguin Books, 1983). Copyright
© John Mortimer, 1983. ‘Reproduced by permission of Penguin Books Ltd p96 Animal Farm by George Orwell, published by Hamilton
Books (permission sought) p98 Henry IV Part 2 by William Shakespeare (public domain) p99 ‘Gaddafi: tyrant or benign ruler?’ by Reed
Perry on reedperry.com (permission sought) p100 ‘Obituary for Gaddafi’ © Telegraph Media Group Limited 2011. (used with permission)
p107 ‘If you want to get nicked, get a hat’ © Telegraph Media Group Limited 2006. (used with permission) p110 Birdsong by Sebastian
Faulks, published by Random House UK (permission sought) p112 ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ by Wilfred Owen (public domain) p113
‘100 Years Ago: Britain Enters The First World War’ by Professor Stephen Badsey, University of Wolverhampton (university academic blog
25 July 2014) p123 Mansfield Park by Jane Austen (public domain) p124 ‘Sonnet 116’ by William Shakespeare (public domain) p125
‘Why an arranged marriage ‘is more likely to develop into lasting love’ by Paul Bentley. Copyright © Daily Mail p134 ‘Date Expectations’
in The Times (permission sought)
As always, I have to thank everyone at Galore Park Publishing for
acting as collective midwife to this book.

Thanks are also due to my husband Nicholas Elkin, who scrupulously

reads everything I write before anyone else sees it and is the best
critic anyone could have.

Se Note to the teacher

Serer reererererererererr rr er rrrrererrsererere rere rere rere reer eee eee eee eee eee eee)

English for Common Entrance Two is intended for pupils in Year 8

preparing for Common Entrance at 13+ and scholarship levels. It meets
the requirements of the National Curriculum at Key Stage 3 and of
the ISEB syllabus. There is also extension into off-piste learning and
development - especially through wider reading.

Every comprehension activity - three in each chapter - leads pupils

to use the text (fiction, non-fiction or poetry) as evidence for their
answers.
The emphasis on reading offers plenty of opportunity for each pupil to
develop his or her ability to read with discrimination and to express a
response to reading.

Some of the chosen extracts are deliberately very challenging. Every

teacher will have his or her own way of helping Key Stage 3 pupils
to meet that challenge at an appropriate level and there are plenty
of my thoughts and responses in the parallel English for Common
Entrance Two Answers. And perhaps every teacher would do well to
put, writ large, on the classroom wall T S Eliot’s famous maxim: ‘Poetry
can communicate before it is understood’ No English teacher should
expect pupils to understand, on first acquaintance, everything there
is to understand about some of the finest writing in English. They are,
after all, at the very beginning of a life-long learning adventure.

Users of this book will soon be progressing to GCSE, IGCSE or other

Key Stage 4 courses - hence the introduction to topics like First World
War literature and the multifarious functions of language which they
will need in Years 10 and 11.

New to this edition are the ‘Did you know?’ sections, which should be
used by pupils as an opportunity to practise crucial research skills.

Susan Elkin

Gn
Contents
Introduction: Reading matters

Mysteries
A woman from the past
‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’
Easter Island
Wniting practice
Did you know?
Grammar and punctuation
Spelling and vocabulary
Functions of language:
Creating atmosphere
Speaking and listening
Extra reading
Progress further

Buying and selling

Community spirit
‘Goblin Market’
‘If you drop litter, you're an idiot and
must be punished’
Writing practice
Did you know?
Grammar and punctuation
Spelling and vocabulary
Functions of language:
The language of selling
Speaking and listening
Extra reading
Progress further
‘I'm called little Buttercup’
 3 November 28
A November day 28
‘November’ 29
‘November’ 30
November thoughts 31
Writing practice 33
Did you know? 34
Grammar and punctuation 3)
Spelling and vocabulary oy)
Functions of language: Breaking
the rules 38
Speaking and listening 40
Extra reading 40
Progress further 41

4 Villains 42
A new chaplain 42
‘My Last Duchess’ 43
A review of Sweeney Todd at Chichester
Festival Theatre 45
Writing practice 47
Did you know? 47
Grammar and punctuation 48
Spelling and vocabulary 49
Functions of language: Spelling
out a subtext aye
Speaking and listening 55
Extra reading 54
Progress further 54

5 Beauty 5
Cleopatra 55
‘The Wild Swans at Coole’ 56
Hair today and gone tomorrow 58
Wniting practice 59
Did you know? 60
Grammar and punctuation 60
Spelling and vocabulary 62
Functions of language: Using
language polemically 65
rd} Speaking and listening
= 66
o
4d Extra reading 67
S
U Progress further 68
6 Risk, adventure and exploration 69 a,
Roof climbing 69 Bs
‘The Lotos-Eaters’ 71 =ny
‘Sacked over ‘elf and safety, teacher
who took two boys of 15 sledging as
part of technology lesson’ cs
Wniting practice 76
Did you know? 76
Grammar and punctuation iii
Spelling and vocabulary 78
Functions of language: News reporting 80
Speaking and listening 82
Extra reading 82
Progress further 83

7 Family 84
Gran 84
‘We Are Seven’ 85
My mother 87
Writing practice 88
Did you know? 89
Grammar and punctuation 89
Spelling and vocabulary 91
Functions of language: Humorous
language 93
Speaking and listening 94
Extra reading 95
Progress further 95

8 Government 96
The Battle of the Windmill 96
Uneasy lies the head that wears
a crown 98
Gaddafi: tyrant or benign ruler? 99
Writing practice 101
Did you know? 102
Grammar and punctuation 103
Spelling and vocabulary 105
Functions of language: Satire 106
‘If you want to get nicked, get a hat’ 107
Speaking and listening 108
Extra reading 108
Progress further 109
 9 War 110
The front line 110
‘Dulce et Decorum est’ 112
100 Years Ago: Britain Enters
the First World War ons
Writing practice 15
Did you know? 116
Grammar and punctuation 116
Spelling and vocabulary 118
Functions of language: Discursive
language 120
Speaking and listening iad
Extra reading di
Progress further ay

10 Marriage 123
Three sisters 123
‘Sonnet 116’ 124
Why an arranged marriage ‘is more
likely to develop into lasting love’ 125
Writing practice tay,
Did you know? 128
Grammar and punctuation 128
Spelling and vocabulary 129
Functions of language: Language for
newspaper reporting iil
Speaking and listening 1352
Extra reading 135
Progress further 134
Date expectations 134

The tools of poetry 136

Index 139

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Introduction
A , S Oe ee et es Pee ee eee errr rrerrrrrr rrr rr eer rr rier rrr ay

Welcome to English for Common Entrance Two. If you have worked your
way through Book One you will recognise the format. A newcomer to
the series? Then I hope you enjoy the mixture of fiction, poetry, non-
fiction and various sorts of language activity that each chapter offers.

I also hope that the recommendations in the ‘Extra reading’ sections

will lead you to some books that you might not otherwise read - and
that you find them as engrossing as I do. Don’t be discouraged if you
find some of these books are difficult to locate - try searching in your
local libraries or in second-hand and specialist booksellers, including
those found online.

There are many good reasons for being a ‘bookaholic’ (that’s a

neologism, by the way - see page 63). The first, of course, is that it’s
a great pleasure to bury yourself in a really gripping, interesting book.
Another reason is that reading is a fine way of learning vocabulary,
grammar and style. And any teacher will tell you that the more you
read the better you will write and we all want you to sail through
your Common Entrance examination. Bookish people tend to be very
knowledgeable too because they are always effortlessly soaking up
bits of information from their reading.

One of the important things to understand about English is that there

are very few right and wrong answers. It’s very different from, for
example, maths. When you read a passage or poem you are quite likely
to notice something new that teachers, pupils or the author of this
book have not noticed before. Or you might read it in a different way
so that your understanding is not the same as other people's. That
can lead to very interesting discussions and is one of the great joys of
studying English.
Remember, too, that you are probably reading some of these passages
and poems for the first time. Several - Keats’s ‘La Belle Dame Sans
Merci’ (page 5) and the extract from Mansfield Park (page 123),
for example —- are very famous. You will almost certainly return to
them and re-read them occasionally for the rest of your life - and,
because you're an alert and thoughtful person, you will go on noticing
new things. So don’t expect to understand everything there is in a
text when you first read it at school! The work you do there is the
beginning of your journey of discovery, not the end.
 Each chapter contains a section called ‘Functions of language’. This is
new for Book Two. It is an introduction to some of the many ways in
which writers use language for a whole range of different purposes.
I think you will find this an interesting aspect of English to study as
well as helping to equip you for the forthcoming Common Entrance
examination.

Alert, successful people are always curious. That is why I have

included a short section in each chapter called ‘Did you know?’ to
encourage you to develop an enquiring mind and to research things
for yourself.

So - go on enjoying your work on this wonderful language of ours and

the astonishing variety of fascinating texts that have been written in
it.
Happy travelling!

See ERUeLeP eee ee eer ere eer ereererererrere rere ree rer ere rer erer ere er errr rere rere reer reer e eee eee ee eee eres)

Exercise
Exercises are provided to give you plenty of opportunities to practise what you
have learned.

Writing practice BS@gdty-

These exercises offer writing tasks that relate to the theme of each chapter.

Did you know? Writing guidelines

There are interesting facts under ‘Did you know?’ that you can use as a are available to
starting point for practising your research skills. | help you with
some of the writing
activities. Look out
Extra reading for this box telling
you where an
These suggestions for further reading are linked to the theme of each chapter.
activity is supported
by guidelines. The
writing guidelines
Progress further can be found in
English for Common
At the end of each chapter, ‘Progress further’ contains interesting issues for you
Entrance Two
to research and discuss, specific ideas for reading and some creative activities.
~ Answers (ISBN

[reer tinh wae hichngagehehe tine)

ao)
— 9781471867088),
S These notes highlight the ways in which language has changed over time. available separately.
8
s
s

@)
 Mysteries

A woman from the past

The narrator of Daphne du Maurier’s famous 1938 novel Rebecca is curious
about Rebecca, her husband’s dead first wife. One day she explores an unfamiliar
part of the house and discovers the mysterious Rebecca’s bedroom.

| turned the handle of the door and went inside. It was dark, of course, because
of the shutters. | felt for the electric light switch on the wall and turned it on. |
was standing in a little ante-room, a dressing room, |judged, with big wardrobes
round the wall, and at the end of the room was another door, open, leading
to a larger room. | went through to this room and turned on the light. My first
impression was one of shock because the room was furnished as though in use.

| had expected to see chairs and tables, swathed in dustsheets, and dustsheets
too over the great double bed against the wall. Nothing was covered up. There
were brushes and combs on the dressing-table, scent and powder. The bed
was made up. | saw the gleam of white linen on the pillowcase and the tip of
a blanket beneath the quilted coverlet. There were flowers on the dressing-
table, and on the table beside the bed. Flowers too on the mantelpiece. A satin
dressing gown lay on a chair and a pair of bedroom slippers beneath. For one
desperate moment | thought that something had happened to my brain, that
| was seeing back into time and looking upon the room as it used to be, before
she died ... In a minute Rebecca herself would come back into the room, sit
down before the looking glass at her dressing-table, humming a tune, reach for
her comb and run it through her hair. If she sat there | should see her reflection
in the glass and she would see me too, standing like this by the door. Nothing
20 happened. | went on standing there, waiting for something to happen. It was
the clock ticking on the wall that brought me to reality again. The hands stood at
twenty-five past four. My watch said the same. There was something sane and
comforting about the ticking of the clock. It reminded me of the present, and that
tea would soon be ready for me on the lawn. | walked slowly into the middle of
Zo the room. No, it was not used. It was not lived in any more. Even the flowers could
not destroy the musty smell. The curtains were drawn and the shutters closed.
Rebecca would never come back to the room again. Even if Mrs Danvers did put
the flowers on the mantelpiece and the sheets on the bed, they would not bring
 her back. She had been dead now for a year. She lay buried in the crypt of the
30 church with all the other dead de Winters.

| could hear the sound of the sea very plainly. | went to the window and
swung back the shutter. The long shaft of light made the electric light look
false and yellow. | opened the shutter a little more. The daylight cast a white
beam upon the bed. It shone upon the night-dress case lying on the pillow.
35 It shone on the glass top of the dressing-table, on the brushes and on the
scent bottles.

| realised for the first time since | had come into the room that my legs were
trembling, weak as straw. | sat down on the stool by the dressing-table. My
heart no longer beat in a strange excited way. It felt as heavy as lead. | looked
40 about me in the room with a sort of dumb stupidity. Yes, it was a beautiful room.
Mrs Danvers had not exaggerated that first evening. It was the most beautiful
room in the house. That exquisite mantelpiece, the ceiling, the carved bedstead
and the curtain hangings, even the clock upon the wall and the candlesticks
upon the dressing-table beside me, all were things | would have loved and
45 almost worshipped had they been mine. They were not mine though. They
belonged to someone else. | put out my hand and touched the brushes. One
was more worn than its fellow. | understood it well. There was always one brush
that had the greater use. Often you forgot to use the other, and when they were
taken to be washed, there was one that was still quite clean and untouched.
50 How white and thin my face looked in the glass, my hair hanging lank and
straight. Did | always look like this? Surely | had more colour as a rule? The
reflection stared back at me, sallow and plain.

| got up from the chair and went and touched the dressing gown on the
chair. | picked up the slippers and held them in my hand. | was aware of a
55 growing sense of horror, of horror turning to despair. | touched the quilt on
the bed, traced with my fingers the monogram on the night-dress case, R de
W, interwoven and interlaced. The letters were corded and strong against
the golden satin material. The night-dress was in the case, thin as gossamer,
apricot in colour. | touched it, drew it out from the case, put it against my
60 face. It was cold, quite cold. But there was a dim mustiness about it still where
the scent had been. The scent of white azaleas. | folded it, and put it back
into the case, and as | did so noticed with a sick dull aching in my heart that
there were creases in the night-dress. The texture was ruffled. It had not been
touched since it was last worn.

g
i
Slightly abridged from Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier (1938)
o
a
>
=
7

QO)
 rm
a
ow
1 What is the narrator’s married name?
Wl
o
2 Give another word for (a) swathed (line 7), (b) sallow (line 52) and ®Oo
(c) monogram (line 56). =|
7)
3 Who do you think Mrs Danvers is? %)
rf
s
nn
4 Write a paragraph summarising what you learn about the narrator from this
passage. K
©
oon J
2
5 In what ways does Rebecca seem to have been different from the narrator?
6 What horrifies the narrator about Rebecca’s night-dress and why? Use
quotations from the passage to illustrate your explanation.

‘La Belle Dame Sans Merc?’

O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.

5 Owhat can ail thee, knight-at-arms,

So haggard and so woe-begone?
The squirrel’s granary is full,
And the harvest’s done.

| see a lily on thy brow

10 With anguish moist and fever dew;
And on thy cheeks a fading rose
Fast withereth too.

| met a lady in the meads,

Full beautiful — a faery’s child,
15 Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.

| made a garland for her head, we

And bracelets too, and fragrant zone’; |
She looked at me as she did love,
20 And made sweet moan.

| set her on my pacing steed

And nothing else saw all day long,
For sideways would she lean, and sing
A faery’s song.
 25 She found me roots of relish sweet,
And honey wild and manna dew,
And sure in language strange she said,
‘| love thee true.’

She took me to her elfin grot,

30 And there she wept and sighed full sore;
And there | shut her wild, wild eyes
With kisses four.

And there she lulled me asleep,

And there | dreamed — Ah! Woe betide!
35 The latest dream | ever dreamed
On the cold hill’s side.

| saw pale kings and princes too,

Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
They cried — ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci
40 Hath thee in thrall!’

| saw their starved lips in the gloam

With horrid warning gapeéd wide,
And | awoke and found me here,
On the cold hill’s side.

45 And this is why | sojourn here

Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.

John Keats (1819)

Exercise 1.2
Read the poem ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’ and answer the following questions:

1 Who narrates the first three stanzas of the poem? Who speaks the rest of
the poem?
2 Explain in your own words why the knight-at-arms is ‘Alone and palely
4) loitering’ (line 46).
wv
o 3 What is the mood of the knight-at-arms? Quote from the poem to support
a your explanation.
=
=
4 How does Keats make the surroundings reflect the mood of the knight-at-arms?
7

(<)
5 Explain the meaning of (a) ail (lines 1 and 5), (b) steed (line 21), (c) thrall m
wo
(line 40) and (d) sojourn (line 45). n
[ps
@o
at
6 Choose and comment on three words or phrases which interest you in this
w
Ae
poem. What is the effect created by each one? @
=}
a.

Easter Island
Easter Island, just fifteen miles
long and ten miles wide, has 887
stone statues. Each weighs several
tons and some are more than nine
metres tall. But nobody knows
why or how they got there so
they qualify as one of the world’s
great mysteries.

Easter Island, which belongs to

10 Chile, is in the southern Pacific
Ocean and is one of the remotest ™® Statues on Easter Island
spots on the globe. It lies 2,300 miles west of the coast of Chile and 2,500 miles
south-east of Tahiti. The closest island is 1,400 miles away.

Imagine Easter Day, 1772, when a Dutch captain landed there. He was the first
iS European to set foot on the island, which at that time was virtually uninhabited.
He and his crew were stunned by that, now famous, line of towering statues.

Scientists and others have tried ever since that first landing to solve the mystery
of the statues. This is one theory:

Easter Island was inhabited by Polynesian seafarers who arrived in about 400 AD.
20 They had travelled thousands of miles in their canoes, guided by the stars, sun,
ocean rhythms, sky colour, cloud formation, wave patterns and bird flight paths.
For some reason they stayed.

This would tally with Thor Heyerdahl’s work. A Norwegian explorer and scientist,
Heyerdahl believed that the Polynesians sailed across the ocean in small craft.
a) In 1947, with five other men, he proved it was possible by building a traditional
balsa wood raft and crossing the Pacific on it. The voyage took 101 days.

There seem to have been two classes of Easter Island inhabitant: those with long
ears and those with short ears. The long-eared people were the rulers. The short-
eared, who came earlier, were the workers. That is why, according to one theory,
30 most of the statues have long ears.
 Not all the statues on the island stand upright or in line. Perhaps only a few made
it to their intended destination while the rest were abandoned along the way.

The statues were carved out of the top edge of the walls of an inland volcano on
the island. Once a statue was carved, it was rolled or dragged down to the base
3) of the volcano. Then it was raised by leverage with ropes tied around it.

The island’s ancient grass, which has now almost disappeared because of over-
grazing by herded sheep, was tough and could have been made into strong
ropes. The theory is that the ropes were wrapped around the statue, which then
functioned as a pulley. Two groups of men would pull first from one side and
40 then the other so that the statue inched forward.

lt would have taken many laborious months, but a statue could have been
‘walked’ down to the ocean in this way. Each one which made it was placed in a
line. They face away from the sea towards the centre of the island.

Some scientists think that if a statue fell over in transit, as often must have
45 happened, there was no way of lifting it again. So they simply returned to base
and carved another one. That would explain why there are statues scattered
about the island, not erected and apparently at random.

The sculpting and movement of these statues required the co-operation of the
entire population of the island. So presumably there was a powerful religious
motive. The people must have believed with deep conviction that they were
required by their gods to undertake this extraordinary work.

At its peak, the population of Easter Island may have been as high as 11,000.
When the first Europeans finally arrived on the island, most of these people had
died out.

Interestingly, ancient Easter Islanders could write and had their own unique system.
No other Pacific Islanders knew how to write. Neither did American Indians.

Their diet poses unanswered questions too. Easter Islanders lived on sweet
potatoes, which they farmed. Sweet potatoes originated in the Americas. How did
the Easter Islanders get them? It is hardly likely that a few adventurous individuals
rowed or sailed 2,300 miles to Chile and returned with these vegetables.

Could Easter Island have been colonised by people from Chile? Probably not.
DNA samples from graves on Easter Island have shown that these people were
Polynesians, not American Indians. But Heyerdahl argued that the ancient
g Polynesians cremated their dead, which destroys DNA. He thought that the graves
o found on Easter Island in modern times belonged to a later influx of Polynesians.
o
~
= Researched and written by Susan Elkin (2006)
 pag
=
Read the extract ‘Easter Island’ and answer the following questions: ga
uv=
F ry)
Explain in your own words why the Easter Island statues ‘qualify as one of the 2
world’s great mysteries’. So:
ra
i)
Give another word or phrase for (a) ocean rhythms (line 21), (b) leverage
(line 35) and (c) colonised (line 61).
Why, according to one theory, do most of the statues have long ears?
What prompted Thor Heyerdahl to cross the Pacific Ocean on a raft?
What is puzzling about the diet of the ancient Easter Islanders?
ff
wu
an
W Why do those who study Easter Island presume that the statues are religious
in origin?

In a short paragraph, summarise how the statues might have been moved
down to the sea from the spot where they were carved.
8 What is the problem with Easter Island DNA evidence?

j
Bercise 1.4
Write an imaginary or factual account of visiting a mysterious place.
Z Using the passage in this chapter — and further information gained from
elsewhere if you wish — write an advertisement for an Easter Island visit
suitable for a Sunday newspaper or travel brochure. (See also Functions of
language: the language of selling on page 25.)
Imagine you are La Belle Dame Sans Merci. Describe the encounter with the
knight-at-arms from your perspective. You could write this as a prose story or
you could make it a poem, perhaps using the same stanza shape as Keats.
Research and write an article about a real-life, unsolved mystery such as the
finding of the Marie Celeste, the possibility that there was a female pope in
disguise in the ninth century or what happened to the infant princes who
died in the Tower of London in 1483. And there are many others. Gather your
information from books and/or the internet.
Continue the story which begins in the extract from Rebecca.
Write in any way you wish about mystery.
 Did you know?
These facts relate to the writers or topics featured in this chapter:
e The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins (1868) is generally regarded as the first
crime mystery novel.
e John Keats died of tuberculosis in Rome in 1821 when he was only 26.
e Archaeological research is ongoing into how and why huge stones were
brought from Wales and elsewhere to Salisbury Plain to create Stonehenge
around 2000 to 3000 BC.Analysis of the rock types present at the ruin has
recently provided new information about the source of the stones.

m Stonehenge is a prehistoric monument in Wiltshire, England.

e Daphne du Maurier (1907-1989) lived most of her life in Cornwall and

used it as the setting for many of her books, including Rebecca.

Research and note three separate facts to add to the list above. They should
relate to mystery, mysteries or to the writers and other topics touched on in this
chapter, or perhaps link to your research to one of the Writing practice tasks. You
should be able to summarise each of your facts in a single sentence.

C).Grammar.and punctuation occ

Sentences
Remember that a sentence is a self-contained unit of communication.
Think of it as a box with its capital letter at the beginning and full
g
=
stop (which may be an exclamation or question mark) at the end.
o
+7)
> Inside the box there is plenty of grammatical scope.
=
Some scientists think that if a statue fell over in transit, as often
must have happened, there was no way of lifting it again.
Here, the main verb is ‘think’: ‘Some scientists think that if a statue 9)
|
fell over in transit there was no way of lifting it again! ‘Think’ governs
the two verbs ‘fell’ and ‘was’ which come in the subordinate clause
5
signalled by ‘that’ In addition to this, the embedded clause ‘as often ro)
7.3

must have happened’ is an extra and so it is marked off with a pair of %)

=
commas within the main ‘box’. a.
Uv
cS
In a minute Rebecca herself would come back into the room, sit =|
aet
down before the looking glass at her dressing-table, humming a io
co)
tune, reach for her comb and run it through her hair. a
fe)
3
Within this sentence Daphne du Maurier has linked five statements in
a list, separated by commas. Rebecca would:
1 come back
2 sit down
3 be humming
4 reach for her comb
5 run it through her hair.
Each of these statements has a main verb (known as a finite verb)
except ‘humming a tune’ which is a participle, part of a verb doing the
work of an adjective.

When you construct sentences make sure you build a secure box. Then
you can use other punctuation inside it if you need to.

This is a useful way of avoiding the very common and lazy mistake of
ending sentences with commas.

Punctuate these six sentences. Put in the capital letter and full stop first so that
your outer ‘box’ is secure.

1 although he was frightened because he did not understand what was

happening james opened the door firmly but quietly
2 did you really shout to frighten off any possible intruder as you entered the
house switched on the lights and noticed that something seemed to be wrong
3 sit up shut up listen and take plenty of notes
4 in his novel bleak house charles dickens creates a character mr krook who dies
through spontaneous combustion an unexplained phenomenon which has
long fascinated human beings
5 all over the world there are statues in catholic churches and cathedrals usually
of the virgin mary which people say they have seen weeping real physical
tears sometimes of blood
 6 daphne du mauriers best known novel dates from 1938 and although she
wrote many others as well as some short stories and biographies nothing ever
touched the popularity of rebecca except possibly my cousin rachel which
was published in 1951

Changing fashions
Hyphens are obsolescent. That means that they are gradually
disappearing from use. If they ever disappear completely they will be
obsolete.

Today they are rarely used to link nouns or nouns and adjectives to
make a different compound word. Generally we no longer hyphenate
‘walking stick’ (walking-stick), ‘ice cream’ (ice-cream) or ‘sea cow’
(sea-cow). We use far fewer hyphens than we once did, although we
still use them in words like ‘sister-in-law’.

Nearly two centuries ago when Keats wrote ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’
hyphens were usual in, for example, a compound like ‘death-pale’.
Even when Rebecca was written, around 80 years ago, hyphens were
routinely used in words like ‘night-dress’ and ‘dressing-table’.

Hyphens are still used occasionally by typesetters who have to break

a word (between syllables) at the end of a line but most will try to
avoid this clumsiness.

On the whole there is a trend today to use less punctuation rather

than more so that a page of writing looks ‘cleaner’.

Punctuation, like almost everything else, is affected by fashion. For

another example, notice Daphne du Maurier’s long paragraphs. Most
twenty-first-century writers would use shorter ones.

See page 62 for examples of how hyphens are used to link phrases
acting as adjectives.

( ).Spelling and vocabulary

eee eee eee eee cs eee eee eee eeeeeeery (Cee eereeeeeererrerererrercrrrerrrrerrrr rere er ee ee ee ey

ante- and anti- words

The narrator of Rebecca passes though an ante-room.

The Latin word for ‘before’ or ‘in front’ is ante. Notice that it is spelt
with an ‘-e’.. The room was like a hallway which led into another room.
g
=
7) The Latin word for ‘against’ is anti. So an antiseptic is a chemical
a which works against infection and an antitank missile is one which
>
= is fired at tanks and heavy machinery in war. Notice that it is spelt
with an ‘-7.
7

(2)
 1%)
~O
o.
=
Aotude words to fit these definitions. Be careful to spell them correctly with an ga
i’ or an‘e’: re)
=|
a.
1 Describes a device such as a burglar alarm, lock or intruder light. <
ie)
ra)
Something which is third before the end in a list. re¥)
oOo
cS.
Describes events before the Biblical story of Noah’s Flood.
The other side of the world to the UK.
)
Before birth.
uu
ao
&
N
W Body of moving air of higher pressure than surrounding air so that pressure
decreases from the centre.

Plurals
There is a clear rule for forming the plurals of words ending in ‘y. If
the preceding letter is a vowel then the plural is usually formed by
adding ‘s’. Thus:

toy toys
donkey donkeys
affray affrays

But if the ‘y’ is preceded by a consonant, the ‘y’ changes to an ‘i’ and
add ‘es’. Thus:

ovary ovaries
ability abilities
poppy poppies
ruby rubies

What is the plural of these words?

1 reliquary
2 decoy
3 plutocracy
4 refectory
5 tercentenary

6 foray

Now write a sentence for each word to show you understand its meaning.
You may use either the singular or the plural form. A dictionary will help you.
 Like punctuation, spelling sometimes changes with time. Notice Keats's
spelling of fairy as ‘faery’. Actually, by 1819, ‘fairy’ would have been usual.
Keats is using an old spelling because in ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’ he wants
to create a poem with a timeless, romantic atmosphere. This will be explored
in the next section.

Creating atmosphere
The atmosphere in the passage from Rebecca is sinister and full of
suspense. Daphne du Maurier achieves this by:
@ using a lot of detail to keep the reader waiting and to show us how
the narrator is feeling
@ using a slow pace - the incidents probably take longer to tell than
they would to happen so the effect is like a slow motion film
@ using ‘jerky grammar’, including some sentence fragments instead of
conventionally correct sentences (‘Flowers too on the mantelpiece.
‘The scent of white azaleas’)
@ using short, very direct sentences interspersed with long ones
(‘The bed was made up’ ‘Nothing happened’ ‘The texture was
ruffled.)
e using phrases breathlessly tucked into the ends of long sentences
(‘scent and powder’, ‘weak as straw’, ‘sallow and plain’)
@ appealing to the senses by emphasising sounds, especially the
ticking clock and aromas or smells, such as the azaleas and the
unwashed night-dress.

Keats creates an atmosphere of mournful longing and sadness in ‘La

Belle Dame Sans Merci’ by:
@ repeating soft consonants like ‘l’ and ‘s’ (‘alone and palely
loitering’), a technique known as alliteration
@ using long, slow sounds which sound like cries of pain (‘made sweet
moan’, ‘Woe betide’)
e choosing old forms of words such as ‘withereth’ instead of ‘withers’,
‘hath’ for ‘has’ and ‘thee’ for ‘you’
g
=
a
a
>
=
7
@ using four-line stanzas which end with an abrupt, short, fourth wn
=)
line; most of these contain only single-syllable words which fall like @
o
hammer blows and sound very heavy and unhappy (‘no birds sing’, ay
a
‘On the cold hill’s side’) ithe]
o
=|
@ including words with negative associations — ‘withered’, ‘woe- rae
begone’, ‘ail’ =
(ead
©
a
3
ga

Write either a two-stanza poem or two paragraphs

of prose. Take as your subject either someone who is
frightened or someone who is deeply unhappy. Use
some of the techniques detailed above to make your
writing atmospheric.

There are writing guidelines for this exercise in

the answers. Look for the section at the end of
the answers called ‘Writing guidelines’.

Perere reer eeeeererereeeren Ss eee reeer eee ereererrrrrerererr ere er rere reer eres

1 Prepare a reading aloud of any of the three passages in this

chapter. Work out how to get the best out of the passage you
choose. Perform it to the class or a small group. You might also
record your work.
2 Work in a small group. Devise a ghost story that you can tell as
a group. Then share your work with another group. Encourage
feedback from the listening group.
3 Work with a partner. Discuss ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’ in detail. Do
you think the poem is effective? Explain your answer.
4 Work with a partner. One of you is the narrator of Rebecca. The
other is her husband, Maxim, whom she tells about her visit to his
late wife’s bedroom. Work out your conversation.
 Extra reading
These books, stories and poems are either by or about the authors of the
extracts in this chapter or they are about mysteries:
@ Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier (1938)
My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier (1951)
Daphne du Maurier by Margaret Forster (1993)
The Woman in Black by Susan Hill (1983)
‘The Eve of St Agnes’ by John Keats (1820) (this can be found in many
anthologies and most selections of Keats’s verse)
The Kon-tiki Expedition by Thor Heyerdahl (1948)
The Truth about Celia Frost by Paula Rawsthorne (2011)
The Mammoth Encyclopaedia of the Unsolved by Colin Wilson (2000)
The Oxford Book of Victorian Ghost Stories edited by Michael Cox and
RA Gilbert (2003)
@ Fingersmith by Sarah Waters (2002)*
@ The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins (1859)*
@ Afterwards by Rosamund Lupton (2011)

@ The Last Anniversary by Liane Moriarty (2005)

*Recommended for very keen readers and for those taking scholarship

Progress further
e Read Rebecca (if you haven’t already done so). Then read Jane Eyre by
Charlotte Bronté (1848). Most critics are convinced that Daphne du Maurier
was very much influenced by Jane Eyre. Work out why and decide how far
you agree.
e Watch the 1940 film of Rebecca, directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring
Laurence Olivier as Maxim de Winter. It is now regarded as a cinema classic
and will be in almost any DVD library. View it very critically. Decide why it
was, and is, judged as a great piece of cinema. Or, if you disagree, work out
your reasons. You might then write a review of the film.
e Research the life of John Keats. Prepare an informative wall poster for the
classroom about him. The 2009 film Bright Star might help you.
Kd
nN
wy
a
>
=
 Buying and selling

Community spirit
Shy, gentle Matilda Jenkyns, known as Miss Matty, has lost her money because
her bank has gone bankrupt. In the fictional 1830s town of Cranford, her friends
have persuaded her to open a tea shop to gain an income.

When we came to the proposal that she should sell tea, | could see it was rather
a shock to her, not on account of any personal loss of gentility involved, but only
because she distrusted her own powers of action in a new line of life, and would
timidly have preferred a little more privation to any exertion for which she
5 feared she was unfitted. However, when she saw my father was bent upon it, she
sighed, and said she would try, and if she did not do well, of course she might
give it up. One good thing about it was, she did not think men ever bought tea.
And it was of men particularly she was afraid. They had such sharp loud ways
with them and did up accounts and counted their change so quickly! Now, if she
10 might only sell comfits to children, she was sure she could please them.

Miss Matty’s sale went off famously. She retained the furniture of her sitting-
room and bedroom, the former of which she was to occupy till Martha could
meet with a lodger who might wish to take it. And into this sitting-room and
bedroom she had to cram all sorts of things, which were (the auctioneer assured
15 her) bought in for her at the sale by an unknown friend. | always suspected Mrs
Fitz-Adam of this but she must have had an accessory, who knew what articles
were particularly regarded by Miss Matty on account of their associations with
her early days. The rest of the house looked rather bare, to be sure — all except
one tiny bedroom, of which my father allowed me to purchase the furniture for
20 my occasional use in case of Miss Matty’s illness.

| had expended my own small store in buying all manner of comfits and
lozenges, in order to tempt the little people whom Miss Matty loved so much to
come about her. Tea in bright green canisters, and comfits in tumblers — Miss
Matty and | felt quite proud as we looked round us on the evening before the
25 shop was to be opened. Martha had scoured the boarded floor to a white
cleanness, and it was adorned with a brilliant piece of oil-cloth, on which
 customers were to stand before the table-counter. The wholesome smell of
plaster and whitewash pervaded the apartment. A very small ‘Matilda Jenkyns,
licensed to sell tea’,1 was hidden under the lintel of the new door, and two boxes
30 of tea, with cabalistic inscriptions all over them, stood ready to disgorge their
contents into the canisters.

Miss Matty, as | ought to have mentioned before, had had some scruples of
conscience at selling tea when there was already Mr Johnson in the town, who
included it among his numerous commodities. Before she could quite
35 reconcile herself to the adoption of her new business, she had trotted down to
his shop, unknown to me, to tell him of the project that was entertained, and
to inquire if it was likely to injure his business. My father called this idea of
hers ‘great nonsense’, and ‘wondered how tradespeople were to get on if there
was to be a continual consulting of each other’s interests, which would put a
40 stop to all competition directly’. And, perhaps it would not have done in
Drumble, but in Cranford it answered very well: for not only did Mr Johnson
kindly put at rest all Miss Matty’s scruples and fear of injuring his business, but
| have reason to believe he repeatedly sent his customers to her, saying that
the teas he kept were of a common kind, but that Miss Jenkyns had all the
45 choice sorts. And expensive tea is a very favourite luxury with well-to-do
tradespeople and rich farmers’ wives, who turn up their noses at the Congou
and Souchong prevalent at many tables of gentility, and will have nothing else
but Gunpowder and Pekoe for themselves.

Abridged from Cranford by Elizabeth 1 At this time it was against the law to sell
Gaskell (serialised 1851-1853) tea, which was heavily taxed, without a
licence — as with alcohol today.

Read the extract from Cranford and answer the following questions:

1 Where is Miss Matty to live after the sale of her house and furniture?
2 Give the meaning, as the words are used in this passage, of (a) accessory
(line 16), (b) cabalistic (line 30), (c) commodities (line 34).
3 From the evidence in the passage, describe Miss Matty’s shop in your own
S
= words.
7)
WwW 4 Which pricey blends of tea are well-off farmers’ wives likely to buy?
DvD
= 5 What can you deduce about the narrator from the passage as a whole? Quote
©
i=) from the passage to support your views.
<
>
ra}
6 What evidence is there in the passage that the townspeople have tried hard to
shelter Miss Matty from the ‘disgrace’ of having to become a shopkeeper?

N
 a)
‘Goblin Market’ oO
=
=
Morning and evening E<
Maids heard the goblins cry: ©=“
=u
‘Come buy our orchard fruits. ©
ee
Come buy, come buy:
5 Apples and quinces,
Lemons and oranges,
Plump unpecked cherries,
Melons and raspberries,
Bloom-down-cheeked peaches,
10 Swart-headed mulberries,
Wild free-born cranberries,
Crab-apples, dewberries,
Pine-apples, blackberries,
Apricots, strawberries; —
15 Allripe together
In summer weather, —
Morns that pass by.
Fair eves that fly;
Come buy, come buy: S55 ZS: LESS on TE ESN
20 Pure grapes fresh from the vine, @ An illustration of ‘Goblin Market’ by Dante Gabriel
Pomegranates full and fine, Rossetti
Dates and sharp bullaces,
Rare pears and greengages,
Damsons and bilberries,
25 Taste them and try:
Currants and gooseberries,
Bright-fire-like barberries,
Figs to fill the mouth,
Citrons from the south,
30 Sweet to tongue and sound to eye;
Come buy, come buy.’
From the opening of ‘Goblin Market’ by Christina Rossetti (1862)

Read the poem ‘Goblin Market’ and answer the following questions:

1 What is remarkable about the diversity of fruit available in this market? What
might this suggest?
2 Why are the words ‘Come buy’ repeated so often?
 3 Find examples of the descriptions of the fruit appealing to different senses,
and explain how they are effective.
4 What are the effects of the short lines and the rhymes? Use quotations from
the poem to support your analysis.

‘If you drop litter, youre an idiot and must

be punished’
The only way to stop people dropping litter is to declare all-out war on them,
says Alex Proud.

If you drop litter, you are a stupid, selfish, thoughtless yob.

This is my knee-jerk reaction to litter. The rural lane by my house resembles a

kind of linear tip, with a fag packet, coffee cup or plastic bottle every few feet.
The small parks near where | work in London look like supersize skips, filled with
5 fried chicken boxes. Even my own garden hosts a few plastic bags in trees, blown
in from elsewhere. Every year it seems to get worse. | hate it, |hate people who
litter and | think it’s time we treated them like the antisocial slobs they are.

As | say, this is my gut reaction. But like all gut reactions, it’s worth examining
properly. Let’s start with my perception that litter is getting worse — as people
10 always imagine things are getting worse. In fact it’s actually worse than I'd
imagined. According to a 2009 report by the CPRE’ and the Policy Exchange,
since the 1960s, littering has grown by 500%. Moreover, says the charity Tidy
Britain, local authorities spend nearly £1 billion picking up litter every year.

It’s true that a few people have attempted to reverse this rising tide of garbage.
15 A few years ago the author Bill Bryson tried to convince us to stop turning our
green and pleasant land into an approximation of the town dump. He even
suggested some fairly tough measures (although Bryson is so genial that he
could make capital punishment for stealing bread sound pleasant). Alas, his nice-
ish entreaties fell on deaf ears and our streets and parks and hedgerows are no
20 cleaner. So | believe the time has come to get nasty.

Before we do, though, we should ask ourselves if litter really is as black and
s
=>)
white as oiks despoiling our country because they can’t be bothered to walk five
7Wn
feet to a bin. Here, | did a little thought experiment comparing littering to a
ae) couple of other, similar blights — dog mess and graffiti. Not picking up after your
©
bi) 25 dog is disgusting, horrible and selfish. But | can sort of understand why you
s
oS
might not do it: carrying a bag of warm poo can ruin a pleasant walk in the
=)
isa)
woods. Carrying an empty Coke bottle, by contrast, is an inconvenience that is
trivial to the point of non-existence. And graffiti? Most graffiti does ruin the
N
 environment in a way that is similar S
a6
30 to litter — and more permanent. But S
ga
a small percentage of graffiti Uv=
improves the environment — and ry)
fa)
the very best is art. Also, unlike o-
fa
littering, the decision to tag a @
35 motorway overpass involves
considerable effort and even
physical courage. Whereas littering
is just the abrogation of effort and
responsibility.

From an article written by Alex Proud and published in | 7 CPRE is the Campaign to Protect Rural England.
the Daily Telegraph (2014) Bill Bryson was its president until 2010.

Read Alex Proud’s article which addresses the problem of litter — the waste
product of consumerism.

1 Why does the writer call litter droppers ‘slobs’ and ‘oiks’?
2 Identify and comment on some of the language he uses to persuade the
reader that litter creates an unpleasant environment.
3 (a) What is the writer’s point of view about litter?

(b) How does he try to persuade the reader to share it? Quote from the
passage to support your answer.
4 What does he argue should be done to prevent littering?
5 What factual evidence does the writer give to make his wiiting persuasive?
Use quotations from the passage to support your answer.
6 (a) What else does he compare littering with?
(b) What does he conclude?

prercise 24
1 Write a story in which someone is sold something
unexpected.
2 Write a colourful description, using as many senses (sight,
hearing, touch, taste, smell) as you can, to describe any
market or shop known to you. Write your description as a
poem if you wish.
 3 Write a persuasive letter to a newspaper expressing strong views about the
effect of pound shops on high-street trade or the use of piped music in shops.
The purpose of your letter is to bring others round to your point of view.
4 Today, much selling and marketing takes place, not in shops and markets but
over the internet. What experience of internet shopping do you, and perhaps
your family, have? Is it a good development or not? Why? How do you think it
will change in the future? Turn your thoughts and findings into an essay which
presents various views about the changing face of shopping.
5 Write a short essay about the extract from ‘Goblin Market’. Comment on the
poet’s style and use of words. The work you did in Exercise 2.2 will help you.
6 Write about buying and selling in any way you wish.

Did you know?

These facts relate to the writers or topics featured in this chapter:
e Elizabeth Gaskell (1810-1865) was the wife of a minister in the Unitarian
Church and campaigned all her life for what we would now call ‘human
rights’.
Christina Rossetti’s brother, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, is well known for
his flamboyant paintings of beautiful, idealised women and for being a
leading member of the Pre-Raphaelite group.
Christina Rossetti, who never married although she had two offers, was
deeply religious and worked for a while as a part-time nun.
The Council to Protect Rural England (CPRE) was founded by Sir Patrick
Abercrombie in 1926 and in its 90 years has influenced policies on
establishing green belts, town planning and litter.
eBay is a modern way of using auctioning, a selling technique which has
been around for hundreds of years.

Research and note three separate facts to add to the list above. They should
relate to buying and selling, or to the writers and other topics touched on in this
chapter. You should be able to summarise each of your facts in a single sentence.
D
=
=
wy
C).Grammar.and punctuation
SOOM HOH EEE HEE HET EEE HHEHHHEE HE ODETTE SEH EE HOSES EEE EHTS EHH E HEH HH ES ES EESEHEEHH EHO HO EEO EEE E ESE E SESE ESOS
WY
v Adverbs
iS
©
Dd Adverbs are words which modify (qualify) or tell you more about verbs
= or sometimes about adjectives, participles or other adverbs.
S"
a) @ I read Elizabeth Gaskell’s novel quickly. (adverb ‘quickly’ modifying
verb ‘read’)
N

(2)
@ ‘Goblin Market’ is colourfully written. (adverb ‘colourfully’ '@)
qualifying participle ‘written’) a)
5am }

@ Litter makes the countryside look horribly scruffy. (‘horribly =|

=|
revealing more about the adjective ‘scruffy’ a=
o
=|
Most adverbs are formed from adjectives and end in ‘-ly’ (e.g. quick/ a
quickly, colourful/colourfully, worrying/worryingly). U
c
=|
al
There are also many adverbs which do not end in ’-ly’ and they tend to as
et

be those words which can also be adjectives, nouns and verbs in other
a
=,
Oo
contexts. =|
Consider these sentences:

@ He sat down on the bank. (Here ‘down’ is an adverb telling you

more about ‘sat’ but it can also be an adjective in ‘down side’ or a
noun in ‘goose down’)
@ I ran fast. (Here ‘fast’ is an adverb modifying ‘ran’ but it’s an
adjective in ‘fast train’)

Use each of the following words as adverbs in sentences of your own:

de ip 4 hard

2 over 5 later

3 well 6 around

Adverbial clauses of time

Groups of words containing verbs, known as clauses, can do the job of
adverbs. Sometimes they answer the question ‘when’? These are called
adverbial clauses of time. Look at these examples:
e Mr Jones read Cranford while he was travelling. (Qualifies ‘read’;
tells us when he read.)
e Before she died in 1894, Christina Rossetti wrote many poems.
(Modifies ‘wrote’; tells us when she wrote.)
e Since American Bill Bryson settled in England, he has supported
English causes enthusiastically. (Tells us more about ‘supported’,
i.e. when he began to support English causes.)

Add adverbial clauses of time to the sentences below. Such clauses usually begin
with words which relate to time such as: since, while, during, before, after, as,
once. Remember that each clause needs a verb of its own. Think about where
 to use commas within your sentences too. You may need one to separate the
clause from the main sentence:

| __________ Elizabeth Gaskell wrote poetry.

2 We read ‘Goblin Market’ in class
3 My mother finished the week’s shopping
A pee =| shall: havearese:
5 ___—__ Sam and Lucy will need their PE kit.
6 ________litterers should be punished.

( ).Spelling and vocabulary

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counter- words
The word ‘counterfeit’ means false, fake or forged.

The first part of ‘counterfeit’ comes from the Latin word contra
meaning ‘against.

‘Counterfeit’ literally means ‘made against’ (the law).

1 Using a dictionary to help you, list eight English words which begin with
‘counter-‘ and write a short definition for each word
2 Choose another Latin prefix such as inter-, ad-, circum-, ab-, extra-, trans-,
contra- or intra- and write a short list, with definitions, of English words
which begin with it.

ang- words
Consider the following words which begin with ‘ang-. Notice that in
some the “g’ is hard as in ‘anger’ and in others it is soft as in ‘angel’.

angler anguine

angiogram angular

Sd
angst angelology
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% Match the words above to these definitions:
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& 1 theory or study of angels
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4 2 great anxiety

N 3 snake-like
4 x-ray image of blood vessels a
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ga
The language of selling c
a
ga
The goblins in ‘Goblin Market’ use very specific language techniques. They: ©

@ use a lot of imperative verb forms as if they were giving orders

(‘Come buy’)
@ make the product sound more attractive than it actually is (‘Bloom-
down-cheeked peaches’)
® sound sincere and passionate (‘Sweet to the tongue and sound to
the eye’)
@ use language so fast and fluently that it confuses the customer.
(‘Taste them a try: Currants and gooseberries...’).

Some advertisers will try to:

e trick customers into buying something that is more expensive than
what they intended to buy
@ mislead customers
@ make their product sound better than it is.

There are currently laws which prevent advertisers deliberately

misleading customers about a product within the UK and Europe, at
least. Sellers are not allowed to browbeat people into buying things,
or sign agreements without allowing them time to think, for example.

Nonetheless, many TV advertisements, roadside hoardings, notices

in newspapers and magazines and all other forms of advertising use
imperative verb forms. And they twist language to make their products
sound more appealing than those of their rivals. Advertising slogans
such as ‘Beanz Meanz Heinz’, ‘Every little helps’ and ‘Think different’ are
interesting too. They use as few words as possible to say something
catchy about the product which everyone will remember. People in the
advertising industry are paid large sums to think up these slogans.

Exercise 2.10
Write an advertisement for one or more of the following new products:

@ luminous shoelaces
@ cake which makes you slim
® electric toenail clippers
@ a holiday in a spacecraft.
 Use the language of selling to make your advertisement as persuasive as you can
and try to think of a good slogan to go with it. Looking back at ‘Goblin Market’
and the article by Alex Proud might help you.

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1 Working in a group, act out the scene in which Miss Matty

welcomes the first customers to her shop.
2 Learn the extract from ‘Goblin Market’ by heart. Practise it until you
know exactly how you want to say it. Then demonstrate your work
to a partner.
3 Work in a pair. Take turns to tell each other about an occasion when
yOu, Or someone in your family, bought or were sold something
which turned out not to be quite as expected.
4 Work in a pair. One of you is a customer in a shop selling perhaps
shoes, flowers or jewellery. The customer should be as awkward as
possible. The seller tries to deal with him or her.
5 In a group of three or four talk about the ‘science’ of selling (or
‘marketing’) - which can even be studied as a university subject.
How moral do you think it is? Should there be more laws to
control it?

Extra reading
These books or plays are either by the writers of the extracts at the beginning
of this chapter or they have something to do with selling, shops and sales:
@ Words in the Dust by Trent Reedy (2011)
A Single Shard by Linda Sue Park (2001)
A Kid for Two Farthings by Wolf Mankowitz (1953)
See It My Way by Peter White (1999)
Death ofaSalesman by Arthur Miller (1949)
Hobson's Choice by Harold Brighouse (1915)
The Hidden Persuaders by Vance Packard (1957)
Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell (1848)
Dd The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens (1841)*
&
o“WW Poems of Christina Rossetti — various books available*
v The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (1939)*
S
D The History of Mr Polly by H G Wells (1910)*
=
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*Recommended for very keen readers and for those taking scholarship

N
 Progress further ——
o
i@)
® The first Trade Descriptions Act was passed in Britain in the 1960s and there
have been many laws to protect consumers since. Find out about these laws, Da
using books and the internet, and consider how easy it used to be for buyers =
to be misled when making a purchase. What does caveat emptor mean? fo
(4)
@ In this chapter we learnt about adverbial clauses of time. Adverbial clauses w
re
of place and manner work in a very similar way. Work out what they are and et

©(@)
ct

write some sentences using them.

=
e Read the song below aloud several times to get used to its rhythm. Now find Uv

out what music Sir Arthur Sullivan set the song to and what time signature
the music has. You may need to find out more about the concept of time
signature first. If you are seeking a challenge, make up a tune to accompany
the song and figure out what time signature your tune follows.

‘Tm called little Buttercup’

This poem is a song about selling.

I’m called little Buttercup — dear little Buttercup,

Though | could never tell why,
But stiil I’m called Buttercup — poor little Buttercup
Sweet little Buttercup !!

5 I’ve snuff and tobaccy, and excellent jacky'

I've scissors and watches and knives;
lve ribbons and laces to set off the faces
Of pretty young sweethearts and wives.

I’ve treacle and toffee, I’ve tea and |’ve coffee

10 Soft tommy? and excellent chops;
I've chickens and conies3 and pretty polonies,4
And excellent peppermint drops.

Then buy of your Buttercup — dear little Buttercup, 1 Twists of tobacco soaked in rum and
Sailors should never be shy; sold to sailors for chewing
15 So buy of your Buttercup — poor little Buttercup; 2 Soft bread usually in the form of
Come of your Buttercup buy. fresh rolls
3 Rabbits
From HMS Pinafore by W S Gilbert
4 Cold smoked pork sausages (the word
(set to music by Sir Arthur Sullivan in 1878)
4
is a corruption of Bologna, the city in
Italy where they were first made)
 November

A November day
Charles Dickens (1812-1870) opens one of his most famous novels with a
description of a November day in Victorian London.

Implacable November weather. As much mud in the streets, as if the waters had
but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to
meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard
up Holborn Hill. Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft black
drizzle with flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown snowflakes — gone into
mourning, one might imagine, for the death of the sun. Dogs, indistinguishable in
mire. Horses, scarcely better; splashed to their very blinkers. Foot passengers,
jostling one another’s umbrellas, in general infection of ill temper, and losing
their foot-hold at street-corners, where tens of thousands of other foot
passengers have been slipping and sliding since the day broke (if ever this day
broke), adding new deposits to the crust of mud, sticking at those points
tenaciously to the pavement, and accumulating compound interest.

Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits! and meadows;
fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping, and the
waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city. Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on
the Kentish heights. Chance people on the bridges peeping over the parapets into
a nether sky of fog, with fog all around them, as if they were up in a balloon, and
hanging in the misty clouds. Fog creeping into the cabooses? of collier-brigs3; fog
lying out on the yards, and hovering in the rigging of great ships; fog drooping on
20 the gunwales of barges and small boats. Fog in the eyes and throats of ancient
Greenwich pensioners, wheezing by the firesides in their wards; fog in the stem
and bowl of the afternoon pipe of the wrathful skipper, down in his close cabin; fog
cruelly pinching the toes and fingers of his shivering little ‘prentice boy on deck.

Gas looming through the fog in divers places in the streets, much as the sun
25 may, from the spongey fields, be seen to loom by husbandman and ploughboy.
Most of the shops lighted two hours before their time — as the gas seems to
know, for it has a haggard and unwilling look.
From Bleak House by Charles Dickens (1852) 1 Small islands
2 Huts for cooking and sleeping on the
decks of:
3 ships transporting coal
Read the extract from Bleak House and answer the following questions:

1 What sort of weather is London experiencing? Use your own words to JOq
describe it.
2 What do the following words mean (a) tenaciously (line 12), (b) wards
(as Dickens uses it here) (line 21) and (c) husbandman (line 25)?
3 Why does Dickens mention a prehistoric animal? Use quotations from the
Passage to support your ideas.
4 Explain why the phrase (a metaphor) ‘compound interest’ (line 12) is
appropriate at the beginning of a novel which is going to be mostly about
money.
5 How many times does Dickens use the word ‘fog’ in the second paragraph?
Why do you think he repeats it so often?
6 What details or language choices show that this passage is set in the
nineteenth century and not more recently?

‘November’
The month of the drowned dog. After long rain the land
Was sodden as the bed of an ancient lake,
Treed with iron and birdless. In the sunk lane
The ditch — a seep silent all summer —

5 Made brown foam with a big voice: that, and my boots

On the lane’s scrubbed stones, in the gulleyed leaves,
Against the hill’s hanging silence;
Mist silvering the droplets on bare thorns

Slower than the change of daylight.

10 Ina let of the ditch a tramp bundled asleep:
Face tucked down into a beard, drawn in
Under his hair like a hedgehog’s. | took him for dead,

But his stillness separated him from the death

Of the rotting grass and the ground. A wind chilled,
15 Anda fresh comfort tightened through him,
Each hand stuffed deeper into the other sleeve.

His ankles, bound with sacking and hairy band,

Rubbed each other, resettling. The wind hardened;
A puff shook a glittering from the thorns,
20 And again the rain’s dragging grey columns
 Smudged the farms. In a moment
The fields were jumping and smoking; the thorns
Quivered, riddled with the glassy verticals.
| stayed on under the welding cold

25 Watching the tramp’s face glisten and the drops on his coat
Flash and darken. | thought what strong trust
Slept in him — as the trickling furrows slept,
And the thorn-roots in their grip on darkness;

And the buried stones, taking the weight of winter;

30 The hill where the hare crouched with clenched teeth.
Rain plastered the land till it was shining
Like hammered lead, and | ran, and in the rushing wood

Shuttered by a black oak leaned.

The keeper’s gibbet had owls and hawks
35 By the neck, weasels, a gang of cats, crows:
Some, stiff, weightless, twirled like dry bark bits

In the drilling rain. Some still had their shape,

Had their pride with it; hung, chins on chests,
Patient to outwait these worst days that beat
40 Their crowns bare and dripped from their feet.

Ted Hughes (1960)

‘November’
No sun — no moon!
No morn — no noon —
No dawn — no dusk — no proper time of day.
No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,
5 No comfortable feel in any member —
No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,
No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds! —
November!

Thomas Hood (1844)

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2 Read the two poems called ‘November’ and answer the following questions:

™ 1 What does Ted Hughes mean by (a) dragging grey columns (line 20) and
(b) glassy verticals (line 23)? What do these words tell you about the weather?
Describe what the narrator of Ted Hughes’s poem sees in a ditch. Zz
fe)
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Choose and comment on two words or phrases which you find interesting in i’)
Ted Hughes’s poem. Ss
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What does Ted Hughes's narrator see in the wood? =
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‘Treed’ and ‘gulleyed’ are unusual words to use in modern English. What do ie)
=
they mean and how effective do you think they are? ga
=
ct
What does Thomas Hood’s poem have in common with Ted Hughes's? wn

How do the two poems differ?

What does Thomas Hood’s poem have in common with the extract from
Bleak House at the beginning of this chapter?

November thoughts
The word November comes from the Latin word novem because it was the ninth,
and penultimate, month in the Roman calendar. It is part of a numerical sequence
which includes September, October and December.

Poets and writers have often written about November in gloomy terms.
Alexander Pushkin, the Russian poet and playwright, writes ‘A tedious season
they await /Who hear November at the gate’ in his 1833 play Eugene Onegin.
The American/British poet T S Eliot (1888-1965) referred to ‘Sombre November’
and the Scottish poet and novelist Walter Scott (1771-1832) wrote in Marmion:
‘November's sky is chilland-drear / November’s leaf is red and sear.’

Perhaps it is because November has this dull, grey, cold image that its first
week has, over the centuries, acquired a number of festivals and celebrations to
brighten it up.

10 In 835 AD, for example, 1st November became All Saints’ Day, once known as All
Hallows’ Day, in the Christian calendar. Saints — the famous ones and ordinary
people who have done saintly things — are remembered on this day which is a
public holiday in many European countries. Traditionally, the festival began the
previous evening as All Hallows’ Eve. And All Hallows’ Eve traditions continue to
A
bs develop extensively, especially in America and Britain, although most of today’s
ghoulish fun and games are a long way from remembering, or praying to, saints.

All Souls’ Day, also a public holiday in many European countries, falls on 2nd
November. Known in Italy as the Day of the Dead it is a traditional time for
families to remefnber people they've lost and to visit cemeteries. The Christian
20 Church regards it as a day to pray for the souls of all dead people.
 In Britain, Sth November is Bonfire Night or Guy Fawkes Day. It was declared
a public holiday by a decree of Parliament to celebrate the failure of the
Gunpowder Plot in 1605. The plot, which was foiled at the last minute,
involved a group of Catholics (Guy Fawkes became the best known) trying
25 to blow up the Houses
of Parliament while the
Protestant King, James |, was
ceremonially opening it for
the year.
30 Until 1859 parish churches
were required to hold
thanksgiving services on 5th
November. Bells were rung
and cannons fired during
35 the day. Effigies of the pope,
Guy Fawkes and other hated mw A burning effigy on Bonfire Night in Lewes, East Sussex
figures were burned on bonfires.
Some of these traditions are still very strong — at Lewes in Sussex for instance.
The bonfire, burning of the guy and firework display are usual in most places
40 although the day is no longer a public holiday.

Britain has far fewer public holidays than other European countries and many
of those it has are clustered together in the spring: Good Friday, Easter Monday,
May Day and the Spring Bank Holiday. Some people think we should have at
least one new one at a different time of year.

Would early November be a good time for this? If so we have to decide whether
to revive one of the old traditions or invent something completely new.
Personally I’d go for 1st November for three reasons.

First, it is already a holiday in most other countries. If Britain prefers to avoid the
Christian connotations of All Saints’ Day it could simply be called, say, Autumn
Holiday or People’s Day.

Second, most schools have a half-term holiday around late October or early
November which means that a lot of adults take annual leave from work to be
with their children.The new holiday could be incorporated into the half-term
week and the date for half-term standardised as the Spring Bank Holiday week
at the end of May already is.
pu
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QO Third, it would launch November in a cheerful way and we might all stop being
S so negative about it.
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a Susan Elkin (2012)

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Read ‘November thoughts’ and answer the following questions: ga
vbe)
1 What was the original meaning of the word ‘October’? (@)
rt,
2 What are the four adjectives that the poets use to describe November in the oO
(4)
first paragraph?
3 Explain the meaning of (a) sear (line 6), (b) ghoulish (line 16),
(c) connotations (line 49) and (d) standardised (line 54).
4 How do modern Halloween customs differ from old 1 November traditions?

5 Summarise the ways in which the celebration of 5 November has changed in

Britain since 1605.

6 How does the writer think a new public holiday on 1 November could benefit
British families?

Exercise 3.4
1 Write a story or poem entitled ‘November’.
2 Imagine you are the sleeping tramp in Ted Hughes’s poem. Tell your story.
3 You are an advice columnist in a magazine or newspaper.A reader writes
saying that he or she finds November a very dull month and can think of
nothing to do. Write your reply offering advice and giving ideas for how the
reader might enjoy some of the delights of November.

There are writing guidelines for task 3 (advice writing) in the answers. Look
for the section at the end of the answers called ‘Writing guidelines’.

4 Write the next three or four paragraphs to follow Dickens’s description in the
extract from Bleak House at the beginning of the chapter. Remember he is
about to introduce some characters and/or action. Try to use his style if
you can.
5 Write about November in any way you wish.
6 ‘How does Dickens make the opening of Bleak House interesting?’ Answer this
question as an English literature essay, developing your ideas fully and in a
detailed and well-structured manner. Comment on Dickens’s use of language
and pick out phrases and words which you find particularly interesting.
Explain why. Your answers to Exercise 3.1 will help you.
7 Write your views about public holidays in Britain. Should there be more? How
should they be spaced during the year?
 Did you know?
These facts relate to the writers or topics featured in this chapter:
e Ted Hughes was married to the American poet Sylvia Plath,who ,
committed suicide in 1963. They had two children together.
Topaz is the birthstone for November and the flower of the month is the
chrysanthemum.
Because the peace document to mark the end of the First World War was
signed at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of
1918, 11 November has been observed ever since as Remembrance Day.

m The Cenotaph in London

e Thomas Hood was a poet of the early nineteenth century who is known
for his darkly comic verse and poems of social protest.
e@ Once Charles Dickens had become successful and well off he bought a
house near Rochester in Kent where he lived and worked from 1856 until
his death in 1870.

Me
©
Q
o>
2) Research and note three separate facts to add to the list above. They should
2
relate to November or to the writers and other topics touched on in this chapter.
™) You should be able to summarise each of your facts in a single sentence.
().Grammar and punctuation
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2)
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Modifiers 3
3ey)
A modifier is a word or phrase which modifies, transforms, changes, alters, a
ie)
qualifies, determines or affects the meaning of another word or phrase. |
[a
ao]
Modifiers, which are sometimes called determiners, include various (=
=|
sorts of adjective and adjectival phrases, adverbs and adverbial 2)
et
phrases and possessive pronouns. =
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ie)
Consider these examples. The modifier is in bold. S

She wore a hat.

She wore your hat (possessive pronoun modifies ‘hat’)

She wore a hat, inherited from her grandmother (adjectival

phrase modifies ‘hat’)
We waited.

We waited quietly (adverb modifies ‘waited’)

We waited in quiet respect (adverbial phrase modifies ‘waited’)

Children laugh.

Boisterous children laugh (adjective modifies ‘children’)

In each case the modifier changes the meaning of the sentence.

Modifiers are a large group. Think of them as a big grammatical ‘file’

into which many smaller files fit.

Put modifiers (as single words or phrases) into the gaps in these sentences. (Note
each sentence already makes sense but you are changing the meaning.)

1 Charles Dickens wrote ___________ books.

2 November, December, January and February are ________ months.

3 Richard ate
4 , Thomas Hood was _______ poet.
BA kes ete DOCS == = lays ang. Fiction.

6 mmouitiens are adjectives and adverbs.

7 Would you like to have ___—____ supper with us ____?

8 There is _________ difficulty here.
 9 | like _______ cooking.
10 =
= musicis=__—__ _—_- too. loud:

Revision of apostrophes .
Remember that apostrophes have two functions:
e They stand in place of omitted letters.
e They indicate possession.

Look at these examples from the passages at the beginning of this chapter:
e Omission
e ‘prentice boy (for apprentice boy)
e they've (for they have)
e Possession
e one another's umbrellas
e the tramp’s face
e the hill’s hanging silence
e the keeper's gibbet
e like a hedgehog’s (hair)
e Dickens’s style

One of the worst and commonest mistakes is to use an apostrophe

simply because the word is plural, or ends in an ‘s’, for example, words
used in the passages: snowflakes, services, bonfires.

Put apostrophes in these examples where they are needed. In brackets after each
put (p) for possession, (0) for omission or (n) for no apostrophe needed:

1 Thomas Hoods poems 7 six oclock

2 dos and donts 8 the witnesss statement
3 novels written by Victorians 9 We shouldnt keep dogs and cats
4. St Marys Church indoors too much.

5 the reigns of Stuart Kings and PO MASE TED:

Queens 11 Guys and Dolls
6 Queen Annes reign 12 Aunt Glyniss house

Qo
i

Semicolons for lists

o<> Look carefully at the punctuation in these sentences from Bleak House:
iS}
2 Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying out on the
yards, and hovering in the rigging of great ships; fog drooping on
)
the gunwales of barges and small boats.
 Fog in the eyes and throats of ancient Greenwich pensioners, %)
a)
wheezing by the firesides in their wards; fog in the stem and bowl 0.
=
of the afternoon pipe of the wrathful skipper, down in his close
ga
cabin; fog cruelly pinching the toes and fingers of his shivering ©
3
little ‘prentice boy on deck. ra
<
re)
Dickens is using semicolons to divide items in lists in long sentences. (@]
yy
A semicolon is stronger than a comma, so if complex items are being os
at
listed the writer can use commas as subdividers inside the items in the
list - although not always. As with commas for lists, you don’t need 2
a semicolon if you use ‘and’, ‘but’ or ‘or’ before the final listed item.
There is no capital letter after a semicolon unless the word is a proper
noun or other word which needs a capital letter in its own right.

For example:

The mouse found nuts, berries and seeds; buried them in cavities in
bark, inside the debris of the greenhouse and under rocks; revisited
its stashes, ensured the security of the hoards and made final
coverings and, during winter dearths, searched them out again.

Use semicolons to divide the items listed in these sentences:

1 | bought oranges, because they are my mother’s favourite and she has a bad
cold bananas for Peter some fresh dates, which we all like unripe peaches,
which will be ready in a few days and a big bag of overripe apples for my
horse, who loves them for treats.

2 Our tour of America took us to New England where Dad was fascinated
by Boston and its history into California where we didn’t like Los Angeles
but loved the countryside eastward along the Mexican border eventually
to Louisiana and Alabama and included highlights like Charleston in South
Carolina.
3 This year Yasmin has already read three books by Charles Dickens, which she
says she enjoyed very much most of Daphne du Maurier, including The Glass
Blowers four modern crime novels biographies of William Pitt and Charles
Darwin and quite a lot of poetry.

C).Spelling and vocabulary. smc

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gh- words
The word ‘ghoulish’ came into English from Arabic in the eighteenth
century. In Muslim legend a ghoul was an evil demon thought to eat
human bodies - either stolen corpses or children.
 A small group of Anglo Saxon-words - such as ‘ghost’ and
‘ghastly’ — begin with ‘gh-’ too. The Anglo-Saxon language,
now usually called Old English or OE in dictionaries, was
spoken by the people who lived in Britain before it was
successfully invaded by William of Normandy in 1066. After
the conquest, the Anglo-Saxon language gradually merged
with French, which was largely based on Latin.

Other ‘gh-’ words - ‘ghee’, ‘ghat’ and ‘gharry’ for example -

have come into English more recently from Hindi because of
Britain’s long association with India.

Still more ‘gh-" words have come from other sources. We get
‘gherkin’ from Dutch, ‘ghetto’ from Italian and ‘ghillie’ from
Scottish Gaelic.
m= AnAnglo-Saxon helmet

Use these ‘gh-’ words in sentences of your own to show that you understand
their meaning:

1 gharry 5 ghastly
2 ghetto 6 ghillie
3 ghoulish 7 ghee
4 ghat 8 gherkin

gg words
‘Haggard’ and ‘luggage’ are spelt with a double “g’ which is quite
common in English.

Exercise 3.10
1 Learn the spellings and meanings (if you need to) of these ten ‘gg’ words:
aggravate goggles priggish

aggressive laggard smuggle

arpeggio niggardliness toboggan

2 Make a list of ten more words which contain ‘gg’.

4
G
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Breaking the rules

CS)
2 In the extract on page 28, Dickens has written entirely in sentence
fragments - part sentences which don’t have a formal subject and
tv)
verb. They are not therefore grammatically ‘correct’.
Daphne du Maurier uses this technique (see Chapter 1) but Dickens on
iJ
has taken it further. S
fa)
pad
2)
Examples: =|
wn
2)
e Implacable November weather. =>

e Dogs, indistinguishable in mire. @

S
@ Fog everywhere. ga
(=
oy)
oa
)
This is quite easy to spot in very short sentences, but in this passage
longer ‘sentences’ are fragments too:
@ As much mud in the streets, as if the waters had but newly retired
from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet
a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine
lizard up Holborn Hill.
e Gas looming through the fog in divers places in the streets, much
as the sun may, from the spongey fields, be seen to loom by
husbandman and ploughboy.

The effect of this is to make Dickens’s observations read like notes.

(After all, he was a journalist as well as a novelist.) It’s a style
associated with very personal, impressionistic writing - in diaries
for example. And it allows Dickens to start as many sentences as he
likes with that plodding, heavy-sounding word ‘fog’. If he’d carefully
observed the rules of grammar and written ‘There was fog everywhere’,
or ‘Fog was everywhere’, the impact would have been slower, duller
and much less immediate.

One of the differences between poetry and prose is that poems tend
to use sentence fragments rather than grammatical sentences. For
example:

Face tucked down into a beard, drawn in / Under his hair like a
hedgehog’s.

No sun — no moon!

This is why Dickens’s description of London feels quite poetic as well

as vivid.

Exercise 3.11
Copy a section of the Bleak House extract, setting it out on the page as if it were
a poem. Remember that poems usually begin each new line with a capital letter
so you may need to adjust Dickens's capitalisation. Decide how you would have
known, if you’d seen your version in a poetry book, that it wasn’t written as a
poem originally.
 Exercise 3.12
Write a paragraph describing a scene you know well using only sentence
fragments.

(If you are using a computer, ignore the grammar checker for this exercise.)

There is nothing wrong with breaking grammatical rules, for effect, when
you're writing creatively, provided that you understand exactly what you're
doing, know why you're doing it and do it with flair - Dickens knew the rules of
grammar as well as anyone!

COOH ee wee esses oer Heese ree Pose seseeressr esse oesveeseseseseseesereeseseoesesssenD

1 Learn the Thomas Hood poem by heart and practise reciting it.
2 In groups of about four discuss your experience of, and feelings
about, November. Some of the extracts in this chapter regard it
rather negatively. Is there anything that you like about November?
3 Imagine you are a television newsreader. Report on the weather in
London in an appropriate style for the November day that Dickens
describes at the beginning of Bleak House. (Imagination is needed
here. Of course there was no TV in 1852. Use a modern TV style but
take your weather information from the passage.)
4 Organise a class debate on the proposition ‘This house thinks that
winter is more enjoyable than summer:
5 Work in a pair. Take it in turns to tell each other about the best
book you have read in the last three months.

Extra reading
These books are either connected with the extracts at the beginning of
this chapter or they relate in some way to the theme of dark, autumn,
November-like days:
@ The Hobbit by J R R Tolkien (1937)
@ Darker plays by Shakespeare such as King Lear, Othello and Hamlet;
Shakespeare Stories (1985) and Shakespeare Stories I/ (1994) by Leon
Garfield are a good starting point
@ The Fire-Eaters by David Almond (2003)
® The Foreshadowing by Marcus Sedgwick (2005)
o
~

es) @ Northern Lights by Philip Pullman (1995)

So
> ® Collected Poems of Ted Hughes, edited by Paul Keegan (2003)
}
= e Selected Poems of Thomas Hood, edited by Joy Flint (1992)

i) ® A Town like Alice by Nevil Shute (1950)

 im)
mal
®@ Bleak House by Charles Dickens (1852)* (e)
ga
=
® Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens (1857)* Ww]
A)
Ma)
@ Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy (1895)* =h
=
cat
et
@ Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (1899)* >
i)
=
*Recommended for very keen readers and for those taking scholarship

Progress further
e Find out why fogs — which used to be nicknamed ‘pea-soupers’ because they
were a thick greyish-green and you couldn’t see through them — were so
much worse in 1852 than they are today. Write a paragraph about this and
keep it to refer to.
e Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) is a recognised mental health problem and
symptoms tend to begin around November. Find out what you can about it.
Do you know anyone who suffers from it? What could you — or anyone else —
do to help?
e In 2005 the BBC ran a new serialisation of Bleak House which many people
liked very much. It was issued on DVD (three discs) in February 2006. Watch
this (again, if you’ve seen it before) so that you know the outline story. Then
try reading the book.
 Villains

A new chaplain
Mr Slope is chaplain, a personal assistant, to the newly appointed Bishop Proudie
in nineteenth-century Barchester, a fictional city in the west of England. He is not
exactly a hero.

Mr Slope is tall, and not ill made. His feet and hands are large, as has ever been
the case with all his family, but he has a broad chest and wide shoulders to carry
off these excrescences, and on the whole his figure is good. His countenance,
however, is not specially prepossessing. His hair is lank, and of a dull pale reddish
hue. It is always formed into three straight lumpy masses, each brushed with
admirable precision, and cemented with much grease; two of them adhere
closely to the sides of his face, and the other lies at right angles above them.
He wears no whiskers, and is always punctiliously shaven. His face is nearly the
same colour as his hair, though perhaps a little redder: it is not unlike beef —
10 beef, however, one would say of bad quality. His forehead is capacious and high,
but square and heavy, and unpleasantly shining. His mouth is large, though
his lips are thin and bloodless; and his big, prominent, pale brown eyes inspire
everything except confidence. His nose, however, is his redeeming feature: it
is pronounced, straight, and well-formed; though | myself should have liked it
Lhe, better did it not possess a somewhat spongy, porous appearance, as though it
had been cleverly formed out of a red coloured cork.

| never could endure to shake hands with Mr Slope.A cold, clammy perspiration
always exudes from him, the small drops are even seen standing on his brow,
and his friendly grasp is unpleasant.

20 Such is Mr Slope — such is the man who has suddenly fallen into the midst
of Barchester Close, and is destined there to assume the station which had
hitherto been filled by the son of the late bishop. Think, oh, my meditative
reader, what an associate we have here for those comfortable prebendaries,
those gentlemanlike clerical doctors, those happy, well-used, well-fed minor
25 canons, who have grown into existence at Barchester under the kindly wings of
Bishop Grantly!
 x
But not as mere associate for these does Mr Slope travel down to Barchester <
ve
with the bishop and his wife. He intends to be, if not their master, at least the f+))
7
aa
chief among them. He intends to lead, and to have followers; he intends to hold
S)
30 the purse strings of the diocese, and draw around him an obedient herd of his =
fa
poor and hungry brethren. =i
o
7
From Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope (1857)
n_

Read the extract from Barchester Towers and answer the following questions:

1 Summarise Mr Slope’s appearance in your own words.

2 What is the name of the previous bishop and what can you deduce about the
attitude of Barchester clergy to him?
3 Who had been chaplain to the previous bishop?
4 Give other words or phrases for (a) excrescences (line 3), (b) punctiliously
(line 8), (c) capacious (line 10) and (d) prebendaries (line 23).
5 What do you learn about Mr Slope’s attitude to his new job from this
passage? Use quotations from the passage to support your ideas.
6 What impression does the author want the reader to have of Mr Slope?

‘My Last Duchess’

This poem, set in sixteenth-century Italy, was written in 1842.

That’s my last duchess painted on the wall,

Looking as if she were alive. | call
That piece a wonder, now: Fra Pandolf’s hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
5 Will’t please you sit and look at her? | said
‘Fra Pandolf’ by design, for never read
Strangers like you that pictured countenance,
The depth and passion of its earnest glance,
But to myself they turned (since none puts by
10 The curtain | have drawn for you, but |)
And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst,
How such a glance came there; so, not the first
Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, ‘twas not
Her husband's presence only, called that spot
 15 Ofjoy into the Duchess’ cheek: perhaps
Fra Pandolf chanced to say, ‘Her mantle laps
Over my lady’s wrist too much,’ or ‘Paint
Must never hope to reproduce the faint
Half-flush that dies along her throat’: such stuff
20 Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough
For calling up that spot ofjoy. She had
A heart — how shall | say? — too soon made glad,
Too easily impressed; she liked whate’er
She looked on, and her looks went everywhere.
25 Sir, ‘twas all one! My favour at her breast,
The dropping of the daylight in the West,
The bough of cherries some officious fool
Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule
She rode with round the terrace — all and each
30 Would draw from her alike the approving speech,
Or blush, at least. She thanked men — good! but thanked
Somehow — | know not how — as she ranked
My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name
With anybody’s gift. Who’d stoop to blame
This sort of trifling? Even had you skill
In speech — (which | have not) — to make your will
Quite clear to such an one, and say, ‘Just this
Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss,
Or there exceed the mark’ — and if she let
Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set
Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse,
— E’en then would be some stooping; and | choose
Never to stoop. Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt,
Whene’er | passed her; but who passed without
Much the same smile? This grew; | gave commands;
Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands
As if alive. Will’t please you rise? We'll meet
The company below, then. | repeat
The Count your master’s known munificence
Is ample warrant that no just pretence
Of mine for dowry will be disallowed;
Though his fair daughter’s self, as |avowed
At starting, is my object. Nay, we'll go
“
Together down sir. Notice Neptune, though,
& Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity,
©
= Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!
>
Robert Browning (1842)
st
 >
®
=
Read the poem ‘My Last Duchess’ and answer the following questions: i)
=
1 ie)
=n
Who is the narrator of the poem?
a)
2 Whom is the narrator addressing and what is he negotiating for? =is)
@o
3 What has happened to ‘my last duchess’ and why? ®
<
4 Choose and list three or four words or phrases which emphasise the sinister
power of the narrator. g
Qa
re¥)
Wi Why does the speaker mention the sculpture of Neptune at the end? et
a)
What does rhyme contribute to this poem? Quote from the poem to support =
ra)
your answer. a
oO
1%)
et
1)
be
A review of Sweeney Todd at Chichester Festival
=
@o
nn
ag
Theatre <
a
+
It has long seemed to me that Stephen =i
@o
Sondheim's Sweeney Todd is the last of the rey)
ct
=
truly great classic American musicals, right om

up there with Guys and Dolls, West Side Story

and My Fair Lady.

To judge by the ecstatic response that

greeted Jonathan Kent’s new production
which opened last night in Chichester,
audiences evidently agree. But though there
10 are undoubtedly many moments here that
achieve the right mixture of nervous
laughter and spine-tingling terror this strikes
me as a production that doesn’t quite do
justice to a masterpiece.

15 It’s perhaps a sign that a show has acquired classic status when a director feels
free to start mucking about with it — and Kent does just that. For reasons that
escape me he has set the action in what appears to be the 1930s, though the
story of the demon barber of Fleet Street, who slits the throats of his customers
to furnish the raw materials of the famous pies served in Mrs Lovett’s shop
20 beneath, is firmly set in the Victorian era, and inspired by Dickens, penny
dreadfuls and 19th century melodrama. Updating it seems merely perverse.

Perhaps Kent’s idea was to make the piece seem more ‘relevant’ by reminding
us of the great slump of the 1930s as our economy goes down the plughole yet
again, but | do wish he had left well alone.
 25 | was also less than persuaded by Michael Ball’s performance in the title role.
With his pale plump face, goatee beard and lank dark forelock of hair, he
certainly looks sinister. But he also looks like David Brent in The Office, and
his voice doesn’t always rise to either the vocal or the dramatic challenges
of the role. He tries hard, and certainly dispels the cosy image of his Radio 2
30 programme, but he never quite penetrates the dark rancorous heart of Sweeney.

| have no reservations at all however about Imelda Staunton as the kind and
cosy Mrs Lovett who hits on the devilish plan of turning Sweeney's victims into
pie fillings and her customers into inadvertent cannibals. There is a wonderful
comic zest in her performance and she gets superb value from one of the
35 show’s greatest songs, the irresistibly inventive ‘A Little Priest’ in which she
contemplates the ingredients of her pies in such wonderful Sondheim lyrics as
‘we have shepherd’s pie peppered with actual shepherd on top’.

And her tender, lovelorn yearning for the psychopathic barber somehow
proves more poignant and more moving than Sweeney’s mountainous sense of
40 injustice and love for his own lost daughter Johanna, feebly played and sung by
Lucy May Barker.

The wonderful score, however, with its doomy organ, shrieking industrial sirens
and nerve-fraying brass is superbly played and though this is far from being the
greatest Sweeney Todd | have seen, the musical’s mixture of darkness and wit
45 remains as damnably addictive as ever.

From an article written by Charles Spencer and published in the

Daily Telegraph (2011)

Read the review of Sweeney Todd and answer the following questions:

1 Who directed this production?

2 Which city was it staged in?

3 Choose three words from the passage which remind you that this show tells
the story of a horrifying villain.
4 Explain in your own words the two things which critic Charles Spencer disliked
most about this production.
“
= 5 What do you learn from Charles Spencer’s review about the character
© Mrs Lovett?
=
=
6 What does Spencer admire about Imelda Staunton’s performance? Use
quotations from the passage in your answer.
vt
 Writing practice Sate &! =)
jou
<
2)
1 Imagine you are the Count’s daughter who is to be married to the Duke in c
x
Browning's poem. Write an entry for your diary describing your first meeting a
with the man your father has decided you will marry. fe)
=a)
2 Write a story entitled ‘Not exactly a hero’.
3 You are the daughter or son of a clergyman in Barchester. Mr Slope comes to
tea and it is the first time you have met him. Write your impressions. Use your
imagination to add to the information in the passage.
4 Write an essay about ‘My Last Duchess’. Mention the story that the poem
tells, how it is told and the poet’s choice of language. Make sure you comment
in detail on the effect of some of Browning’s words and phrases. You can use
some of your answers to Exercise 4.2 as a starting point and also the notes in
the ‘Functions of language’ section on page 52.
5 Write in any way you wish about villains or people who aren’t what they seem.

Did you know?

These facts relate to the writers or
topics featured in this chapter:
@ The word ‘villain’ originally meant an
agricultural worker (a ‘villein’) but
gradually changed to mean a wicked
or malevolent person.
As well as being a prolific novelist,
Anthony Trollope was a senior Post
Office official and inventor of the
pillar box.
AA,
Robert Browning wrote the famous ——
ae =——
children’s poem ‘The Pied Piper of
Hamelin’.
The Sweeney Todd story — or legend
— has been filmed and staged many
times, including the 2007 film
starring Johnny Depp and Helena = A statue of the Pied Piper of Hamelin
Bonham Carter. farlamalin

Grerdse
45
Research and note three separate facts to add to the list above. They should
relate to villains or to the writers and other topics touched on in this chapter. You
should be able to summarise each of your facts in a single sentence.
 ( ).Grammar and punctuation
Pret rerrr re rerrrererrerrvereeereer LErereereererereeeeerrcerer ers eee eee

Anticipatory phrases
Look at the phrases which open these sentences:

One of the only truly classic American musicals, Sweeney Todd,

opened at Chichester Festival Theatre in October 2011.

Written in the mid-nineteenth century, Robert Browning’s poem

tells a sixteenth-century story.
Each is an anticipatory phrase. That means that it looks ahead to
something which is yet to come in the sentence. Unless something is
added the phrase would be meaningless.

The phrase ‘One of the only truly classic American musicals’ relates
to ‘Sweeney Todd’ which comes next. The phrase ‘written in the mid-
nineteenth century’ relates to ‘Robert Browning’s poem’. In both cases
the opening phrase anticipates the subject of the sentence.

This is a neat, useful and elegant device in writing because it helps

to vary sentence shape and means that fewer sentences repetitively
begin with the subject. It can enable a point to be well made in fewer
words too.

But it is easy to get it wrong. In English, word order affects meaning.

It is important that the subject which the phrase is referring to comes
immediately after the anticipatory phrase, otherwise the sentence
makes no sense or means something other than the writer intends.

For example:
e One of the only truly classic American musicals, Spencer finds it
damnably addictive. (Spencer is not a musical.)
e Written in the nineteenth century, Robert Browning wrote his poem in
Florence. (Robert Browning was not written in the nineteenth century.)

Look carefully at these sentences. Some are correct and some are not. Correct
(or alter so that they make sense) the ones which are wrong. You may need to
change words as well as word order:

rm) 1 Always tasty at Pizza Express, | enjoyed lunch.

=%&
2 A part-time novelist, Anthony Trollope also worked for the Post Office.
=
>
3 Presented many times in different forms, the Sweeney Todd story is very
compelling.
vt
4 Her voice very dramatic, the class listened while Fiona read her poem. wn
a)
5 Falling on 14 February, lovers the world over celebrate St Valentine’s Day.
Le
=
6 Inspired by Robert Browning, a poem a day was Andrew’s goal. ga
mw
|
a
Revision of apostrophes for possessive plurals <
re)
(@)
Remember that in English an apostrophe followed by ‘s’ is used to pe)
T
show possession. The apostrophe and ‘s’ come immediately after the a
word that is possessing (e.g. ‘Paul's friend’, ‘my sister's dog’). If the
possessor is plural, the rule is the same except that we do not add ’s’
2
after the apostrophe if the plural possessor already ends in ‘-s’ (which
of course it normally does). Thus:
@ girls’ books (books belonging to several girls)
@ ladies’ shoes (shoes belonging to more than one lady)
@ actresses’ scripts (scripts belonging to several actresses)
@ foxes’ lairs (lairs belonging to several foxes).

Note, however, that if the plural possessor does not end in ‘-s’, add
the apostrophe and ‘s’ as normal. Thus:
e men’s shoes (shoes belonging to more than one man)
@ geese’s feathers (feathers belonging to more than one goose).

1 Write these words as plural possessives:

(a) baby (f) teacher (k) army
(b) princess (g) headmistress (\) author
(c) ibex (h) bush (m) country
(d) church (i) scientist (n) grandmother
(e) fairy (j) musician (o) granny
2 Now put each one of these plural possessives into a sentence of your own.

().Spelling and vocabulary. sennenennene

Heteronyms
Look at these sentences:

Browning makes his Duke refuse to stoop.

Perhaps Mrs Lovett puts her scraps out with the refuse.
 Mr Slope is keen to present his views to everyone he meets in
Barchester.
If Mr Slope visits a lady he usually takes a little present with him.

‘Refuse’ and ‘refuse’ look identical when written so we have to deduce

what they mean from their context. In speech they sound different
because we stress them differently.

If we mean to refuse to do something we say ‘refuse’. If we mean

rubbish we say ‘refuse’. ‘Present’ and ‘present’ are another example.

These pairs of words are called heteronyms.

Heteronyms are quite common in English because it is a stressed

language.

You can change the meaning or function of a word by stressing

different parts of it too.

For example:
@ produce and subject are verbs
@ produce and subject are nouns.

Sometimes we move the stress when we add prefixes and suffixes to

words too. For example, we say:
e illustrate but illustration
e strategy but strategic
@ memory but memorial
® appear but disappear.

This is an aspect of English that many people learning it as an

acquired language find very difficult. For those of us who grew up
speaking and hearing English it usually comes instinctively, but you
need to be aware of the tricks the language is playing.

Write two sentences to illustrate the use of each of the following heteronyms:

1 invalid 6 digest

“
2 minute 7 viola
= 3 second 8 console
©
=
= 4 collect 9 rejoin
st 5 contract 10 process
 = n
Exercise 4.9 i
Write sentences using the following words. The stressed syllable is highlighted to Ga
help you: “4
a
1 frequent (verb) 4 contest (verb) S
a
2 convict (noun) 5 absent (verb) a
=
3 rebel (noun) 6 conduct (noun) my
<
The silent p
Some words in English begin with a ‘p-’ which is not pronounced.
They come from Greek and they just have to be learnt. For example,
‘psychiatrist’ comes from the Greek words psyche, which means ‘mind’,
and iatros, which means ‘doctor’.

Study the following list of Greek words which will help with the next
exercise:
psora an itchy disease

ptochos beggarly, poor

pseudos false, untrue

psalmos a song sung to a stringed instrument

pteris a feathery fern

pneuma wind, air

pneumon lungs

pteron feather

ptosis falling

Exercise 4.10
1 Link these definitions with the right meanings on page 52:
air-filled (e.g. a tyre) serious lung disease

extinct flying reptile drooping of upper eye lid

poetic prayer, often sung skin disease

doctor who treats mental illness false

study of ferns government by the poor

 psoriasis pteridology

ptochocracy psychiatrist

ptosis pneumonia :

pseudo pterodactyl

psalm pneumatic
2 Now learn the spellings and meanings of these ten words if you don’t already
know them.
3 List as many different silent ‘p’ words as you can, using a dictionary to help
you. Then make sure you know the meanings and spellings of all the words on
your list.

The silent m

If you use ‘Never Eat Shredded Wheat’ to

remember the points of the compass or
BIDMAS (Brackets, Index numbers, Divide,
Multiply, Add, Subtract) to help remember
the order in which maths calculations should
be tackled, you are using a mnemonic or
memory aid. The ‘m-’ is silent and mnemonic
is a very unusual word. Make sure you can
spell it. We get the word from Mnemosyne
who was the goddess of memory in Ancient
= Parnassius mnemosyne is the Latin name of this
Greek mythology. species of butterfly, also called Clouded Apollo

Terre errr err rere reer ere rere erere ng © Peers @ PETE e reer eee rere eee eee eee reer rere rece ere reer eee reer

Spelling out a subtext

Anthony Trollope’s Mr Slope is very unappealing to look at and the
reader understands that he isn’t very nice to know either. But Trollope
doesn’t tell you any of this directly. He implies it.

In ‘My Last Duchess’, Browning is presenting a monologue in verse.

The speaker is a ruthless murderer. But, like Trollope, Browning
makes his meaning clear by implication rather than by what is
actually said.

Conveying ideas by implication rather than by stating them outright is

known as subtext. Think of it as an underlying message. Playwrights
“vn
& use it in drama when characters don’t say what they actually mean
Ls)
but the audience knows what is going on in their minds because of
=
> gesture and tone. Novelists and poets do something similar and the
term has been borrowed from drama to describe it.
ws

(=2)
Trollope: %
a)
@
@ praises Mr Slope sparingly to suggest that he’s being very fair o
a8
(his nose and his figure) S
a
® uses a lot of negatives to tone down his comments rather than ©
=|
choosing the vocabulary of obvious dislike (‘not ill made’, ‘no a
whiskers’, ‘not specially prepossessing’) =
et
@ chooses humorous imagery expressed with pretend seriousness @
=.
(bad beef, red cork) 5
ga
@ repeats for emphasis (‘intends’)
@ addresses the reader directly as if we and he are friends sharing a
confidential chat (‘oh, my meditative reader’, ‘I never could’).

Browning:

@ makes the Duke speak very politely and formally (‘Will’t please you rise?’)
@ ensures that the Duke is very fluent and convincing - obviously in
charge
@ gives the Duke very simple vocabulary so that there can be no
misunderstanding (‘She had / A heart - how shall I say? - too soon
made glad’)
@ never uses direct words like kill, destroy or murder
® conveys power obliquely (‘My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name’)
e has the Duke speak chillingly (‘There she stands / As if alive’).

Exercise 4.11 :
Re-read the extract from Barchester Towers. Write a short summary of Trollope’s
subtext. What, in plain, blunt language, is he trying to tell us about Mr Slope?

Exercise 4.12
Re-read ‘My Last Duchess’. Summarise in a paragraph exactly what the Duke is
telling the visitor. Be as direct as you can.

ceeeeseresceal Cece sore e essere neseeseseue JCRRO Meee OHHH HEHEHE TEESE EEO EE DESEO SEDO HESEH TESTES

1 Read one of the books listed in the next section. Tell a partner about
the book, doing your utmost to persuade him or her to read it too.
2 Prepare a reading of the description of Mr Slope. Make it as lively
and interesting as you can, remembering to communicate what you
think the author really feels.
3 Work in a small group to discuss ‘My Last Duchess’. Ensure that the
points each person makes relate to the words of the poem. Decide
how much you like the poem as a piece of writing and why.
 4 Use your work in task 3 as the basis for a prepared reading of the
poem to share with other groups.
5 Work in a pair. One of you is Mr Slope. The other is a lady he is
visiting in Barchester. It is the first time he has called. Role-play
the conversation.
6 Prepare a short talk for the class about a villain either from history
or from fiction.

Extra reading
These books either relate to the extracts at the beginning of this chapter
or they include people or situations which aren’t quite what they seem:
Envy by Gregg Olsen (2011)
The Shell House by Linda Newbery (2002)
Scarecrows by Robert Westall (1981)
Postcards from No Man’s Land by Aidan Chambers (1999)
The Oxford Book ofVillains, edited by John Mortimer (1992)
The Poems of Robert Browning (1994)
Hester’s Story by Adéle Geras (2005)
Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell (1948)
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro (2005)*
Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope (1857)*
The Warden by Anthony Trollope (1855)*
*Recommended for very keen readers and for those taking scholarship

Progress further
e@ Inthe 1980s the BBC serialised Barchester Towers and another book in the
same series by Anthony Trollope, The Warden. Alan Rickman is excellent as Mr
Slope. Titled The Barchester Chronicle, it is available on DVD. Watch it so that
you know the outline story. Then try reading the books.
e Robert Browning (1812-1889) married another poet Elizabeth Barrett
(1806-1861), known after their wedding in 1846 as Elizabeth Barrett
Browning. The story of their courtship and marriage is pretty remarkable. Find
out about their lives and read some (more) of the poetry they each wrote.
Ww
e Listen to a recording of Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd. Work out what
&
© you think about his music and enjoy Mrs Lovett’s ‘A Little Priest’ song!
=
>

st
 Beauty

Cleopatra
This is Sir Thomas North’s 1579 translation of part of Lives by Plutarch, a
Greek biographer who lived between approximately 50 and 120 AD. It describes
Cleopatra setting out to meet Mark Antony.

She disdained to set forward otherwise but to take her barge in the river of Cydnus,
the poop whereof was of gold, the sails of purple, and the oars of silver, which kept
stroke in rowing after the sound of the music of flutes, howboys, citherns, viols and
other such instruments as they played upon the barge. And now for the person
5 herself: she was laid under a pavilion of cloth of gold of tissue, apparelled and
attired like the goddess Venus commonly drawn in picture; and hard by her, on
either hand of her, pretty fair boys apparelled as painters do set forth god Cupid,
with little fans in their hands, with which they fanned wind upon her.

From Lives by Thomas North (1579)

Here is Shakespeare’s version as it appears in his 1607 play Antony and Cleopatra.

The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne

Burned on the water. The poop was beaten gold;
Purple were the sails, and so perfuméd that
The winds were lovesick with them. The oars were silver,
5 Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made
The water which they beat to follow faster,
 As amorous of their strokes. For her own person,
It beggared all description: she did lie
In her pavilion — cloth of gold, of tissue —
10 O’erpicturing that Venus where we see
The fancy outwork nature. On each side her
Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids,
With divers-coloured fans, whose wind did seem
To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool,
15. And what they undid did.
From Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare (1607)

Read the above extracts from the translation by Sir Thomas North and
Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra and answer the following questions:

1 What is the most obvious difference between these two pieces of writing?
2 Which river was Cleopatra’s barge sailing on?
3 How was the barge driven?
4 What has Shakespeare taken directly from Plutarch, his source, and what has
he added? Quote from both passages in support of your answer.
5 From Shakespeare’s lines explain the meaning of (a) ‘It beggared all
description’ (line 8) and (b) ‘And what they undid did’ (line 15).
6 Which of these two descriptions in the extracts do you prefer and why?

“The Wild Swans at Coole

The trees are in their autumn beauty,
The woodland paths are dry,
Under the October twilight the water
Mirrors a still sky;
5 Upon the brimming water among the stones
Are nine-and-fifty swans.

The nineteenth autumn has come upon me

Since | first made my count;
| saw, before | had well finished,
10 All suddenly mount
 as
And scatter wheeling in great broken rings =
@
Upon their clamorous wings.
raw
| have looked upon these brilliant creatures,
And now my heart is sore. =
ie)
re)
Us: All’s changed since |, hearing at twilight, 7)
pe)
The first time on this shore, et

The bell-beat of their wings above my head, a

2)
Trod with a lighter tread. 23
o_

Unwearied still, lover by lover,

20 They paddle in the cold
Companionable streams or climb the air;
Their hearts have not grown old;
Passion or conquest, wander where they will,
Attend upon them still.

25 But now they drift on the still water,

Mysterious, beautiful;
Among what rushes will they build,
By what lake’s edge or pool
Delight men’s eyes when | wake some day
30 To find they have flown away?
W BYeats (1917)

Read the poem ‘The Wild Swans at Coole’ and answer the following questions:

1 For how long has the narrator been observing the swans?
What time of year and what time of day is it?
How many birds are there?
Which words and phrases describe the sound of the swans?
In what way does he find them beautiful?
Ff
mu
a
N
W What is the mood of the poem? Consider the whole poem in your response.
 Hair today and gone tomorrow
All cities have lots of them. Like mushrooms they spring up when no one’s
looking. Once they were simply called hairdressers or barbers but today they use
pretentious vocabulary borrowed from other professions and life styles. ‘Treatments’
are recommended in ‘salons’ by ‘hair consultants’, ‘designers’ or ‘stylists’.

In their expensively fitted-out shops, punningly named things like ‘Prime Cuts’, ‘Hair
and Now’ or ‘Head Line’, city hairdressers are getting above themselves in a big way.
Their premises are deliberately made to look like up-market clinics (without being
clinical of course) with the staff in white uniforms, faintly reminiscent of nurses.
Hairdressers, let it not be forgotten, are the descendants of servants — ladies’ maids
10 and the like. They are not related to professions like medicine.

And what happens when you get inside these hairdressers’ shops? The client —
they have yet to call the customers ‘patients’ but it won't be long — submits, at
considerable expense, to guidance and advice from a soi-disant expert about her
hair. The hair is in ‘poor condition’. It is probably ‘damaged’. By what? By perm
Vs lotions, neutralisers, colouring agents and other of the favourite witches’ brew
of chemicals which are the hairdresser’s stock-in-trade. Not to mention the
plethora of gels, mousses, conditioners, protein rinses and so on — all, of course,
at extra cost. Hair driers, rollers, heated tongs don’t do the hair much good either.

The effrontery of the hypocrisy is astonishing. As you sit and listen to all
20 this sanctimonious tripe you are probably watching in the mirror another
customer as she voluntarily offers her head for some sort of chemical bath
or worse. Not a shred of reluctance or reservation about ‘damage’ from the
practitioner at this stage. It provides self-perpetuating employment for her
colleagues in the future, | suppose.

25 What hair actually needs for normal healthy maintenance is periodic washing
with a minimum amount of shampoo, maybe a smear of conditioner and
then to be allowed to
dry naturally. And you
don’t need to be any kind
30 of expert, self-styled or
otherwise, to know that.

The trouble is, if everyone

took the common sense
line, there’d be thousands
35 of redundant hairdressers
ray and product and equipment
=
& manufacturers. It’s big
Cr)
Lsa)
business. And what about
ln
 those who dignify their profession with a quasi-scientific title such as ‘trichology’ =
et,
40 and write learned advice in women’s magazines? =)
ga

After thirty years of submission to the conning abuses of ‘good’ hairdressers, vpe)
(a)
especially the sort who congregate in city centres and never charge less than eS;
(a)
£25 per visit, |am now shot of their less than benign attentions. 0)

| have declared unilateral independence by growing my hair long. | wash it,

45 brush it and wear it twisted in a bun on the top of my head exactly as | did as a
teenager, although it’s a bit greyer these days. A minor but satisfying blow
for autonomy.

Susan Elkin (1993)

Read the article by Susan Elkin and answer the following questions:

1 Give another word or phrase for (a) pretentious (line 3), (b) reminiscent
(line 8), (c) effrontery (line 19) and (d) autonomy (line 47).
2 Find words in the passage which mean (a) self-styled and (b) academic-
sounding.
3 What damages hair, in the writer’s opinion?
4 Explain in your own words why the writer thinks that the hairdressing
profession is hypocritical.
5 Summarise the writer’s own recommendations for healthy hair.
6 Why does the writer now do without hairdressers?
7 Identify and comment on four ‘value judgement’ words or phrases in this
passage — the ones which indicate the writer’s own views.

prercise 5.4
1 The article about hairdressers is intended for adults. Write a warning
leaflet for teenagers about the dangers of some form of ‘beauty
treatment’.
2 Imagine you are one of the boys fanning Cleopatra. Write what you tell a
friend that evening when you have finished work.
3 Write an essay comparing Shakespeare’s description of Cleopatra’s barge
with the source he took it from. Comment in detail on Shakespeare's
words and style. (You can use some of the work you did in Exercise 5.1 to
help you.)
 4 Write a poem or an imaginative prose account of something you have seen or
witnessed which struck you as beautiful.
5 Research and write a factual article about swans. Include what makes them
different from other birds, their food, habitat, breeding and behaviour.

6 ‘Beauty is only skin deep.’ How far do you agree or disagree? Write an essay
setting out your views. Use examples to support your arguments.
7 Write about beauty in any way you wish.

Did you know?

These facts relate to the writers or topics featured in this chapter:
e Inthe seventeenth century obese women were regarded as beautiful,
which is why the artist Peter Paul Rubens featured so many large ladies in
his paintings.
e William Shakespeare’s father, John, was a Stratford-upon-Avon tradesman
who could neither read nor write.
e William Butler Yeats, probably the most famous Irish poet of all time, died
ini 1939,

e The Hairdressing Council was founded in 1964 to establish and maintain

a list of qualified, professional hairdressers.

Research and note three separate facts to add to the list above. They should
relate to beauty or to the writers and other topics touched on in this chapter. You
should be able to summarise each of your facts in a single sentence.

C ).Grammar and punctuation

Tere eee eer eee Veer eeere reer SELere rere rererer errr rarer rrrrrerrrrrr rrr rer errr rr rrr eT eee e er eee eee ees

Direct and indirect speech

If we quote exactly what someone says in, for example, a story or a
newspaper article, that is direct speech.
For example:

‘Hair driers, rollers, heated tongs don’t do the hair much good/
says Susan Elkin.

2S Susan Elkin’s exact words are quoted verbatim (word for word). They
© therefore have to be enclosed in inverted commas and need some
@
a) other punctuation mark - in this case a comma - at the end.
in
Compare this example from a newspaper report: 9)
-|
e))
Dr Nigel Carter, the chief executive of the British Dental Health 3
Foundation, says that even whitening toothpastes, which are 3
a
=
largely ineffective in lightening teeth, should not be used more rs)
=)
than twice a day, as they tend to be abrasive, and overuse may ja"
~
damage the surface enamel of teeth. c
a
e)
The journalist who interviewed Dr Carter is summarising in her own et
c
pe
words what he has said. This is called indirect or reported speech and &:
oO
needs no inverted commas. It often needs a link word such as ‘that’ a
after the speech verb - in this case ‘says’ — because the words spoken
are not the direct object of the verb.

Sometimes verbs need to be put in a different tense too.

For example: |

Susan Elkin said ‘I do not visit hairdressers any more:

Susan Elkin said that she did not visit hairdressers any more.

Mr Harvey-Maynard stated, ‘I believe you've seen enough of

this, class?’

Mr Harvey~Maynard stated that he believed the class had seen

enough of this.

The following sentences all use direct speech. Rewrite them in indirect speech.
You will need to change word order and/or add or replace words. Make sure you
punctuate them correctly. Remember indirect speech is the writer summarising
what someone else has said.

1 ‘I first saw Antony and Cleopatra at Chichester Festival Theatre in 1979,’ our
English teacher told us.
‘Mysterious, beautiful,’ wrote Yeats of the swans at Coole.

‘A thing of beauty is a joy for ever,’ wrote poet John Keats.

The Queen often begins her speeches with the words ‘My husband and I’.
‘Lead onl’ said the explorer to his companion.
wu
ao
WN
&
W My grandmother said, ‘I have just read Bleak House.’
 Rewrite these sentences using direct speech. You will need to use inverted
commas and other punctuation.

1 The actor told his friends that he had enjoyed playing Antony.
2 Our headmaster hopes that the new building will be finished by the beginning
of next term.
3 According to Dr Carter, it is dangerous to whiten your teeth too often.
4 Mum had a headache so Dad asked us to be as quiet as we could.
5 Aunty Usha told us that she had made plans to spend Christmas in Papua
New Guinea this year.
6 Temi explained that she wanted to go to Granny’s via the supermarket in
order to buy her some chocolates.

Hyphens in adjectival phrases

Writers often use hyphens as links when they want to use a whole idea
or an expression as if it were a single adjective:
e whiter-than-white
e@ glow-in-the-dark
@ over-the-counter

This is quite a creative way of using language. It enables the writer to

come up with new, concise ways of describing things.

Turn the following expressions into hyphen-linked adjectives and use them in
sentences of your own:

1 black as night
2 one size fits all
3 open for business
4 dry as dust
5 fed up with school

an
5
C).Spelling
and vocabulary. css
% The origins of names
CH)
wal
Shakespeare was a playwright. ‘Wright’ is a thousand-year-old word
LA from Old English (the language spoken in England before the Norman
Conquest in 1066). It means ‘a maker’.
So Shakespeare was a maker of plays. Cartwrights and wheelwrights iY)
a)
made carts and wheels, respectively. 2
=
The names of many old crafts are still alive in English today - as ga
%)
surnames. Baker, Brewer, Shepherd and Fisher are all very common s
ee
names, for example. If you have such a name it means that at some point <
io)
- probably hundreds of years ago — one of your ancestors was known in ral
ry)
his community by the job he did and that became the family name. T
=
It is very obvious what names like Butcher, Farmer and Miller mean S
and you can probably make your own, quite long, list of such names.
But what about the less obvious ones such as Parker or Chapman?

Use a general dictionary or a dictionary of names to link the following surnames

with their meanings:

Parker jeweller

Chapman gamekeeper in a park

Cordwainer trader

Wainwright blacksmith

Cooper supplier of goods for ships

Palmer barrel maker

Goldsmith pilgrim home from the Holy Land

Sawyer leather worker

Chandler a cutter of wood

Mercer cart maker

Farrier cloth merchant

Neologisms
Trichologist’ (hair expert) is an example of a newly invented word
coined to describe a new idea, person, thing or trend. People -
especially journalists - coin new words (neologisms) all the time,
often by making a new version of an older word - such as ‘shopaholic’
or ‘chocoholic’ to describe people who are addicted to shopping or
chocolate in the same way as alcoholics are addicted to alcohol.
Others are based on acronyms or near acronyms such as ‘nimby’ which
stands for ‘not in my back yard’, and is applied to people who don't
mind new building unless it’s close to their own homes. Texting has
produced neologisms such as LOL for ‘laugh out loud’ or, sometimes,
‘lots of love’, BIF (before I forget) and HOAS (hold on a second)
among others, although accurate and fast predictive texting may mean
that some of these are already dying out.

Some of these neologisms become established and find their way into
dictionaries as part of our growing and changing language. Others
disappear very quickly.

Exercise 5.10
Find out what the following neologisms mean and use them in sentences
of your own:

1 staycation 6 wordsmith
2 technophobe 7 telethon
3 crowdfund 8 Oxfam
4 photobomb 9 Ofsted
5 townscape 10 cyberspace

The sometimes silent n

Autumn is one of a small group of words in which ‘m’ is followed
by a silent ‘n’. The ‘n’, however, is pronounced when autumn takes a
syllable in its adjectival form: autumnal.

Other words which behave in a similar way include:

@ condemn (condemnation, condemnatory)
e solemn (solemnity).

Exercise 5.11
Put these words into the spaces in the sentences which follow:

autumnal solemnity columnist condemnation columnar

1 Church services usually have an atmosphere of
2 Jan Moir is a regular ____ for the Daily Mail.
3 _________ weather is only to be expected in October.
4 At our school’s main entrance is a large __-_—=———S_aarea.
5 Because she lied to us all she earned the _______ of almost everyone
in the class.
The disappearing u a
Cc
Shakespeare used the word ‘amorous’ and Yeats the word ‘clamorous’ =|
fa
pa
in the extracts in this chapter. fe)
=|
4)
Look carefully at the spellings of these words because the nouns fe)
=P

they come from are ‘amour’ (a French word) and ‘clamour’. When they ry)
become adjectives they lose a ‘u’. In Chapter 4 Charles Spencer uses =]
ga
hs
the word ‘rancorous’ which behaves in the same way. cy)
ga
(.)
Exercise 5.12
1 Write the adjective which comes from these nouns. They all follow the same
rule:
(a) vigour
(b) humour
(c) glamour
(d) clamour
(e) rancour
2 Now make sure you know what all these words mean.

Using language polemically

In the article on pages 58-59, Susan Elkin is making an argued
case against the hairdressing industry. Although she knows that not
everyone would agree, she expresses her views in strong language and
does not acknowledge that there could be another equally valid point
of view. There is nothing even-handed about this writing.

Such an article is known as a polemic - from the Ancient Greek

word polemos, ‘war’. The author is, in a sense, waging war against
hairdressers. Someone who writes (or speaks) in this style is called a
polemicist.

But this article was intended for a magazine so it also has to

entertain. That is why Susan Elkin opens her piece with a jokey ‘hook’
about mushrooms to get the reader's attention and make him/her read
on and why she doesn’t reveal what she is talking about until the
third sentence. It is also why, occasionally, she uses slightly flippant
expressions like ‘they have yet to call the customers “patients” and
‘blow for autonomy.
 Most of her text is a fairly serious, angry attempt to draw the
attention of readers to something they may not have thought sa
before. It is the sort of article which would make readers react-
agreement or disagreement. So there would probably be published
letters about it in the next issue of the magazine.

Susan Elkin:
@ uses everyday language (‘Hair driers, rollers, heated tongs don’t do
the hair much good either’)
@ uses less common words (‘plethora’, ‘effrontery’) when she needs to
because she is assuming that her reader is adult and well educated
e directly questions the reader to involve him or her (‘And what
happens when you get inside these hairdressers’ shops?’)
e ridicules hairdressers by accusing them of behaving as if they were
medical practitioners
@ reminds readers that hairdressers are the descendants of servants
e ends with an anecdote about her own hair to establish herself as a
real, approachable and sensible person
@ uses some contracted forms of words (‘don’t’, ‘there’d’) to create a
conversational tone
@ uses personal pronouns (‘T’, ‘you’) which give the piece directness.

Exercise 5.13
Write a short polemic for a magazine — two or three paragraphs — expressing
angrily your views on something about which you feel, or can pretend to feel,
strongly. It could be the decision not to put speed bumps in your street, the
attitude of the burger industry to health or anything else you wish. Use the
same techniques as Susan Elkin, including words and phrases which carry value
judgements.

rere rrr © Cee eee rere eee ee eerereeeeee 3 Peer rerer errr erererrrrerrrrrrrrrrrrrrr rrr rrr ee eee

1 Work in a group. Devise an advertising campaign for a tooth

whitening product. You could create posters, a script for TV or radio
or an article for newspapers, magazines, the internet or some other
medium — you choose.
2 Work in a group of three. One of you is a hairdresser, one of you
agrees with Susan Elkin, and the third is a radio presenter. Rehearse
the three-minute conversation you will have on the programme.
Perform your work to the rest of the class.
ry
S
©
©
a)

ln
3 Work with a partner. One of you is Enobarbus, the character in Antony m
x
et
and Cleopatra who describes Cleopatra on her barge. The other is the rybey|
person he is speaking to, who must respond appropriately. Work out o
an updated version, taking it in turns to be Enobarbus. rt
2.
4 Imagine you are W B Yeats’s narrator. You have just seen the 5
ga
Swans again this year. Think about what you would say to a friend
about this. Write out your thoughts in prose using your own
words. Include how you felt as well as what you saw and heard.
You can invent further details of your own if you want to go
beyond what is in the poem. Then share your piece with someone
else in your class.

Extra reading
These books feature beauty or beautiful people:
e Olivia First Term by Lyn Gardner (2011)
@ /vy by Julie Hearn (2006)
@ Love, Aubrey by Suzanne LaFleur (2009)
@ The White Darkness by Geraldine McCaughrean (2005)
@ Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare (Leon Garfield’s lively
retelling in Shakespeare Stories I/ is useful.)
@ Any of the many versions of the traditional story of Beauty and the
Beast, the Arthurian legend of ‘The Loathly Damsel’ and the Greek
legend of Narcissus
Troy by Adéle Geras (2000)
Sisterland by Linda Newbery (2003)
Poems by W B Yeats; collections of Yeats’s poetry are in many
anthologies
@ The Picture of Dorian Grey by Oscar Wilde (1890)
@ Death in Venice by Thomas Mann (1912)*
*Recommended for very keen readers and for those taking scholarship
 Progress further
e Find and read the poems ‘Storm in the Black Forest’ by D H Lawrence and
‘Pied Beauty’ by Gerard Manley Hopkins. If you like them, use them as a
starting point for a personal collection of poems about beauty.
e@ Look at some art books containing figure paintings from previous centuries
or find them on the internet. Look at the work of, for example, Michelangelo,
Rubens, Titian, Gainsborough and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Or better still visit
a gallery. Then look at some modern magazines which have photographs of
fashion models and others. In what ways have ideas about beauty — especially
for women — changed? Why do you think this is? You could prepare an
illustrated presentation about this for the rest of the class.

m The portrait ‘St Cecilia’ by Paul Rubens

 Risk, adventure and
exploration
Roof climbing
The narrator of Barbara Vine’s novel Grasshopper describes a very risky hobby —
really an obsession — in which she and a group of friends are regularly involved.

The most difficult kinds of roof to walk on are those on buildings put up in the
past 100 years. These roofs are usually tiled, either with peg tiles or pantiles, and
they slope steeply. It is as if architects like Lutyens and Mackintosh and Voysey
only realised in the twentieth century that it rains a lot here and steep slopes on
5 roofs provide better drainage. The best kinds are shallow and made of slates,
preferably with a stone coping or low wall at the edge, designed to hide from
view the fact that the roof slopes at all. The more ornamentation on a roof the
better, the more gables, belvederes, single chimney stacks and mansarding, the
easier it is to climb. Single detached houses are useless to the serious climber.
10 Standing alone as they do, no matter how shallow their roofs, no matter how
many footholds the tops of their dormer windows, their pediments and parapet
rails provide, they remain islands. The open air, the gap between them and the
house next door, which may be several or many feet, is the sea which divides
them from the continent. Climbers need terraces, each house joined to the one
15 next door and preferably not divided from it at roof level by a stack that is a
barrier to their progress, a high wall spanning the breadth of the roof and
carrying a dozen closely set chimney pots or cowls.

The experienced climber despises television aerials and dishes as aids to balance
keeping. He treads fast and light-footed on tile and coping and window ledge.
20 Heunderstands that the first big mistake the climber makes is to dislodge a slate
and set it clattering down to ricochet off the coping and crash on the ground. He
holds on only to that which is firm and steady, avoiding 100-year-old chimney
pots, drainpipes and flimsy plaster mouldings. The best climbers are light in weight
and supple.

25 Most roof sounds pass unheard by the householder who knows it’s impossible
anyone is walking’in the sky up above her head. What she hears must be the wind,
the rustling and rasping of tree branches. Or a cat may be up there. She has seen
a cat on these roofs. At the veterinary practice in St John’s Wood they tell her that
most of the cats they treat are brought in with broken legs. The cat on the roof or
30 balcony sees a butterfly and leaps in pursuit of it into the shining void.
 We were like cats but we saw no butterflies. Mostly we went on the roofs after
dark. In daylight you had the view, north London laid out below you, Hampstead
Heath and Highgate Wood, the heights of Mill Hill, the canal coming out of its
tunnels and entering Regent’s Park, but by day you might be seen. Not everyone
35 is in her car or stares at the ground when she walks. Once or twice we were
seen but nothing came of it. What would you think if you saw three people in
blue jeans and dark sweaters up on the roof of mansion flats? That they were
workmen putting up an aerial of course, or doing repairs to the guttering.

By night the lights were strung out and spread and scattered below us. No
40 unpolluted sky was ever so starry. But up where we were, above the lights, the
darkness was like thin smoke, the clouds and clear spaces above us stained plum-
coloured. When | first began | carried a torch and Liv had the inevitable candle until
Wim stopped her. We must learn to see in the dark, he said, as he did. He was our
teacher, as it might be a ski instructor with a class of novices on the slopes.
=
Ke) 45 At my school, on the last day of term, the fourth form traditionally played a
eer}
© game called ‘round and round the room’. You had to circle the gym from the
3)
ies main entrance and back without once touching the floor, and you did it by
o means of wall bars, a horse, a climbing frame and, of course, ropes. People who
me)
=
inadvertently tapped the floor with a toe were disqualified. The winner was the
rT 50 boy or girl to do it in the shortest time. | won it easily in my fourth-form year
w=
=) and got the prize, a tiny silver (silver plate) cat, but unfortunately you can’t take
ww
= A-levels in negotiating gyms. The roofs of Maida Vale became my gym and a lot
gv of other things besides. For a little while.
me)
©
ww People would think you mad, or at least very eccentric, if you told them you
a
la SS climbed on roofs. Of course, you seldom do tell anyone because you know what
the reaction will be. They don’t understand.They want to know why. But you might
Oo
as well shoot up some heroin or drink brandy or go dancing or climb mountains

(70)
 or do white-water rafting. They like it or they thought they would like it when they
began.

60 It takes a certain kind of person. No one who was afraid of heights would
attempt it. No one unfit or unsure on their feet should attempt it. It takes a kind
of lawlessness, an unconventional spirit. Claustrophobics are good at it. Some, a
very few, are geniuses at it. Wim was, we weren't. Liv wasn’t, and Jonny, though
good, wasn’t in Wim’s class. For us, it was the freedom we could find nowhere
65 else, but once we had pushed ourselves to the limits of what we could do and
experienced it to the full, we wanted it no longer.
From Grasshopper by Barbara Vine (2000)

(Grercie 61}
Read the extract from Grasshopper and answer the following questions:
1
Which roofs, according to the author, are the best to walk on?

2 Sum up in your own words the qualities a good roof climber needs.

3 Why, according to the narrator, is it unlikely that anyone will report a roof
climber for trespass? (You should be able to find two reasons.)
Use a dictionary to find the meaning of (a) pantiles (line 2), (b) belvederes
(line 8) and (c) mansarding (line 8)?
What, according to the narrator, is the attraction of roof climbing? Use
quotations from the passage to support your ideas.

“The Lotos-Eaters’
Odysseus and his men are lost on their way home from the Trojan War. In this
extract, the Victorian poet Alfred Lord Tennyson describes them landing on a
strange island inhabited by people who eat only the fruit of the lotos-plant. The
story comes from Book IX of The Odyssey by Homer.

‘Courage!’ he said, and pointed toward the land,

‘This mounting wave will roll us shoreward soon.’
In the afternoon they came unto a tand
In which it seemed always afternoon.
5 Allround the coast the languid air did swoon,
Breathing like one that hath a weary dream.
Full-faced above the valley stood the moon;
And like a downward smoke, the slender stream
Along the cliff to fall and pause did seem.
 10 A land of streams! Some, like a downward
smoke, Slow-dropping veils of thinnest
lawn, did go;And some thro’ wavering
lights and shadows broke,Rolling a
slumberous sheet of foam below.
Ue: They saw the gleaming river seaward
flow From the inner land: far off, three
mountain tops, Three silent pinnacles
of aged snow,Stood sunset-flush’d: and,
dew’d with showery drops,Up-clomb the
20 shadowy pine above the woven copse.

The charmed sunset linger’d low adown R

In the red West: thro’ mountain clefts the dale §
Was seen far inland, and the yellow down
Border’d with palm, and many a winding vale
25 And meadow, set with slender galingale;!
A land where all things always seem’d the same!
And round about the keel the faces pale,
Dark faces pale against the rosy flame,
The mild-eyed Lotos-eaters came.

Branches they bore of that enchanted stem,

Laden with flower and fruit, whereof they gave
To each, but whoso did receive of them,
And taste, to him the gushing of the wave
Far far away did seem to mourn and rave
On alien shores; and if his fellow spake,
His voice was thin, as voices from the grave;
And deep-asleep he seem’d, yet all awake,
And music in his ears his beating heart did make.
<
2~ They sat him on the yellow sand,
SS) Between the sun and moon upon the shore;
And sweet it was to dream of Fatherland,
ie.
oi Of child, and wife, and slave; but evermore
v Most weary seem’d the sea, weary the oar,
=
© Weary the wandering fields of barren foam.
g= Then someone said, ‘We will return no more,’
~
And all at once they sang, ‘Our island home
o> Is far beyond the wave; we will no longer roam.’
ae)
%
~< Alfred Lord Tennyson (1832) | 'A spice similar to ginger
2
&

Ke]
 Exercise 6.2 7,
pe)
—
ia)

Read ‘The Lotos-Eaters’ and answer the following questions: ro)

a
fe)
1 Describe the island in your own words. =<
oO
|
o
2 What did the inhabitants of the island give the sailors and what effect did it tw
have on them? pe)
=}
3 Explain the meaning of (a) languid (line 5), (b) alien (line 35) and (c) barren a
14)
(line 44). a=A
1A
4 Choose and comment on five or six words which Tennyson chooses for their be

sound and the atmosphere they help to create.

Ww Look carefully at the way Tennyson has arranged his stanzas and at the rhyme
pattern. What do you think this adds to the poem as a whole?

‘Sacked over ‘elf and safety, teacher who took two

boys of 15 sledging as part of technology lesson’
A teacher was sacked after letting children use his sledge in the snow as part of a
lesson because he failed to carry out a risk assessment.

Richard Tremelling, 37, took the racing sledge into school to demonstrate design
technology to his class of 15-year-olds.

5 As part of the demonstration, he tested conditions on two snowy slopes himself

before deciding they were safe enough for two boys to follow suit.

The boys were unharmed. But Mr Tremelling was sacked from his £40,000-a-year
job as head of technology for breaching health and safety rules.

Yesterday he appeared before the General Teaching Council for Wales at the
10 start of a two-day hearing to decide his future.

Campaigners and MPs said the decision to sack him was ‘absolutely disgraceful’
and ‘ludicrous’.

Nick Seaton, chair of the Campaign for Real Education, warned that the ‘heavy-
handed’ punishment ‘would only succeed in discouraging good candidates from
15 joining the teaching profession’.
He added: ‘I don’t think too many people would consider sledging to be
dangerous for children of the age of 15, particularly when under the watchful
eye of their teacher.
 ‘Mr Tremelling should be commended for thinking outside the box and
20 attempting to make his lesson more interesting for his class by introducing a
practical element. That he has lost his job over it is absolutely disgraceful.’

Rosa Fernandes, presenting the case, said: ‘Mr Tremelling took the sledge to
school without the authorisation of the head.

‘He failed to carry out appropriate risk assessments and failed to provide a
25 written risk assessment.

‘He didn’t ensure pupils were wearing protective headgear and protective
clothing.’

Mr Tremelling told the hearing he took the sledge into the 650-pupil Cefn
Hengoed Community School in Swansea as a teaching aid to incorporate the
30 weather conditions into a lesson.

He said he discussed the manufacture and use of the sledge with pupils during a
revision class.

‘A number of pupils stayed behind interested and excited,’ he added. ‘They

wanted to see it in use and, giving it some thought, | agreed.’

35 The experienced teacher said he conducted a ‘mental risk assessment’

before sliding down a small slope, covered in two to three inches of snow,
on the sledge.

Two of the pupils, aged 15, then volunteered to ride the sledge, one after the other.

Mr Tremelling said: ‘I told the first boy to follow the track marks that I’d laid out —
40 which he did in a safe manner.

‘| wanted to demonstrate sledge control so | moved to a different slope. | went

first — it was a bit fast so | was not happy for the child to go from the top.
=
Ks)
Fer] ‘He started from halfway down the slope and completed the turn correctly.
AY
S)
wa ‘The whole process took less than ten minutes and | was sure it reinforced their
3S 45 knowledge.’
me)
=
Tory MP Philip Davies said Mr Tremelling’s case was a perfect example of the
wo
=
=) ‘health and safety obsession’ in Britain today.
~~
=
G He added: ‘What has happened to this teacher is absolutely ludicrous, even in
Ss
ae)
% this day and age. The school appears guilty of a ridiculous overreaction.’
a
2 50 Lord Young, the former Cabinet minister and Tory peer, completed a report into
ie
the health and safety rules surrounding classrooms and school trips in October.
ie)
 vy
te)
He recommended introducing a single consent form to cover all activities a (a)
a
child may undertake during their time at a school. om
[a
ie}
Other recommendations include cutting back a 12-page risk assessment that —<
1")
=
55 teachers have to complete before each school trip. xs
(ens
He criticised the ‘enormous bureaucracy’ which caused many teachers to avoid pe)
=|
organising such activities, depriving millions of children of a vital part of their (aX
4)
education. All his recommendations are now being implemented. fe)
=
7)
et
Mr Tremelling was suspended following the sledge lesson after a snowfall in <

60 February 2009. He was dismissed in January last year.

He denies unacceptable
professional conduct and faces
a reprimand on his record,
suspension or being struck off if the
65 allegations are proven.

Mr Tremelling’s union, the

NASUWT, declined to comment
while proceedings were ongoing.

The hearing in Cardiff is expected

70 to end today.

From an article written by Andy Dolan and published in

the Daily Mail and Mail Online (2011)

Read the article by Andy Dolan and answer the following questions:
1
What rule did Mr Tremelling break?
2 What is the name of the school Mr Tremelling worked in and what was his job?
3 He has been sacked from his job but what other penalties could await him?
4 Summarise in your own words exactly what Mr Tremelling did on a snowy
day in February 2009.
What, according to Philip Davies and Lord Young, is wrong with health and
safety rules?
Is there anything in this article which suggests that Andy Dolan and his
newspaper have a view of their own? If so, what is it? Use close reference to
the text to support your answer.
 Writing practice BS@vart ee
1 Write about any experience you have of an adventurous or ‘risky’ activity
(such as bungee jumping, parachuting, ballooning or anything else that you
found exhilarating).
2 Write a story which begins either with someone landing on an unusual island
or having a serious accident in a laboratory.
3 Write a poem or prose description of a place known to you which has, for
some reason, a very specific atmosphere (for example, Venice during carnival
week, your home area on Christmas Day or
London in the rain).
4 Imagine that you have spotted a group of
young people roof climbing. Write a letter to a
newspaper expressing your views. Then write an
answer from someone who disagrees with you.
5 Write an essay about Tennyson's ‘The Lotos-
Eaters’. Using some of the work you have already
done in Exercise 6.2 as a starting point, comment
on how the poet achieves his effects. Do you like
the result? Explain your reasons.
6 Write about risk in any way you wish.

Did you know?

These facts relate to the writers or topics featured in this chapter:
e Grasshopper is by Ruth Rendell, who died in 2015. She wrote some of her
novels as Barbara Vine.
Tennyson, who became a close friend of Queen Victoria because both had
houses on the Isle of Wight, was Poet Laureate from 1850 until his death
° in 1892.
=er
Today's legal approach to risk stems from the Health and Safety at Work
Mg
o Act of 1974, although there have been changes and amendments to it
‘Os since then.
®
ae) Teachers are required to ‘assess risk’ — usually in writing — for every
<
© activity pupils undertake.
MS
=
ws) The Daily Mail was first published in 1896.
°
g
ae)
Lis)
x
2
ie

Xo)
 2)
I3
“

Research and note three separate facts to add to the list on the previous page.
re)
They should relate to risk or to the writers and other topics touched on in this =
mw
chapter. You should be able to summarise each of your facts in a single sentence. |
a.
~
c
=)
( ).Grammar and punctuation
hee eRe, SEV eeeeeUSesese rere rryercrurerererrrrr rr err ere reer reer reer ere eee ee ee ee
(a)
et
Cc
q@
=
Direct and indirect questions ie)
3
‘Do you like Ruth Rendell’s novels?’ asked Mrs Ali in our English
lesson. (direct)
In English Mrs Ali asked us whether (or not) we liked Ruth
Rendell's novels. (indirect)

‘Has the Health and Safety policy been circulated to all staff yet?”
enquired the headmaster. (direct)
The headmaster wanted to know if the Health and Safety Policy
had yet been circulated to all staff. (indirect)

‘What sort of locks do you have on your front door?’ asked the
policeman first. (direct)

The policeman’s first question was about the locks on our front
door. (indirect)

Like statements (see pages 60-61), questions can be asked directly

or indirectly. The direct form needs speech marks and a question mark
and tends to be shorter. It is used a lot in fiction and drama. It seems
more chatty and informal.
The indirect form needs no question mark or speech marks. It often
needs a conjunction like ‘if’ or ‘whether’. It is used a lot in reports
of meetings (the headmaster asked those present for their views)
and in everyday conversation when you can’t remember someone's
exact words so you summarise or paraphrase when you retell the
conversation to someone else (Mum wondered aloud why Dad was so
late). In indirect questions, as in indirect statements, the tense of the
verb sometimes needs to be changed (e.g. ‘Why are you singing?’ - He
asked why you were singing).
Newspaper reports use both forms - often in the same article — for
variety. Remember that there are a number of verbs which can be used
for expressing questions in your writing. They include:

asked ' questioned wondered

queried demanded enquired

 Rewrite these direct questions in an indirect form. You will need to change
some words. Be as creative as you wish as long as the meaning remains the
same.

1 ‘Can’t you see I’m busy?’ my brother said crossly.

2 ‘Why is so little Italian taught in British schools?’ questioned the Italian
Ambassador during her visit to our school.
3 Mum asked, ‘Have you got a minute to lay the table for supper?’
4 ‘When was the Battle of Waterloo?’ we were asked in history today.
5 ‘Are you sure it was Alexander Fleming who discovered penicillin and not
Marie Curie?’ Tom asked.
6 ‘What's for lunch today?’ wondered Ella, as she headed for the menu board.

Rewrite these sentences to include direct questions. Each will need speech marks
and a question mark.

1 Our form tutor wondered whether there was a reason for our not being in
school uniform.
Tariq’s enquiry was about the train’s departure time.
Granny was curious to know which car we had come in.
It was the whereabouts of Newcastle which was exciting Chloe.
fb
wn
N
W When the school was inspected we were asked how many hours of prep we
had to do.
6 The interviewer wanted to know why the Member of Parliament didn’t vote.
=
=ted
2
}
C) Spelling andivocabulary sone sae aeeenenens
i Adjectives which end in ‘-n’ like ‘barren’ double their ‘n’ when they
o take the suffix ‘ness’ and become nouns. If you speak slowly both ‘n’
v
S sounds are pronounced too. So:
©
NS
5
hed
barren (adjective) + ness = barrenness (noun)
o>
vo
%
<
2
ce

Ke)
 : Vn
Exercise 6.8 ®
Convert the following g adjectives
adj to noun S and d use them
hem iin sentences of your own: : 0a
2
re)
1 keen 4 thin a
~<
2 drunken 5 even 4
Q)
3 open 6 outspoken S

Archaisms
2
Tennyson deliberately used some words and word forms in his poem
which were not used in everyday English in 1832 and certainly aren't
now. These are known as archaisms. He chose them because he
wanted his poem to sound as if it came from a much earlier time.
Tennyson’s archaisms include:
@ up-clomb (old past tense of ‘to climb’ - now ‘climbed’)
e clefts (‘cuts through’; can you think of modern words which still
relate to this?)
e whoso (‘anyone’)
@ spake (old past tense of verb ‘to speak’ - now ‘spoke’).

Shakespeare's plays were first published in full in 1623, seven years after his
death. The King James Bible, which was one of the first editions of the Bible in
English, was published in 1611. Both texts are full of archaisms.

Find out what these archaisms from the Bible and Shakespeare once meant:
1 divers (as an adjective) 6 hie
2 groat 7 twain

3 multitudes 8 verily
4 corse 9 sirrah
5 fain 10 chough

Malapropisms
Many people misuse words because they are similar to other words
in sound or spelling and so become confused. Such errors are called
malapropisms because a very funny character named Mrs Malaprop in
Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s 1775 play The Rivals makes these mistakes
all the time. For example, she says:
e ‘He is the very pineapple of politeness!’
e ‘She’s as headstrong as an allegory on the banks of the Nile.
 Exercise 6.10
Use each of these pairs of words in two separate sentences to show that you
know the difference between them: é

1 flout, flaunt

2. plaintiff, plaintive
3 sceptic, septic
4 moral, morale

5 deprecate, depreciate

The suffix -ee

An employee is someone who is employed by an employer. For
example, Mr Tremelling was an employee of Cefn Hengoed Community
School. The ‘ee’ suffix is attached to the root verb ‘employ’ to create
a noun which means the person is, in some sense, subjected to the
action of that verb. In the same way we get:
e devotee (one who is devoted)
e absentee (one who has absented him/herself)
e trainee (one who is being trained).

New ‘-ee’ words are often made up. Some teachers call the pupils in
their tutor group their tutees. When people have been vaccinated
some doctors call them vaccinees.

Exercise 6.11
List as many examples of ‘-ee’ words as you can.

=
2Ss
= ere eee eee eee eer eee ere eee eee cree ee © Peers we Pee eee eee ee eee eee eee eee eee ee ee ee eee eee eee ee ee ee ee ees

AS News reporting
a.
® Andy Dolan is writing for a newspaper which prides itself on easy-to-
vo
< read directness. The main purpose of Dolan’s article is to give factual
i.)
Se information about Mr Tremelling’s sacking, disciplinary hearing and
=)
ow) the background to it. It is a piece of news reporting which appeared
o> in the Daily Mail's news section - not on its comment or feature
vo pages. Its secondary purpose is to hint that Mr Tremelling is the
bi)
< victim of injustice and to ridicule the authorities.
2
ce

\o
Dolan’s job is to inform the reader about the basic facts of the e=
c
incident. This is not the same as explaining, where the writer will go =)
2)
into more depth to provide details of a particular idea. An example =
fe)
would be an exploration of the “elf and safety’ culture mentioned in =]
4)
the article’s heading, with the writer perhaps drawing upon his own fe]
=a

Opinions as well as factual evidence. )

S
ga
The article: =
oy)
ga
(0)
is Summarised in its headline
is Summarised again in its opening paragraph in slightly more detail
uses the rest of its length to fill in the background
answers the standard journalism questions: Who? What? Where?
When? Why? (Richard Tremelling - Sacked —- Swansea - 2009 -
Allowed pupils to sledge)
@ uses very short paragraphs, most of which consist of a single
sentence ©
@ often includes short, grammatically simple sentences (‘The boys
were unharmed: ‘He was dismissed in January last year’)
@ quotes three people (Nick Seaton, Philip Davies, Lord Young) who
are not in favour of the way current health and safety rules are
dealt with in schools
@ gives a lot of space (nine paragraphs) to Mr Tremelling’s own
account of what happened
@ gives much less space (three paragraphs) to what Rosa Fernandes
told the General Teaching Council for Wales in presenting the case
against Mr Tremelling
e includes extra pieces of information such as Mr Tremelling’s salary
and the number of pupils in the school by building them into
sentences as adjectival phrases
@ quotes emotive words (chosen to get the reader's sympathy and
agreement) such as ‘disgraceful’, ‘ludicrous’, ‘heavy-handed’,
‘obsession’, ‘overreaction’ and ‘bureaucracy’ to support the
suggestion that Mr Tremelling has been treated unfairly.

Exercise 6.12
Write a Daily Mail-style news report relating to an incident, experimenting with
some of the techniques used here by Andy Dolan. You should choose to focus on
something which has happened in school or something you've seen reported on
television or via the internet. Or you might — an entertaining challenge this — pick
an incident from a work offiction and give it the Daily Mail treatment.

There are writing guidelines for this exercise in the answers. Look for the
section at the end of the answers called ‘Writing guidelines’.
 wee ede wee c ce£68 8 ol OG ecw ees e ee eee eee eee eee sores se GPosesevesevescscssesosesesssssesossssesesessesesssesee

1 Is risk an essential part of life? Discuss your

views in a group of four or five. Then join
another group. Share your opinions.
2 Prepare a three- to four-minute presentation
about an unusual, high-nsk sport, using
computer software if you wish and if it’s
available. Give your presentation to the rest
of the class.
3 Invite into school a speaker from the Royal
Society for the Prevention of Accidents
(RoSPA). Ask him or her to talk about
managing risk. Introduce your guest to the
rest of the class and be prepared to ask thoughtful questions.
4 Work in a pair or a group of three. Re-read ‘The Lotos-Eaters’ as if
you were risk assessors. Discuss all the dangers which faced the
sailors. What could they have done to reduce risk?

Extra reading
These books all relate to the theme of risk, adventure and exploration in
fiction or real life:
@ Bruised by Siobhan Parkinson (2011)
@ The Storm Garden by Philip Gross (2006)
A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson (1998)
The Kite Rider by Geraldine McCaughrean (2001)
Taking on the World by Ellen MacArthur (2002)

© Grasshopper by Barbara Vine (2000)

AS)
) Race to the Pole by Ranulph Fiennes (2004)
BY
s) Into the Crocodile Nest by Benedict Allen (1987)
ie
Fy Faber Book ofExploration, edited by Benedict Allen (2002)
me)
< The Report by Jessica Francis Kane (2011)
Ts
= The Birthday Boys by Beryl Bainbridge (1996)
=]
a)
¢ The Vault by Ruth Rendell (2011)
o
S
ae) Seven Years in Tibet by Heinrich Harrer (1952)*
i)
avy The Small Woman by Alan Burgess (1957)*
0
fad *Recommended for very keen readers and for those taking scholarship
Co)
 ~U
Progress further | al
oO
ga
=
@m
e@ Barbara Vine mentions three architects: Lutyens, Mackintosh and Voysey. Find A]
“n
out about them. Use books or the internet. Look at some pictures of their work. a)
=
Why did they become famous and why are they still remembered? a
et
=F
e@ Find a newspaper story (news or a feature) which uses a lot of quotations. 0)
=
Analyse it to see which quotes are examples of direct speech and which of
indirect speech. Work out why you think the journalist has made the choices
that he/she has.
e Alfred Lord Tennyson was Queen Victoria’s Poet Laureate for most of her long
reign. Find out about Tennyson’s life and home on the Isle of Wight near the
Queen’s holiday home and share your findings with the rest of the class.
 Family

Gran
Clay, the narrator of this story, lives with her parents, sister, brother and
grandmother to whom she is very close. She is feeling uneasy and thinking about
Gran who is away.

What had happened that evening wouldn't have happened if Gran had been
there. | wished she’d ring but | knew she wouldn't. The last time she’d called she
said that she and Beatrice were going to the beach for a few days. | pictured
them sitting by their fire on the sand, next to the Pacific Ocean, under a sky full
of stars, drinking wine, happily smoking whatever they were smoking. | wanted
to be there, not with Gran, to be Gran, to have jumped half a century, not
looking forward to all the things | would be able to do but looking back on all
the things | had done, without having done them.

That would be cheating. Gran said she’d earned the right to do what she liked
without caring what anyone else thought. And she had earned it. The joke about
running off to a tepee in Wales, even if it was a caravan in Shropshire, wasn’t
really a joke. When she was at university she found she was pregnant, and her
parents were very sympathetic until they found out that she and her boyfriend
didn’t intend to marry or even stay together. They thought she would have the
baby adopted and when she refused they told her not to come home until she
changed her mind, and she never did. Never changed her mind and never went
home again. Mum didn’t know her grandparents and the man we’d always called
Grandad wasn't, in fact, our grandfather. Mum was three when Gran married
him. By then she had managed to get a teaching qualification and was working
20 and everything was fine.

But the joke about the bridge players wasn’t all that funny either. Mum said he’d
been a wonderful father to her but she often wondered if the reason he’d been
happy to take her on was because he couldn’t have any children of his own. He’d
had mumps when he was thirteen and it had left him sterile. There was no IVF
2D treatment or sperm donation then. As well as being an accountant he was an
amateur athlete and full of energy, and they’d travelled all over the place on
holidays while Mum was growing up — and then he started playing bridge. Mum
said it transformed him, it was almost as if he were addicted — well | suppose he
was. Gran stayed with him, bored out of her skull, for five years until he died —
30 of monomania, Gran said, but it was a heart attack. |can remember him up to
 the time | was about eight, being all the things Mum said he was, a wonderful i)
grandfather the way he’d been a wonderful father, and then they went to the Isle >
SI
(i>)
of Wight and after that | can’t remember him at all. He switched himself off. a)
@o
<
After he died Gran discovered that it hadn't just been bridge. One thing led to @
35
=

another, poker, casinos, he’d been gambling heavily, that was the monomania,
the addiction. He’d run up hideous debts and remortgaged the house without
telling her. She was left with nothing. We didn’t talk about these things, we just
knew them, they were Gran’s back story, and Mum’s; the things that had made
them what they were.

From Turbulence by Jan Mark (2005)

Read the extract from Turbulence and answer the following questions:

1 What is Gran doing at the time of the story?

Why did Gran quarrel with her parents?
Why did Gran and her husband have no children of their own?
Where did Gran have to live after she broke away from her parents?
Fk
Mm
N
W What was the ‘monomania’ that the narrator says her step-grandfather
suffered from? How and where did it start?

6 Why and how does the narrator envy her grandmother? Use quotations from
the passage to support your answer.

“We Are Seven’

A simple Child,
That lightly draws its breath,
And feels its life on every limb,
What should it know of death?

| met a little cottage Girl:

She was eight years old, she said;
Her hair was thick with many a curl
That clustered round her head.

She had a rustic, woodland air,

10 And she was wildly clad:
Her eyes were fair, and very fair;
Her beauty-made me glad.
 ‘Sisters and brothers, little Maid,
How many may you be?’
15 ‘How many? Seven in all,’ she said,
And wondering looked at me.

‘And where are they? | pray you tell.’

She answered, ‘Seven are we;
And two of us at Conway dwell,
20 And two are gone to sea.

‘Two of us in the church-yard lie,

My sister and my brother;
And, in the church-yard cottage, |
Dwell near them with my mother.’

25 ‘You say that two at Conway dwell,

And two are gone to sea,
Yet ye are seven! | pray you tell,
Sweet Maid, how this may be.’

Then did the little Maid reply,

30 ‘Seven boys and girls are we;
Two of us in the church-yard lie,
Beneath the church-yard tree.’

‘You run about, my little Maid,

Your limbs they are alive;
If two are in the church-yard laid,
Then ye are only five.’

‘Their graves are green, they may be seen,’

The little Maid replied,
‘Twelve steps or more from my mother’s door,
And they are side by side.

‘My stockings there | often knit,

When it is light and fair,
| take my little porringer,
And eat my supper there.

‘The first that died was sister Jane;

In bed she moaning lay,
Till God released her of her pain;
And then she went away.

‘So in the church-yard she was laid;

And, when the grass was dry,
 K<
<
Together round her grave we played,
My brother John and I. =
te)
et
>
@m
‘And when the ground was white with snow, =
And | could run and slide,
55 My brother John was forced to go,
And he lies by her side.’

‘How many are you, then,’ said |,

‘If they two are in heaven?’
Quick was the little Maid’s reply,
60 ‘O Master! We are seven.’

‘But they are dead; those two are dead!

Their spirits are in heaven!’
"Twas throwing words away; for still
The little Maid would have her will,
65 And said, ‘Nay we are seven!’
William Wordsworth (1798)

Read the poem ‘We Are Seven’ and answer the following questions:
1
Account, in your own words, for the seven children in the little girl’s family.
What does she say which interests the narrator so much?
Summarise the child’s appearance in your own words.
What do you notice about Wordsworth’s word choices in this poem?

wu
WwW
&
N What is the real ‘message and mood’ of this poem? Use direct quotation to
support your views.

My mother
My mother’s family came from Leamington Spa. | have a photograph of my
grandfather fishing; surrounded by his three daughters and a formidable wife, he’s
wearing a sort of cricketing cap, a starched collar and a tweed jacket. He was, like
my father’s blindness, a taboo subject and no one ever said much about him
5 except that he was called Mr Smith and his profession was, as my father said with
the sole purpose of irritating my mother, a ‘bum-bailiff’ or Warwickshire debt-
collector. | have no idea why he shot himself, but my mother, at the end of her

@
 life, told me that it happened while she had a job as a schoolmistress in South
Africa. She learnt of it because her family sent her out a copy of the local paper
10 with the announcement of her father’s death carefully marked as a news item
which might interest her. From what she told me | understood that they sent no
covering letter.

My mother had studied art in Birmingham, to which city she bicycled daily.
Later she taught drawing in Manchester, at a Lycée in Versailles, and at a girls’
15 school in Natal, where she rode bareback across the veldt and swam naked
under waterfalls. She was a ‘New Woman’ who read Bernard Shaw and Katherine
Mansfield, whom she resembled a little in looks. My grandmother was a High
Church Anglican whose bedside table supported a prayer-book and a crucifix, but
my mother had no use at all for God, although she was to become revered as a
20 heroine and a saint in her middle age.

She earned these titles, of course, for putting up with my father; an almost
impossible task.

From Clinging to the Wreckage by John Mortimer (1982)

Read the extract from Clinging to the Wreckage and answer the following
questions:

1 What is a ‘taboo subject’ (line 4)?

2 Why, do you infer, was ‘putting up with my father ... an almost impossible
task’ for the writer’s mother?
3 What were the circumstances in which the writer’s mother learnt of her
father’s death?

4 What were the writer’s mother’s religious beliefs?

5 Explain the meaning of the words (a) formidable (line 2) and (b) revered (line 19).
6 Summarise in your own words the impression you have ofJohn
Mortimer’s mother.

Writing practice By GQratw ae

1 Write about your family or a family known to you.
2 Write a short story called ‘Turbulence’, treating the subject in any way
you wish.

3 Write a story or a poem about a family coping either with death

or disability.
4 Imagine you are Clay’s gran. Write your granddaughter a letter from the ®)
=
Pacific coast of America. ie)
3
5 Write the newspaper article which John Mortimer’s mother received in =oo
South Africa. Add additional details about her father’s life and family, if mal
©
you wish. =)
Q.
6 Write your response to ‘We Are Seven’. Comment on Wordsworth’s choice of n°)
=
words, his rhyme scheme and the point of view he is exploring. Remember to =]
fe)
first provide factual information about the poem before explaining its aspects in et
Cc
further detail. ie)
=
2)
=]

Did you know?

These facts relate to the writers or topics featured in this chapter:
The average age for becoming a great-grandparent is 75
(Guardian, 2007).
There were 17.1 million families in Britain in 2006.

John Mortimer was the father of actress and writer Emily Mortimer.
Two is the most common number of children in British families but,
because there are fewer very large families than there used to be, the
average number is now 1.8.

Research and note three separate facts to add to the list above. They should
relate to families or to the writers and other topics touched on in this chapter.
You should be able to summarise each of your facts in a single sentence.

( ).Grammar and punctuation

Placement of only
Look at these sentences:

e She only grew carrots. (She didn’t do anything else to carrots. She
didn’t buy them, or eat them or use them to make prints in art. All
she did was to grow them.)
e She grew only carrots or She grew carrots only. (She didn’t grow,
for example, potatoes, runner beans or flowers. Carrots alone were
what she grew.)
® Only she grew carrots or She, only, grew carrots. (Perhaps
other people grew other things but she was the only grower
of carrots.)
The position of the adverb ‘only’ changes the meaning and sometimes,
as in the third example above, the punctuation changes it too.

Many speakers and writers are very careless with this, often using the
first example when they mean the second. .

Think carefully about what you mean and get into the habit of placing
‘only’ accurately.

Write out these sentences, explaining in brackets what each means:

1 Only we read ‘We Are Seven’ that morning.

We only read ‘We Are Seven’ that morning.
We read only ‘We Are Seven’ that morning.
We read ‘We Are Seven’ only that morning.
Turbulence is the only novel by Jan Mark that | have read.
Turbulence is the novel by Jan Mark that only | have read.
F&F
WwW
DO
N
W Turbulence is the novel by Jan Mark that | have only read.

Split infinitive
In English we form the infinitive or ‘title’ of a verb with the word ‘to’.
The infinitive form does not have a tense or person or stated subject.
So ‘to walk’, ‘to play’, ‘to sing’ and so on are infinitives.

We use them all the time by hooking them onto other verbs in sentences
such as ‘I need to buy some food’ or ‘Shall we get ready to swim?’

In other languages, such as French or Latin, infinitives are usually

single words: marcher and ambulare (‘to walk’), jouer and ludere
(‘to play’), chanter and canere (‘to sing’).

Because in English the infinitive is a two-word structure, other words -

usually adverbs —- sometimes get slipped into the middle. This is the famous
split infinitive such as ‘to boldly go’ or ‘to happily wait’

Some people get very excited about split infinitives and regard them
as the worst grammatical mistake you can make.

On the whole they are rather inelegant and it is much better to avoid
them if possible. But sometimes trying to avoid the split infinitive
gives you such a clumsy sentence that the split is better than the
alternative. It’s a matter of common sense.
 %
a)
.
=
Rewrite each of these sentences without the split infinitive: ga
»
1 We must be sure to carefully prepare for the exam. 3
ra
<
2 Are you ready to quickly visit Gran? oO
ra
)
3 Mum told us that she used to only like reading books about horses. o
cae
4 | really will try to regularly practise the trumpet.
2
5 Let's get ready to really enjoy ourselves.
6 Americans seem to often use split infinitives.

Why do we need punctuation?

Look at these two sentences carefully:
@ The policeman said, ‘The accused is lying. I saw him break into the
shop on Thursday night!
e ‘The policeman; said the accused, ‘is lying. I saw him break into the
shop on Thursday night.

The words are the same. But the meaning is completely changed by
the punctuation.

Make up six pairs of sentences of your own. In each pair the words should be
exactly the same but punctuate them differently to change the meaning.

(_).Spelling and vocabular

mono- and -mania words
Monomania means an obsession (‘mania’) with a single thing (‘mono’)
— jn the case of the narrator's step-grandfather in the extract from
Turbulence it was gambling.

Some -mania words are very well established, such as:

e megalomania (obsession with power)
e kleptomania (obsessive stealing)
e dipsomania (obsessive drinking or alcoholism).

Journalists and others often coin new -mania words, neologisms, to

cater for the ever-increasing range of new obsessions, such as:
e Euromania (great enthusiasm for Europe or the European Union)
e lotterymania (obsession with lotteries)
e Beatlemania (obsession with the Beatle ue

m Waxwork figures of The Beatles in Madame Tussauds, Berlin

Some of these words stick and become a permanent part of the ever-
changing language. Others disappear quite quickly.

Words which include the prefix mono- include:

@ monorail (train track consisting of a single rail)
e monocle (single eye glass used instead of a pair of glasses)
e@ monotone (a sound using only one pitch).

Copy out these words. Write a short definition for each of them.

1 monologue 5 trichotillomania
2 bibliomania 6 monolingual
3 monogamy 7 monosyllable
4 monochrome 8 pyromania

More silent letters

In some words (those which derive from Ancient Greek) the ‘h’ in ‘ch’ is
silent - as in chemist, character or orchid (although there are plenty
of other ‘ch’ words in English such as ‘church’ and ‘chimpanzee’ in
which the ‘h’ is sounded). When you are writing these silent ‘h’ words
do not forget to put the ‘h’ in, for instance in ‘chaos’ and ‘orchestra’.
similarly, some words from Ancient Greek use an ‘rh’ in which the ‘h’ is a
pes
silent. These include rhubarb, rheumatism and rhinoceros. Make sure 3
you spell them correctly. 2.
(e}
|
nn

Exercise 7.10 fe)

=-

oO
Illustrate the meaning of the following words by using each in a sentence. Learn 3
ga
(or revise) the spelling as you work: (=
&
©
1 rhizome 5 chorus
2 charismatic 6 chiropodist
3 rhapsody 7 chemotherapy
4 rhombus 8 chlorine

Humorous language
The British sense of humour is famous all over the world. It is
quirky and often involves people or characters healthily laughing at
themselves or seeing ‘the funny side’ of very serious issues. It often
depends on understatement and can be quite subtle. This type of
humour is rarely full of ‘belly laugh’ jokes or ‘slapstick’ comedy in
which, for instance, people knock each other over or throw custard
pies at each other. It is often related to words and language, spoken
or written. It tends to be the kind of humour which makes you grin
rather than roar with laughter.
British humour often pokes fun at the social class system (think of
classic TV comedy like Only Fools and Horses or To the Manor Born).
John Mortimer hints at it in his Clinging to the Wreckage. His father
was a senior barrister and his father’s father a high court judge
while his mother’s father was a debt-collector, named ‘Mr Smith’ The
writer's father cannot resist commenting on this class difference by
referring to his father-in-law as a ‘bum-bailiff’ ‘with the sole purpose
of irritating my mother’.
John Mortimer’s style is a good example of the British sense of
humour. He:
@ uses short sentences which sometimes seem disjointed (‘My
mother’s family came from Leamington Spa.) ;
e sounds serious (although he isn’t)
@ uses very precise, formal language to highlight how inconsequential
it all is (‘to which city she bicycled daily’, ‘whose bedside table
supported’); the precision of the language does not relate to the
triviality of what he’s describing, which turns it into a joke
e has fun with incongruous contrasts (Leamington Spa is very English
and polite compared with naked swimming in South Africa)
e doesn’t dwell on the terrible time his mother must have had looking
after his father, but hints at it and makes it into an understated
joke; laughing at, and making light of their hardships
e recalls how the only indication that his mother was given of her
father’s suicide was a newspaper cutting without a covering note -
an example of black humour.

Exercise 7.11
Write a paragraph or two about a relative or someone you know, making it
as understatedly funny as you can. Use some of the techniques which John
Mortimer uses.

eee ree eee ree Verereereee S ere eer eee eererererererrerererr rrr rer errr eee ee ee ee

1 Work in a group of four or five. Each one of you is a family member.

Role-play an argument about homework.
2 Work with a partner. Devise a short play (sketch) based on
‘We Are Seven’.
3 Tell a partner about a member of your family who is interesting,
tiresome, entertaining, eccentric, charismatic, etc. (Everyone has at
least one!) Then join another pair. Each of you should describe his
or her partner's relative to the rest of the group.
4 Organise a discussion (or formal debate) on the question ‘Is the
traditional family disappearing and, if so, what are the effects of
the change?’
5 Present an oral book review (perhaps on one of the titles
recommended in this chapter or elsewhere in this book) to a small
group or to the rest of the class.
 ~o
=
Extra reading 2)
ga
|
These books all have family as a major theme: 1)
71)
nn
e The Truth about Celia Frost by Paula Rawsthorne (2011) =A
Cc

® Turbulence by Jan Mark (2005) =

=r
@o
a
® Buddy by Nigel Hinton (1982)
@ Looking
for X by Deborah Ellis (1999)
@ Falling Leaves Return to their Roots by Adeline Yen Mah (1997)
@ Clinging to the Wreckage by John Mortimer (1982)
@ Noand Me by Delphine de Vigan (2007)
@ Hungry Hill by Daphne du Maurier (1943)
® Germinal by Emile Zola (1885)*
® A Year Without Autumn by Liz Kessler (2011)*
@ What Maisie Knew by Henry James (1897)*
@ Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (1877)*
*Recommended for very keen readers and for those taking scholarship

Progress further
e Find out about the life and work of William Wordsworth. He believed that
poetry should be about the everyday lives of ordinary people like the little
girl in ‘We Are Seven’ — an unusual approach in the late eighteenth century
when he started writing.
e John Mortimer (1923-2009) was a defence barrister. He gave up practising
law to be a full-time writer of plays,TV and film scripts, and books. Read at
least one of his books. He was a very witty writer.
e Compulsive gambling is a recognised addiction. Invite a representative
of Gamblers Anonymous into school to tell you about the work of this
organisation and the problems faced by its members.
e Research the changing role of grandparents in different cultures. Present your
findings to the rest of the class.
 Government

The Battle of the Windmill

A group of farm animals has evicted the farmer and other human beings. It now
runs its own farm, but there are leadership problems and it is difficult to know
whom to trust and who is telling the truth. And sometimes the farm is attacked
by outsiders.

They had won, but they were weary and bleeding. Slowly they began to limp
back towards the farm. The sight of their dead comrades stretched upon the
grass moved some of them to tears. And for a little while they halted in
sorrowful silence at the place where the windmill had once stood. Yes, it was
gone; almost the last trace of their labour was gone. Even the foundations were
partially destroyed. And in rebuilding it they could not this time, as before, make
use of the fallen stones. This time the stones had vanished too. The force of the
explosion had flung them to distances of hundreds of yards. It was as though the
windmill had never been.

As they approached the farm Squealer, who had unaccountably been absent
during the fighting, came skipping towards them, whisking his tail and beaming
with satisfaction.
And the animals heard, from the direction of the farm
buildings, the solemn boom of a gun.

‘What is that gun firing for?’ said Boxer.

‘To celebrate our victory!’ cried Squealer.

‘What victory?’ said Boxer. His knees were bleeding, he had lost a shoe and split
his hoof, and a dozen pellets had lodged themselves in his hindleg.

‘What victory, comrade? Have we not driven the enemy off our soil — the sacred
soil of Animal Farm?’

20 ‘But they have destroyed the windmill. And we had worked on it for two years!’

‘What matter? We will build another windmill. We will build six windmills if we
feel like it. You do not appreciate, comrade, the mighty thing we have done. The
enemy was in occupation of this very ground that we stand upon. And now —
thanks to the leadership of Comrade Napoleon — we have won every inch of it
Zp back again!’
 —
>
‘Then we have won back what we had before,’ said Boxer. 1)
ow
Ae
‘That is our victory,’ said Squealer. oe
@
They limped into the yard. The pellets under the skin of Boxer’s leg smarted fe}
=

+
painfully. He saw ahead of him the painful labour of rebuilding the windmill >
@o
30 from the foundations, and already in imagination he braced himself for the task.
But for the first time it occurred to him that he was eleven years old and that =
a.
perhaps his great muscles were not quite what they had been.
3.
But when the animals saw the green flag flying, and heard the gun firing again
— seven times it was fired in all — and heard the speech that Napoleon made,
35 congratulating them on their conduct, it did seem to them after all that they
had won a great victory. The animals slain in battle were given a solemn funeral.
Boxer and Clover pulled the wagon which served as a hearse, and Napoleon
himself walked at the head of the procession. Two whole days were given over to
celebrations. There were songs, speeches, and more firing of the gun, and a special
40 gift of an apple was bestowed on every animal, with two ounces of corn for each
bird and three biscuits for each dog. It was announced that the battle would
be known as the Battle of the Windmill, and that Napoleon had created a new
decoration, the Order of the Green Banner, which he had conferred upon himself.

From Animal Farm by George Orwell (1945)

Read the extract from Animal Farm and answer the following questions:

1 What had the animals been doing immediately before this passage opens and
what is the result?
2 What is implied by ‘Squealer, who had unaccountably been absent during
the fighting’?
3 Who is Napoleon and what impression do you get of him from this passage?
4 What do you learn from this passage about Boxer’s character? Support your
answer with direct quotations.
5 Why does Squealer address the other animals as ‘comrade’?
6 Think about why this passage has been included in this chapter about
government. Is this extract really about animals? Give reasons for your
answer.
 Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown
In Shakespeare’s play Henry /V Part 2 it is the middle of the night, but the old king
cannot sleep. He is worried about his kingdom and his son. He is also ill.

King Henry IV:

How many thousand of my poorest subjects

Are at this hour asleep! O sleep, O gentle sleep,
Nature’s soft nurse, how have | frighted thee,
That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down
5 And steep my senses in forgetfulness?
Why rather, sleep, liest thou in smoky cribs,
Upon uneasy pallets stretching thee
And hushed with buzzing night-flies to thy slumber,
Than in the perfumed chambers of the great,
10 Under the canopies of costly state,
And lulled with sound of sweetest melody?
O thou dull god, why liest thou with the vile
In loathsome beds, and leavest the kingly couch
A watch-case or a common ‘larum-bell?
15 Wilt thou upon the high and giddy mast
Seal up the ship-boy’s eyes, and rock his brains
In cradle of the rude imperious surge,
And in the visitation of the winds,
Who take the ruffian billows by the top,
20 Curling their monstrous heads, and hanging
them With deafing clamour in the slippery
clouds, That with the hurly death itself
awakes? Canst thou, O partial sleep, give thy
repose To the wet sea-boy in an hour so rude, 7%
25 Andin the calmest and most stillest night,
With all the appliances and means to boot,
Deny it to a king? Then happy low, lie down!
Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.

From Henry
IV Part 2 by William Shakespeare (1600)

ho
°
o
§
5S Read the extract from Henry
IV Part 2 and answer the following questions:

(°] 1 Why does King Henry envy his subjects?

O
2 To whom or what is most of this speech addressed?
cO
 List synonyms for bed(s) which Shakespeare gives Henry to use in this 9)
passage. Evaluate what they add to the piece. Y)
a.
oO.
Why does he mention the ship-boy? Y)
=
5 Choose two examples of alliteration, assonance or consonance (see page 136) et
Ss
in this speech and say why they are effective. i)
=}
et
Explain in your own words what Henry means by ‘Uneasy lies the head that o
=
Wears a crown’. i-a
@o
=F
ga
Gaddafi: tyrant or benign ruler? =)
pa}
=.
1.)
a)
Colonel Gaddafi ruled Libya from 1969 until 2011 when, in August, he was °°

overthrown by rebels supported by NATO forces. Two months later he was

caught and shot. Read these two very different accounts of him, both taken from
obituaries. Then answer the questions which follow.

Passage A

Colonel Omar Mohammad Gaddafi was the Head of the Libyan State, Chairman
of the Revolutionary Command Council, co-founder and longtime chairman of
the African Union, and author of the Third International Theory which served as
the basis of the Islamic Socialist Republic of Libya, and an inspiration to anti-
5 Western causes across Arabia.

Gaddafi was a unique and defiant ruler who died as a warrior-king, upholding
the highest honor a man can possibly achieve: martyrdom against his blood-
enemy. Against an insurmountable foe and against all possible odds, Omar
fought to the death against the invading CIA mercenaries and foreign usurpers.
10 For much of his life Omar had cursed Western arrogance. He continued to stand
in defiance of their aggression until the very last moments of his life.

Gaddafi did not spend much money on his military and never accumulated
bio-chemical or nuclear weapons, which ultimately may have led to his demise.
Instead, he had invested in welfare programs and free colleges for students with
15 high grades.

His body was hidden in the southern deserts by the US military’s hired goons.
Perhaps it is a fitting respite for a man who was born and raised among the
anonymous pathways of the Sahara. May you rest in peace, Colonel. | am one
American who will not forget your name.

Omar Mohammad Gaddafi 1942-2011 (martyred)

Abridged from an obituary by Reed Perry on reedperry.com (2011)

 Passage B

Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, the former Libyan dictator who has been killed aged
69, liked to promote himself as an instigator of global revolution; for the four
decades of his rule, however, this was carried out through the subjugation of his
people at home, and the sponsorship of terrorism abroad.

His grip on power always looked solid. But in February 2011 the uprisings in
North Africa, which had already seen the fall of the governments of Libya’s
neighbours, Egypt and Tunisia, suddenly put his regime in jeopardy.

It was a suitably chaotic end for a man who could never be easily pigeonholed.
Erratic, vain and utterly unpredictable, he always seemed to be enjoying a
private joke which no one else could see. His image, plastered on walls all over
Libya, seemed a parody of Sixties radical chic — the craggy features, longish hair,
the eyes half-hidden behind retro blue-tone shades.

Gaddafi would arrive at summits of Arab leaders in a white limousine

surrounded by a bodyguard of nubile Kalashnikov-toting brunettes.At one
non-aligned summit in Belgrade, he turned up with two horses and six camels;
the Yugoslavs allowed him to graze the camels in front of his hotel — where he
pitched his tent and drank fresh camel milk — but refused to allow him to arrive
at the conference on one of his white chargers. Several of the camels ended up
in Belgrade zoo.

At an African Union summit in Durban in 2002, his entourage consisted of a

personal jet, two Antonov transport aircraft, a container ship loaded with buses,
goat carcases and prayer mats, a mobile hospital, jamming equipment that
disrupted local networks, $6 million in petty cash, and 400 security guards with
associated rocket launchers, armoured cars and other hardware, who nearly
provoked a shoot-out with South Africa’s security forces.

Yet the self-styled ‘Universal Theorist’ and ‘Guide of the First of September
Great Revolution of the Arab Libyan Popular and Socialist Jamahiriya’ was no
joke. In the 1970s and 1980s, while other tyrants were content to repress their
own people, Gaddafi seemed hell-bent on bringing murder and mayhem to the
whole world.

After PanAm Flight 103 was blown up over Lockerbie in 1988, leaving 270
dead — the biggest mass murder in British history — a court found two Libyans
S
~

o guilty of planting the bomb on board. In 1984, WPC Yvonne Fletcher was shot
€ dead in London with a machine gun fired from inside the Libyan embassy. Then
5> there was the bombing of a Berlin discotheque, explosions at Rome and Vienna
airports and the bombing of a French airliner over Chad.
3
O

co
 In addition, Gaddafi sent arms
=e
shipments to the IRA, Abu Nidal, SS,
ga
and numerous other terrorist ~4
40 organisations and set out to export ry)
fa
revolution to his neighbours, =3
ra
0)
perpetuating regional conflicts
in Sierra Leone, Zimbabwe, Chad
and Liberia. Domestic opponents
45 —the ‘running dogs’ who opposed
his dictatorship — were ruthlessly
liquidated. In 1984 bomb attacks on m= Muammar Gaddafi during a state visit to
seven Libyan exiles living in Britain Ukraine, 2008
left 24 people injured; one Libyan journalist opposed to Gaddafi’s regime was
50 assassinated as he walked past London’s Regent’s Park mosque.

Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, born 1942, died 20 October 2011

Abridged from an obituary published in the Daily Telegraph (2011)

1 What evidence is there in Passage A that the writer is American, apart from
the statement in his final sentence?
2 How, if you didn’t know that the Daily Telegraph is a British newspaper, could
you deduce that Passage B is almost certainly the work of a British writer?
3 How old was Gaddafi when his rule started?

4 Give three examples from each passage (six in all) of words which suggest a
strong opinion.
5 Summarise in your own words, in two sentences for each, the view of Gaddafi
suggested by (a) Passage A and (b) Passage B.
Why does Passage B describe Gaddafi’s travel arrangements in such detail?
What, according to Passage A, were Gaddafi’s great strengths?
What does Passage B regard as Gaddafi’s worst actions and policies?

Oo
OO
ON Which of these two passages do you find more trustworthy and why? Quote
from the passages to support your answer.

Exercise 8.4
1 Using the facts given by the writers of Passage A and Passage B, write a
neutral summary of Colonel Gaddafi’s life.

2 Now write out arguments both in favour of and against Colonel Gaddafi, and
conclude which arguments are stronger, and why.

101
 3 You are a head of state (in any country or an imaginary one) who cannot
sleep. Write your thoughts in prose or poetry.
4 Boxer of Animal Farm is a carthorse. Write an interview with him for a
magazine after the Battle of the Windmill. :
5 Write a story about a group of animals doing something original or
unexpected.
6 Write about government in any way you wish.
7 You are one of Henry IV’s servants. Write a letter home to your family about
your employer’s health and state of mind. Use some of the detail from the
passage and as much imagination as you wish.

Did you know?

These facts relate to the writers
or topics featured in this
chapter:
e George Orwell’s real name was
Eric Blair.
e@ Queen Victoria, who became
Queen aged 18 in 1837 and
died in 1901, held the record
for the longest reigning British
monarch until 9 September
2015 when she was overtaken
by Queen Elizabeth II.
Shakespeare was fascinated
by tyrants. Other plays which
explore the nature of tyranny
include Macbeth, Julius Caesar
and Measure for Measure.
m George Orwell in 1943

Research and note three separate facts to add to the list above. They should
relate to government or to the writers and other topics touched on in this
chapter. You should be able to summarise each of your facts in a single
oS
Sad

sentence.
=
:
S
3
)

00
( ).Grammar and punctuation )
5
WOO OO OT OO OOO OTIC OCOD CEO COOOL SOOO OCOOOCOIOTIOUOODUGTICICOIOMOOUIOOCIO OOOO COUOOUOOOODIOMCIOCIEES

Common errors
=|
i
a
1 ‘Fewer’ can be used only for something which you can count, e.g. a
days, meals, items, books. ‘Less’ is used to qualify something which |
a
cannot be counted or quantified, e.g. water, colour, excitement. So: ae)
=
e fewer cars but less traffic =]
ral
ra
et
e fewer cartons but less milk. o
There are some exceptions where ‘fewer’ sounds awkward, for =
3
example you wouldn’t say: ‘I have fewer than ten pounds left’ Also 5
watch out for cases where the phrase ‘more or less’ is used.
2 Avoid tautology - using unnecessary words which repeat something
you've already said.
For example, you need never write or say ‘return back’ because ‘to
return’ means ‘to go back’. The word ‘back’ here would be tautologous.
Similarly, you don’t need to ‘ascend up’ a hill or ‘shout loudly’ either.
3 The verb ‘to lay’ is transitive. So it requires an object. You can, for
instance, lay a table, a trail, bricks or carpets. So:
e Our hens are laying (or have laid, were laying, etc.) nice, big
brown eggs.
But the verb ‘to lie’ has two meanings and is never transitive.
It means (a) to tell an untruth and (b) to be in a horizontal
position. So:
e He lies all the time about his family.
e In summer I often lie on a rug in the garden to read.
But take care. The past tense of the second meaning of the verb ‘to
lie’ confuses some people so that they muddle it with the verb ‘to
lay’. Learn:
e A servant helped Henry lie on the bed.
e Henry IV lay dying.
e He had lain sleepless for several hours.
‘Layed’ does not exist. And if you don’t hurry to get up on a non-
school day you are, of course, having a lie-in, not a ‘lay-in’ which
doesn’t exist either.

Write out these sentences putting ‘fewer’ or ‘less’ into the spaces:

1 George Orwell wrote ________ books than Charles Dickens.

2 Do we need more or ________ suitcases for this year’s holiday?

3 Wehave_______ luggage than usual.

4 Inthe end Gaddafi had _________ supporters than he needed in Libya.

5 This queue is for shoppers with ___________ than eight items to pay for.
103
 6 Thereis____————_ traffic on the M25 after about eight o'clock.
7 |am trying to eat
8 That means | munch __________ chocolate bars.
\

Use the verbs ‘to lay’ or ‘to lie’ to complete these sentences. You will need various
parts of the verbs and different tenses.

1 ‘Please don’t_____—sms to mee, said the headmaster.

2 Let’s__~~—~—————S on the beach and rest for a while.

3 The old man had on the floor for an hour before he was found.
4 Our new carpet was very well
5 ‘Let us _________ these _______ to rest,’ said the policeman, trying
to get at the truth.
6 Black Colombian hens ______ the best eggs.
7 ‘| don’t enjoy a in,’ Thomas.
8 While the twins _________ on the sofa resting, Mum _______ out
their party clothes.

Rewrite these sentences without tautology:

1 | want to re-read Henry /V Part 7 again.

Muammar Gaddafi was never chosen as the elected ruler of Libya.

After the Battle of the Windmill, the animals were also very tired as well.
In a little while | shall change my library books later.
All formal invitations should be replied back to.
F&F
mn
ao
N
W Before exams it’s a good idea to revise over your work.

Punctuation revision

~
=
5)
= Punctuate these passages as a way of revising your understanding of the rules of
5
>
punctuation:
2)
) 1 years passed the seasons came and went the short animal lives fled by a
time came when there was no one who remembered the old days before the
©
 rebellion except clover benjamin moses the raven and a number of pigs (From %
a=)
Animal Farm by George Orwell) .
=
2 the letter from guy was still on the desk where i had left it wondering why i had gaa
bothered to keep it once i had read it i tore it up and dropped the pieces in our 3
waste bin silver watching me said are you going to am i going to what marry a
him this guy guy i could hardly believe it i stared at him of course im not going
<
re)
9)
to marry him im too young to get married (From Grasshopper by Barbara Vine) re)
T
3 oz is a big bloke and i am not small but it took our combined weight to —s
shift whatever was behind the door far enough for oz to squeeze through i 2
stayed outside and put my hand round it sandor was collapsed on the floor
between the wash hand basin at one end and the lavatory at the other half
sitting against the door feet against the opposite wall i couldn't see his
face he didn’t seem to be breathing is he dead i could only whisper it (From
Turbulence by Jan Mark)

C). Spelling and vocabulary. ccs

-some words
Shakespeare gives Henry IV the word loathsome - an adjective which
describes something to be loathed.

Adjectives which have the suffix -some, from Old English, are interesting
because their stems can be nouns (burdensome) or verbs (loathsome).
There are two groups:
e Adjectives which describe the state suggested by the stem - for
example, an adventuresome person likes adventure.
e Adjectives which mean something which induce the state suggested
by the stem - for example, a flavoursome food has flavours for
others to enjoy and a fearsome person frightens others.

There are also -some words, still in use, which stem from words
which have changed their meaning. So cumbersome means ‘clumsy’
or ‘awkward’ because a ‘cumber’ is an old word for a burden or
obstruction. Similarly handsome used to mean ‘easy to handle’.

Journalists and others, fond of neologisms, sometimes coin new

-some words too. Toothsome is a fairly recent word meaning ‘tasty’,
and cringesome suggests someone or something who/which makes
you cringe.
 Exercise 8.10
Use the words below to complete the sentences:

wholesome awesome bothersome

irksome tiresome fulsome

1 Although the word'___’ is often misused it really does describe
accurately most people’s reaction to the Pyramids.
2 Midges can be very __________in Scotland although some people are
unaffected.
3 Traffic noise is _________ when it continues all night.
4 __ «food includes fruit, vegetables and home-cooked dishes.
5 Mr Jones’s comments about my painting were so ____ and
complimentary that | didn’t really believe him.
6 Boxer and the other animals on Manor Farm found the rebuilding work

Exercise 8.11
Explain the meaning of:

1 quarrelsome 4 meddlesome
2 winsome 5 noisesome

3 venturesome 6 wearisome

More silent letters

Some words in English from Ancient Greek such as psalm, psychologist
and pterodactyl have a silent ‘p’. In Greek the combination ‘ps’ is one
letter, psi (y). Similarly, the combination ‘ch’ (found in words such as
chorus, Christmas, technical, etc.) is one letter, chi (7).

eee eee eee eee eee eee eee rere erere nr © FOeEe © Pee eee errr ererereecrererererrrrrrrrerer errr re ee eee eee ey

Satire
Animal Farm is a satirical novel. George Orwell, tongue in cheek, called it
S
~

GD a ‘fairy story’ He is using satire to make a very serious point by showing

= animals being taken advantage of by cleverer and more powerful animals.
S> Their leaders - the pigs - fool them. Orwell is using his animals to show
truths, as he sees them, about politics and government.
ro}
So)
Here is another example of satirical writing:
co
 =
‘If you want to get nicked, get a hat’ <
(2)
<
| don’t need to tell you what the greatest scourge of our times is.Asyou all know =7]
it is old ladies. The older they are the more evil and criminal they tend to be. And |
et
the really shocking ones are easily spotted, for they are inevitably to be found et
(e)
wearing that ultimate symbol of violence and depravity, the hat. So full marks to 0a
©et
the Hereward pub in Ely for spotting an obvious trouble-maker, 82-year-old Betty
=F
Wilbraham, when she pushed her luck, took a diabolical liberty and attempted to raial
enter their premises wearing a titfer. ©
a
00
As the pub pointed out, public safety could properly be preserved only if Mrs ©et
Wilbraham removed the hat. She could then be easily identified on security 9
cameras when she started to break bottles and smash the place up — as old >
@
7.
ladies like her inevitably tend to do. Mrs Wilbraham, rather perplexed, says that
she always wears a hat and that her late mother ‘wouldn't have set foot outside
the house without wearing one’. So what they say about criminal dynasties is
clearly true, then.

From an article written by Simon Heffer and published in the Daily Telegraph (2006)

Simon Heffer:

@ uses a ‘deadpan’ style pretending to believe what he says (‘as you

all know’), borrowing the language usually associated with criticism
of youthful bad behaviour (‘shocking’, ‘depravity’, ‘smash the place
up’, ‘criminal dynasties’)
chooses exaggerated language (‘a diabolical liberty’)
actually means the opposite of what he says (‘So full marks’)
is fiercely critical of the Hereward pub
sympathises with Mrs Wilbraham
uses humour and irony to make his point (‘as old ladies like her
inevitably tend to do’).

Exercise 8.12
Write a short piece using satire and irony to criticise, or make fun of, something
or someone. Use some of the techniques Simon Heffer uses.

107
 Peeeerrerevereererereerery @ Peer rrrrrerrerer errr eee eee

1 Work in a group of three. One of you is Reed Perry (writer of

Passage A on page 99), another is the Daily Telegraph obituary
writer (pages 100-101) and the third is a radio presenter. Work out
your conversation concerning Gaddafi’s life and legacy.
2 Learn by heart the speech (soliloquy) from Henry IV Part 2. Then
work out how to speak it to make it as compelling as possible.
3 Organise a discussion or debate about the present government.
What is right or wrong with it? How could it be better? Don’t talk
about the personalities and private lives of politicians. Try to
concentrate on policies. Use newspapers and the internet as sources
of information.
4 Hold a balloon debate. Five people pretend to be famous or
important people from the past or the present - such as William
Shakespeare, Saint Francis, Nelson Mandela, Florence Nightingale
and Sylvia Pankhurst. The imaginary balloon that they are all in
is losing gas and dropping. The only way to save the lives of four
people is to throw the fifth one out - otherwise everyone in the
balloon will die. Each ‘balloonist’ makes a speech explaining why
he/she is too important to the world to die. Then the rest of the
class votes to decide who leaves the balloon and which four stay in.
5 Tell the rest of the class about a book you have read recently,
explaining why you enjoyed it and why you would recommend it.

Extra reading
These books feature various forms of government:
@ Animal Farm by George Orwell (1945)
® Across the Nightingale Floor by Lian Hearn (2002)
@ The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier (1974)
® The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory (2001)
® The Dogs of War by Frederick Forsyth (1974)
@ A Matter of Loyalty by Sandra Howard (2009)
@ A Week in December by Sebastian Faulks (2009)
=o
~
® Wild Swans by Jung Chang (1994)*
Ss
5>
*Recommended for very keen readers and for those taking scholarship

3
O

CO

@)
 a)
Progress further x
2}
ga
=
e Inhis 1946 essay ‘Politics and the English Language’ George Orwell suggested @
7)
4)
these six rules for clear, concise English: a)
=
a
1 Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are ct
=
used to seeing in print. @m
-"

Never use a long word where a short one will do.

If it is possible to cut out a word, always cut it out.
Never use the passive where you can use the active.
bk
wu
N
W Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can
think of an everyday English equivalent.
6 Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
Look again at the extract from Animal Farm and consider how far Orwell
followed his own rules. Now look at any article from a recent newspaper.
To what extent is the journalist following Orwell’s rules? Would it have been
a better piece of writing if he or she had followed them more closely? Can
you follow these rules in your own work?
e Henry!/V Part 2 is part of a sequence of ‘history’ plays by Shakespeare:
Richard II, Henry IV Part 1, HenryIV Part 2, Henry V. Read some of them, see a
performance or watch filmed versions. The BBC’s The Hollow Crown series is
the latest TV adaptations of these. Leon Garfield’s Shakespeare Stories (1985)
retell Richard I] and Henry IVPart 7.
e Find out what you can about Libya, using reference books and the internet.
Make a poster for the classroom wall to share some of what you have found
out with others.

109
© War

The front line

Stephen Wraysford is a junior officer in the First World War. He has been injured
in the Battle of the Somme.

They emerged to find chaos. Further shelling had caused casualties in the trench
and had destroyed the parapet over a length of fifty yards. They took what cover
they could find. Byrne dragged Stephen’s body to a relatively unscathed section
while Hunt went in search of help. He was told that the regimental aid post,
supposedly impregnable in its dugout, had been wiped out by a direct hit.

Stephen lay on his side, with the wood of the duckboards against the skin of his
face, his legs bent double by Byrne to keep him out of the way of men moving
up and down. His face was covered with dirt, the pores plugged with fragments
blown into them by the explosion of a German grenade. He had a piece of
10 shrapnel in his shoulder and had been hit by a rifle bullet in the neck; he was
concussed by the blast and unconscious. Byrne pulled out his field dressing kit
and emptied iodine into the hole in Stephen’s neck; he found the tapes that
pulled open the linen bag and freed the gauze dressing on its long bandage.

Rations came at ten o'clock. Byrne tried to force some rum between Stephen’s
ile lips, but they would not open. In the bombardment priority was given to
repairing defences and to moving the wounded who could walk. Stephen lay for
a day in a niche dug for him by Byrne until a stretcher-bearer finally got him to a
forward dressing station.

Stephen felt a profound weariness. He wanted to sleep in long draughts of days,

20 twenty at a time, in perfect silence.Asthe consciousness returned he seemed to
manage only a shallow sleep. He dipped in and out of it and sometimes when he
awoke he found his body had been moved. He was unaware of the pattering of
rain on his face. Each time he awoke the pain seemed to have intensified.

He had the impression that time had gone into reverse and he was travelling
ZS back closer to the moment of impact. Eventually time would stop at the
moment the metal pierced his flesh and the pain would stay constant at that
level. He yearned for sleep; with what willpower he could muster he forced away
the waking world and urged himself into the darkness.
 —|
a= i
As infection set in, he began to sweat; the fever reached its height within oO
30 minutes, making his body shake and his teeth rattle. His muscles were convulsed =a
re)
and his pulse began to beat with a fierce, accelerated rhythm.
The sweat soaked
am |

or
.

through his underclothes and mud-caked uniform. =

cg)
By the time they had transported him to the dressing station the fever had started
to recede. The pain in his arm and neck had vanished. Instead he could hear a
35 roaring sound of blood in his ears. Sometimes it would modulate to a hum and
at others rise to a shriek according to how hard his heart was pumping. With the
noise came a delirium. He lost touch with his physical being and believed himself
to be in a house on a French boulevard in which he searched and called the name
of Isabelle. With no warning he was in an English cottage, a large institution, then
40 back in the unremembered place of his birth. He raved and shouted.

He could smell the harsh carbolic soap of the orphanage, then the schoolroom
with its dust and chalk. He was going to die without ever having been loved, not
once, not by anyone who had known him. He would die alone and unmourned.
He could not forgive them — his mother or Isabelle or the man who had
45 promised to be a father. He screamed.

‘He’s shouting for his mother,’ said the orderly as they brought him into the tent.

‘They always do,’ said the medical officer, peeling back the field dressing Byrne
had applied almost thirty hours before.

They put him out of the tent to await transport to the casualty clearing station
50 or death, whichever should come first.

Then, under the indifferent sky his spirit left the body with its ripped flesh,
infections, its weak and damaged nature. While the rain fell on his arms and legs,
the part of him that still lived was unreachable. It was not his mind, but some
other essence that was longing now for peace on a quiet, shadowed road where
55 no guns sounded. The deep paths of darkness opened up for it, as they opened
up for other men along the lines of dug earth, barely fifty yards apart.

Then, as the fever in his abandoned body reached its height and he moved
towards the welcome of oblivion, he heard a voice, not human, but clear and
urgent. It was the sound of his life leaving him. Its tone was mocking. It offered
60 him, instead of the peace he longed for, the possibility of return. At this late
stage he could go back to his body and to the brutal perversion of life that
was lived in the turned soil and torn flesh of the war; he could, if he made
the effort of courage and will, come back to the awkward, compromised and
unconquerable existence that made up human life on earth. The voice was
65 calling him; it appealed to his sense of shame and of curiosity unfulfilled: but if
he did not heed it he would surely die.
From Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks (1993)

(111)
Read the extract from Birdsong and answer the following questions:

1 Give other words or phrases for (a) unscathed (line 3), (b) impregnable (line 5),
(c) modulate (line 35).
2 Describe Stephen’s injuries.
3 How long was it before the men could get Stephen away from the fighting
and what were the reasons?
4 Summarise Stephen’s thoughts and ideas as he waits for treatment, in your
own words.
5 Do you think Stephen will die? Give detailed reasons for your answer
supported by quotations from the passage.

‘Dulce et Decorum est’

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
5 Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines’ that dropped behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys — An ecstasy of fumbling,

10 Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime...
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, | saw him drowning.

15 Inall my dreams, before my helpless sight,

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace __m® Soldiers in the First World War during a gas
Behind the wagon we flung him in, attack
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
20 If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, —
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
 _
25 To children ardent for some desperate glory, (2)
io)
~
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Q ~

Pro patria mori.2 u

>
Wilfred Owen (written in 1918 and 1A very destructive German high-explosive ga
shell
a
first published in 1920) w
2 A Latin phrase which means ‘It is sweet =
et
and right to die for your country’ <4
==]
m
=]
t+.
4")
=
nn
et
1 Describe in your own words what has happened to the man who is ‘drowning’. >
1)

2 Why is it difficult for the men to walk? Illustrate your answer with quotations a
m
from the passage. cr

3 Why does Owen call the Latin tag ‘The old Lie’? 2)
aul
[ee
4 Choose two of Owen’s comparisons (metaphors, similes or other imagery)
from the poem, comment on them and say why you think they are effective. =
x
5 What do the rhyme and rhythm add to the poem as a whole?

100 Years Ago: Britain Enters the First World War

Professor Stephen Badsey, Professor of Conflict Studies at Wolverhampton
University, reflects on Britain’s entry to ‘The Great War’ in 1914.

Looking back on the start of the First World War, we are conscious of a world and
a Britain very different from our own. The countdown of events that led to Britain
declaring war rings like a death-march in the heads of everyone who knows them.
The war was precipitated by the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to
5 the imperial throne, on Sunday 28 June in Sarajevo in Bosnia, recently officially
annexed to Austria-Hungary, carried out by Serb nationalist terrorists backed by
some members of the Serbian government. It was the third war in the Balkans in
three years, in a time of tension and instability. This time, the declarations of war
went further, involving the complex alliances between the great powers of
10 Europe.A month later, on Tuesday 28th July the Austro-Hungarian Empire
declared war on Serbia, and next day bombarded the Serbian capital of Belgrade.
Serbia’s protector the Russian Empire mobilised its own forces, leading to the
German Empire going to war in support of its ally Austria-Hungary, and invading
Belgium as part of its war plan to defeat France as Russia’s ally. Unable to tolerate

113
15 this, exactly a week after the Austro-Hungarian declaration, at 11.00 pm (London
time) on Tuesday 4 August, the United Kingdom declared war against Germany.
At the time it was called the European War or the Great War, involving all the
major powers of Europe with their empires. :

To modern eyes, the Britain that entered the First World War seems riven with
20 paradoxes. It was a country of immense disparities, in which class distinctions
were visible in the clothes that people wore, in which about one percent of the
population owned seventy percent of its wealth, in which fewer than two men in
three had the vote, and no women had the vote at all. Britain was the centre of
the world’s only global empire, many of whose subjects had no say at all in their
25 own governance. But Britain called itself a democracy, and so did its enemies — as
an insult. It was a country of small communities and great regional variations,
divided not only by accent and class but by politics, including increasing strikes
by organised labour, violent protests by the women’s suffrage movement, and
the very real threat of a civil war in Ireland that distracted the British government
30 from events in Europe at a critical time. But in the crisis of the outbreak of the
war, Britain also proved to be the strongest and most socially cohesive of all
the major powers, able to raise an army of half a million men by the end of the
year through volunteerism, with the capacity over four years both to outlast
and outfight its enemies. Britain emerged from the First World War as one of the
victors, with its empire at its greatest ever extent, and its enemies defeated.

Our modern view of Britain in the First World War is concerned first of
all with the dead; and for most British people they were always the most
important part of the war at the time. Although no-one can say exactly
how many Britons died as a direct result of the war, the number was around
three-quarters of a million, plus perhaps a further half-million from the wider
British Empire, all unique human beings. But both in absolute numbers and as
a proportion of the population, this was a smaller loss than either France or
Germany, or any other major power. British deaths were far from being a ‘lost
generation’; they represented
just over one-twentieth of
their age-group, comparable
to levels of emigration from
Britain over the previous
decades. Proportionally, the
heaviest losses were suffered &%
by the young men of the most
privileged classes, who paid
in blood for their privileges.
Very few people greeted the
outbreak of the war with
enthusiasm, but from start
 to finish, for the great majority, it remained one of the most popular wars that
an
Britain had ever fought. The actions and opinions of British dissenters from the 3
ga
war effort are important precisely because they were so rare and unusual. ~2
=
ry)
fa)
60 The immense variations in individual experiences make it extremely difficult to ae
ra.
make any generalisation about British opinions at the time, but it appears wv)
certain that the great majority of people believed that fighting and winning the
First World War was worth it. If that seems strange or hard for us to understand,
that is partly due to the war itself, and partly due to the hundred years’ distance
65 from which we are looking at it.

From an article written by Professor Stephen Badsey, University of Wolverhampton (2014)

1 Summarise in your own words the main topic under discussion in Professor
Badsey’s web article.
2 Which two points of view does he explore relating to this topic?
3 Explain the meaning of the words (a) annexed (line 6), (b) suffrage (line 28),
(c) cohesive (line 31) and (d) dissenters (line 58).
4 Identify the phrases at the start of paragraphs 1, 2 and 3 that show which
perspective the professor is taking.
5 In paragraph 2, where does he use contrasting language to emphasise each
side of the discussion?
6 At what point in paragraph 3 does the focus shift from British deaths in the
First World War to the comparative popularity of the war?
7 How effective do you find the conclusion? Use quotation from the final
paragraph to support your answer.

(Writing practice SERIE,

1 Describe an occasion when you have been hurt or injured.
2 Imagine you are a young man fighting in France in 1915. Write a letter home
to your sister.

3 Imagine you are Byrne in Birdsong. Write your diary for the day that Stephen
Wraysford was injured.
4 Write an essay about ‘Dulce et Decorum est’. Use some of the work you did in
Exercise 9.2 to help you.
5 Write a story called ‘Birdsong’.
6 Write about war in any way you wish.
 Did you know?
These facts relate to the writers or topics featured in this chapter:
@ The peace treaty which marked the end of the First World War was signed
at Versailles on 11 November 1918.

At least 10 million men died in battle during the First World War but no
one has fully accurate figures.
Wilfred Owen was killed, aged 25, just a few days before the war ended
in 1918.

Sebastian Faulks has written novels set in the Second World War as well
as Birdsong, which is set a generation earlier.

Research and note three separate facts to add to the list above. They should
relate to war or to the writers and other topics touched on in this chapter. You
should be able to summarise each of your facts in a single sentence.

C).Grammar.and punctuation. oss

Past participles
Past participles are formed from verbs to create the perfect (as opposed
to the simple past) tense and can also be used like adjectives. If one
breaks a chair, for example, the chair can be described as
‘broken’ (‘broken’ is the past participle of the verb ‘to break’). They
often need an auxiliary (or ‘helping’) verb, usually the verb ‘to
have’. For example:
e She has arrived.
e We have wondered.
e They had asked.
Most past participles in English are formed by adding ‘d’ or ‘ed’ to the O
root verb (e.g. ‘marched’, ‘enquired’), sometimes after removing or @
changing a letter such as a “y’ (e.g. ‘hurried’, ‘worried’) or doubling a :
ae
letter (e.g. ‘pegged’, ‘tinned’). 4
ey)
S
But many of our commonest verbs have irregular past participles. Q.
For example: uv
Cc
S
ra)
@ He has sung. et
fo
e My father has spoken. co)
=
e You have eaten? 2)
fe | q

Note that in English the past tense of the verb uses a form which is
often, but not always, identical to the past participle of the verb.
Thus:

verb past tense past participle

to walk I walked walked

to teach I taught taught

But note:

to swim I ate

to eat swum

I swam eaten

In the seventeenth century the past participle of the verb ‘to get’ was
‘gotten’ (compare it with ‘forget’ and ‘forgotten’).
This has changed over time.
In Britain we now use ‘got’ — e.g. ‘Emma had got a dog.’ Early migrants to
America from England in the 1600s took the language with them and it has
developed differently. For example, many Americans still say ‘gotten’ not ‘got’.

1 List 20 regular past participles that can follow ‘I have...’

2 List 20 irregular past participles that can follow ‘He has...’
3 Add an object if some of your verbs are transitive. For example: He has eaten
my apple.
Revision
Below is some witty advice once given by a newspaper editor to his
journalists because he wanted them to write clearly and well. If you
have worked through all the exercises in this book you should have
no difficulty working out what the editor means. His first ten rules for
good writing are listed here. The other ten are included in Chapter 10.
Verbs has to agree with their subjects.
rary

Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.

And don’t start a sentence with a conjunction.
It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.
Avoid clichés like the plague.
Also, always avoid annoying alliteration.
Be more or less specific.
Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are (usually) unnecessary.
P
W
&
auNo sentence fragments.
oon

10 One should never generalise.

Take the above rules one by one and explain the point which the editor is making.

eee ere ere eee rere ree reer ererns (Teer errr er ere reer ererre rr rrrrrr rrr errr errr errr rns

Words from vertere

The word ‘perversion’ means wrong or bad use. It comes from the Latin
per + vertere meaning ‘to turn the wrong way’. ‘The brutal perversion’
of Stephen Wraysford’s life in the extract from Birdsong suggests that
the war is treating him like an animal (or brute) by turning his life
away from what is normal. To ‘pervert the course ofjustice’ is to turn
it away from what is fair and right. These days the words ‘perversion’,
‘pervert’ and ‘perverted’ are used most often of people whose sexual
desires are turned away from what is considered normal.

Other words come from the Latin vertere with various prefixes. They
include: ‘invert’, ‘extrovert’, ‘advertise’ and ‘inversion’.

Use the following words from vertere in sentences to make their meaning clear:

1. diversion 4 subvert

2 introvert 5 transverse

3 vertigo 6 versus
Words from manus and opus %)
ao)
©
Soldiers in training for the First World War often went on practice =
exercises called ‘manoeuvres. This is literally work done with the S
va .

hands (from manus in Latin) but now meaning any job which is tricky o
5
and requiring special skill. ‘Manipulate’, ‘manicure’ and ‘manufacture’ rau
<
all come from the same root. Oeuvre is the French word for ‘work’. If ro)
(@)
we talk (in English) of the ‘oeuvre’ of a writer, musician, or artist, we ©
oT
mean everything he or she wrote, composed, made or painted - all a
that person’s work. The Latin word for work is opus, and a writer's or
composer's magnum opus is his or her ‘great work’.
2

Put these words into the spaces in the following sentences:

manipulative operational manoeuvring

manicurist opus manufacturing

1 British industry has moved away from _____ toward saleable services.
2 Because nail art is so fashionable my hairdresser now also works as a

3 There were a lot of delays during the building but our school’s new swimming
pool is now
4 _____ =the car round the bend into our garage takes great skill and a
lot of practice.
5 Each piece of music a composer publishes is given an ____ number
to distinguish it from his or her other works.
6 If you try too hard to get other people to do what you want you will be
accused of being :

Spelling revision
Make sure you can spell these words.

prophecy memorial

condemnatory charismatic

quarrelsome horticulturalist

conservatories technophobe

disappearance : guarantor

119
 Exercise 9.10
Revise the spellings and meanings of the words above.

Work with a partner. Take it in turns to call out the ten words above. Your partner
should write down first the word correctly spelt and then its meaning. Score one
mark for each spelling and one for each meaning so there is a total of 20 marks.

Make sure that you relearn carefully any that you get wrong.

Another ten words for revision are listed in Chapter 10.

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Discursive language
In a discursive essay, it is important to write about the topic or issue
in a measured and balanced way. This not a one-sided argument but
a chance to explore a subject and weigh facts and arguments on both
sides or from different perspectives.

The techniques of discursive writing reflect the fact that the views
expressed need to be clearly reasoned and supported well by evidence
so as to convince the reader of their validity. The techniques include:
@ covering points for and against an issue or putting across two
different points of view
e structuring these points either to cover all the ‘for’ points and then
all the ‘against’ points or using each paragraph to address one pair
of ‘for and against’ points
® using connective phrases at the start and within paragraphs to link
ideas and show the direction the discussion is moving in
@ using anecdote, facts or statistics to support each view
expressed, e.g. ‘able to raise an army of half a million men by
the end of the year through volunteerism’
@ formal language to give the views expressed authority, e.g.
‘It is clear that...” or use of the passive, e.g. ‘the war was
precipitated by...’
e tentative language, to allow for other views to be considered,
e.g. ‘it seems as if’, ‘it could be said that’
e balancing language, which means alternative views may be
put, e.g. ‘Whilst some argue that ... others maintain...’

The balance that is carried through a discursive essay usually

continues right through to the conclusion, as the article by Stephen
Badsey on pages 113-115 exemplifies.
 - ae
Exercise 9.11 = There are writing a
iia guidelines for this sa
Write a discursive essay on this topic: ‘War is always evil but sometimes necessary.’ exercise in the ©
How far do you agree or disagree with this statement? Refer to and use the answers. Look for o.
techniques of discursive writing introduced above and in Stephen Badsey’s article the section at the =]
ga
on pages 113-115. end of the answers
called ‘Writing
| Speaking and listening | = | guidelines’.
1 Organise a class discussion about the rights and wrongs of war.
2 Prepare a presentation for a small group about what front-line life was like in
1916. Use the information presented in this chapter. You could also use books and
the internet to supplement your knowledge and for sources of extra information.
3 Learn Wilfred Owen’s poem by heart and perform it for the rest of the class.
4 Work in a group of three. Take the roles of Stephen Wraysford, Wilfred Owen
and Professor Badsey. Discuss your experiences and/or express your thoughts
about the 1914-1918 World War.
5 Read one of the books in the ‘Extra reading’ section of this chapter and tell the
rest of the class about it.

Extra reading
All these books feature people living though wars in different countries at
different times:
@ /nthe Morning by Michael Cronin (2005)
Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks (1993)
Charlotte Gray by Sebastian Faulks (1998)
A Town like Alice by Nevil Shute (1950)
Atonement by lan McEwan (2001)
War Horse by Michael Morpurgo (1982)
Private Peaceful by Michael Morpurgo (2003)
Sharpe’s Eagle by Bernard Cornwell (1981)
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell (1936)*
Great Britain’s Great War by Jeremy Paxman (2014)
Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain (1933)*
The First World War in 100 Objects by Peter Doyle (2013)
The Ghost Road by Pat Barker (1995)*
*Recommended for very keen readers and for those taking scholarship
 Progress further
e Find out about the short life of Wilfred Owen. Read some more of his poems.
Then listen to War Requiem by Benjamin Britten. It was written for the
consecration of Coventry’s new cathedral in 1962 because the old one had
been bombed in the Second World War. Part of War Requiem comprises some
of Wilfred Owen’s poems set to music.
@ Look at the website of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission
(www.cwgc.org). If you have basic information about them, you can often
trace relatives who fought or died in the 1914-1918 war.
e Research the history of the Royal British Legion. It raises money each autumn
by selling poppies to help victims of war and their families. But there’s more
to it than that.
 Marriage

Three sisters
Jane Austen sets the scene for her novel Mansfield Park by describing the
marriages of three sisters.

About thirty years ago, Miss Maria Ward of Huntingdon, with only seven
thousand pounds, had the good luck to captivate Sir Thomas Bertram, of
Mansfield Park, in the county of Northampton, and to be raised to the rank of a
baronet’s lady, with all the comforts and consequences of an handsome house
and large income.
All Huntingdon exclaimed on the greatness of the match, and
ner uncle, the lawyer, himself, allowed her to be at least three thousand pounds
short of any equitable claim to it. She had two sisters to be benefited by her
elevation; and such of their acquaintance as thought Miss Ward and Miss Frances
quite as handsome as Miss Maria, did not scruple to predict their marrying with
10 almost equal advantage. But there are not so many men of large fortune in the
world, as there are pretty women to deserve them. Miss Ward, at the end of half
a dozen years, found herself obliged to be attached to the Rev. Mr Norris, a friend
of her brother-in-law, with scarcely any private fortune, and Miss Frances fared
yet worse. Miss Ward’s match, indeed, when it came to the point, was not
iS contemptible, Sir Thomas being happily able to give his friend an income in the
living of Mansfield, and Mr and Mrs Norris began their career of conjugal felicity
with very little less than a thousand a year. But Miss Frances married, in the
common phrase, to disoblige her family, and by fixing on a Lieutenant of
Marines, without education, without fortune, or connections, did it very
20 thoroughly. She could hardly have made a more untoward choice. Sir Thomas
Bertram had interest, which from principle as well as pride, from a general wish
of doing right, and a desire of seeing all that were connected with him in
situations of respectability, he would have been glad to exert for the advantage
of Lady Bertram’s sister; but her husband’s profession was such as no interest
®D could reach; and before he had time to devise any other method of assisting
them, an absolute breach between the sisters had taken place. It was the natural
result of the conduct of each party, and such as a very imprudent marriage
almost always produces. To save herself from useless remonstrance, Mrs Price
never wrote to her family on the subject till actually married. Lady Bertram, who
30 was a woman of tranquil feelings, and a temper remarkably easy and indolent,
would have contented herself with merely giving up her sister, and thinking no
 more of the matter: but Mrs Norris had a spirit of activity, which could not be
satisfied till she had written a long and angry letter to Fanny, to point out the
folly of her conduct, and threaten her with all its possible consequences. Mrs
35 Price in her turn was injured and angry; and an answer which comprehended
each sister in its bitterness, and bestowed such very disrespectful reflections
upon the pride of Sir Thomas, as Mrs Norris could not possibly keep to herself,
put an end to all intercourse between them for a considerable period.

From Mansfield Park by Jane Austen (1814)

Exercise 10.1
Read the extract from Mansfield Park and answer the following questions:

1 What were the maiden (unmarried) names of (a) Lady Bertram and (b) Mrs Price?
2 What did the youngest sister do which upset her family?
3. Explain in your own words the comment made about Maria by ‘her uncle, the
lawyer’ (lines 6-7).
4 What do you learn about Mrs Norris’s character from this passage?
5 What, in the context of this passage, is meant by (a) elevation (line 8),
(b) scruple (line 9), (c) remonstrance (line 28) and (d) intercourse (line 34)?
6 This passage claims to be about the marriages of three couples. What is it
actually about? Is there anything surprising which is not mentioned?

‘Sonnet 116’
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments; love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no, it is an ever fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand'’ring bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
10 Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
iF) Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
L=>)
o But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
: If this be error and upon me proved,
= | never writ, nor no man ever loved.
=)
i
William Shakespeare (1609)
 Exercise 10.2 >
<
4
What does Shakespeare mean by (a) ‘love is not love /Which alters’ (lines 2-3) se)
3
and (b) ‘Love’s not Time’s fool’ (line 9)? re)
S31
a}
How many mentions are there of love and loving in this sonnet? What do you ey)
=)
deduce from this? ga
i)
a.
What is the sonnet’s main message? Support your answer with quotations 3
from the poem. re)
aa
jae
i)
How effective do you find the final rhyming couplet and what do you think it Ms)
fi)
means? ei

Shakespeare personifies Love in this sonnet. What does he tell us about the 2
figure of Love? fe)
oa
@m
&
i
Why an arranged marriage ‘is more likely to <
et
oO
develop into lasting love’ a.
iy)
<
They are seen by many as business deals that have little to do with love. Ll
(2)
~
=
But arranged marriages are far more likely to lead to lasting affection than et
fo)
marriages of passion, experts claim.
my
wn
According to research, those in arranged marriages — or who have had their a:
=)
partner chosen for them by a parent or matchmaker — tend to feel more in love ga
as time grows, whereas those in regular marriages feel less in love over time. oy
=
o_

And within ten years, the connection felt by those in arranged marriages is said
to be around twice as strong.

Relationship experts claim this is because arranged matches are carefully

10 considered, with thought going into whether potential partners’ families,
interests and life goals are compatible.

This means they are more likely to commit for life — and to stick together
through rocky patches.

Those who marry for love, on the other hand, tend to be blinded by passion and
15 so overlook these crucial details.

When the going gets tough, they are more likely to view the situation simply as
a natural end to their romantic dream — a way of fate telling them something is
wrong with the relationship.

With soaring divorce rates and record numbers of single-parent households

20 in the West, researchers suggest it is time to rethink the Western approach to
 love. Harvard academic Dr Robert Epstein has studied the subject of arranged
marriages for eight years, looking at the approaches taken in cultural groups
including Indian, Pakistani and Orthodox Jewish.
\

He has interviewed more than 100 couples in arranged marriages to assess their
25 strength of feeling and studied his findings against more than 30 years of
research into love in Western and arranged marriages.

His work suggests that feelings of love in love matches begin to fade by as
much as half in 18 months, whereas the love in the arranged marriages tends to
grow gradually, surpassing the love in the unarranged marriages at about the
30 five-year mark.

Ten years on, the affection felt by those in arranged marriages is typically twice
as strong.

Dr Epstein believes this is because Westerners leave their love lives to chance,
or fate, often confusing love with lust, whereas those in other cultures look for
35 more than just passion.

He said: ‘The idea is we must not leave our love lives to chance. We plan our
education, our careers and our finances but we're still uncomfortable with the
idea that we should plan our love lives. |do not advocate arranged marriages but
| think a lot can be learnt from them.

‘In arranged marriages, thought goes into the matching. In the West, physical
attraction is important. But people must be able to distinguish lust from love.
Strong physical attraction is very dangerous, it can be blinding.

‘In the West marriages are easy to get out of. But in arranged marriages, the
commitment is very strong. They get married knowing they won’t leave, so when
times are harder — if they face injury or trauma — they don’t run away. It brings
them closer.’

Francine Kaye, relationship expert and author of The Divorce Doctor, added:
‘There is an awful lot to be said for arranged marriages. They are determined to
make it work.

‘| have seen in arranged marriages in the Orthodox Jewish community that the
parents very carefully look at compatibility — it is not left to chance. They do
their homework on their characteristics, their values, morals and life goals.

ed)
=>)
‘It should be pointed out that arranged marriages work because culturally
& marriage is seen differently. We have a very romantic view of marriage. Theirs is
5 more pragmatic.
>
=)
=
 ‘There is a downside to arranged S
ef,
marriages though — no matter 5
ga
how pragmatic you are in —
choosing a partner, there always 9
a
60 needs to be chemistry.’ o.
oO
1)
From an article written
by Paul Bentley and published in
the Daily Mail (2011)

Exercise 10.3
1
(a) Where does Dr Epstein work?
(b) Who wrote The Divorce Doctor?
Which communities favour arranged marriage?
What research has Dr Epstein conducted?
Why does Dr Epstein think arranged marriages are stronger than conventional
ones? Use quotations from the article to support your answer.
Summiarise Francine Kaye’s views about arranged marriage.

How strong do you think this is as a piece of journalism? Is there anything

else the journalist could usefully have included?

Exercise 10.4
:
Write a story called ‘Marriage of True Minds’.
2 Write a sonnet about an emotion using Shakespeare’s ‘Sonnet 116’ as a
model. Try to use the same rhythm and rhyme scheme.
Write your views about arranged marriages for a magazine article. There are writing
Describe a wedding that you have attended. guidelines for
task 3 (writing an
Imagine you are Mrs Frances Price. Using the information you are given in the argument) in the
passage from Mansfield Park on pages 123-124 — and adding to it in any way answers. Look for the
you wish — write to your sister Mrs Norris telling her about your life and what section at the end of
you think of her views. the answers called
Write on the subject of marriage in any way you wish. ‘Writing guidelines’.

Imagine that you are an older person who is married. What advice would you
give to someone who is thinking of marrying their partner? Remember to
include personal experience to reinforce your arguments.
 Did you know?
These facts relate to the writers or topics featured in this chapter:
e ‘Sonnet 116’ is one of the 154 which Shakespeare wrote and which were
published as a book-length sequence in his lifetime — unlike the plays
which were not published until after his death.
Jane Austen, who lived in Hampshire for most of her life, was buried in
Winchester Cathedral in 1817.

Fewer British people now choose to marry than at any time for hundreds
of years.
Arranged marriage, which requires the consent of the couple concerned,
is completely different from ‘forced marriage’ in which couples are given
no choice.

Exercise 10.5
Research and note three separate facts to add to the list above. They should
relate to marriage or to the writers and other topics touched on in this chapter.
You should be able to summarise each of your facts in a single sentence.

C ).Grammar and punctuation

OReCeCUeCee eee eC eVereereerrerers CErere rr rere rererrerrrerr rrr er ererrrrrrr errr err reer errr ree er erer rere)

Pluperfect tense and past participles

Past participles (see Chapter 9) are used with two forms of the past tense.

They are used with the perfect tense. For example: ‘I have noticed’;
‘they have eaten dinner. The auxiliary verb is in the present tense.

The further past, or pluperfect tense, uses the past tense of the auxiliary
verb and pushes the action back one stage further in time. For example:
‘We had finished’; ‘you had left’ The implication of this is usually that
the pluperfect action happened before something else in the sentence.

For example:

She had rung her mother before she left home. (The whole
sentence is in the past tense, but she rang before she left and the
tenses make that clear.)

i) I started the car after I had checked that there was petrol in it. (It
=>)
& is all in the past tense but one action takes place before the other,
. although in this case they are expressed in a different order.)
=
The past tenses of the verb ‘to have’ are often contracted with their
=)
= pronoun subjects giving ‘we'd’, ‘I'd’, ‘they'd’, ‘you'd’ and so on.
 %)
Exercise 10.6 a)
.
=
Use the pluperfect and other forms of the past tense to complete these
ga
sentences. Underline each use of the pluperfect tense. o
|
1 ra
Once Vicky. = sche <
ro)
(@)
2 Bene= buthe oy
oT
3 Afterwe___ ih
2
ss we

4 Before you_______ we
Sas ===
. before.
6 My grandparents ________ they

Revision
Below are the remaining points about good English written for
journalists by a newspaper editor. The first ten are in Chapter 9.
11 Contractions aren’t necessary and shouldn’t be used.
12 Don’t use no double negatives.
13 Eschew ampersands & abbrevs.
14 Eliminate commas, that are, not necessary.
15 Never use a big word when a diminutive one would suffice.
16 Kill all exclamation marks!!!
17 Use words correctly, irregardless of how others use them.
18 Use the apostrophe in it’s proper place and omit it when its not
needed.
19 Puns are for children not groan readers.
20 Proofread carefully to see if you any words out.

Exercise 10.7
Take the above sentences one by one and explain the points that the editor is
making.

OOOH Ree eee e HEHE Eee EEE eENE HOE HEE HEE HEH EESEOEE HE OOS

Words from coniungere

The ‘career of conjugal felicity’ mentioned by Jane Austen for Mr and
Mrs Norris means ‘happy married life’ She deliberately used slightly
pompous vocabulary here because it’s the sort of thing Mrs Norris
herself would have said. And, since it was a practical marriage of
convenience — because of the money rather than one based on love -
it probably wouldn’t have been particularly ‘felicitous. Jane Austen, as
so often, is being ironic.

129
 ‘Conjugal’ means ‘joined with’ It comes
from the Latin word coniungere (to unite).
‘Conjunction’ and ‘conjugate’ come from the
same root. When two stars or planets move to
a position which from Earth looks as if they
are touching (as in an eclipse) they are said to
be ‘in conjunction’. We also get words such as
‘junction’, ‘joint’ and ‘disjointed’ from iungere.

Coniumgere is spelled with an ‘i’ because Latin

does not use the letter ‘j’.

Exercise 10.8
How many different meanings can you think of for
the word ‘joint’? List them. Then use a dictionary to m A solar eclipse occurs when the moon passes between
help you think of more. the Earth and the Sun

Exercise 10.9
For a bit of spelling and vocabulary fun, see how many words you can make from
the letters of DISJOINTED. Each of your words must:

@ contain an‘e’

@ have four letters or more

@ not need a capital letter.

Stationery and stationary

Most couples getting marred want wedding ‘stationery’ which means
paper goods and must not be confused with ‘stationary’ which means
standing still. There are two ways of remembering the difference:
e Stationery contains an ‘e’ for envelope.
e Stationary comes, like the words status and statue, from stare
(‘to stand’) in Latin and the root is an ‘a’.

Exercise 10.10

yy
Words which sound the same but which have different meanings or spellings are
i=) called homophones.
&
5 Find, or work out, ways of remembering the difference in spelling and meaning
= between these five easily confused pairs of homophones. Make a note of the
=)
i meaning of each.
1 compliment complement ae
cS
=|
2 councillor counsellor fa
oe
ie)
3 elusive illusive =|
4)

4 gorilla guerilla ie)

=A

oY)
5 alter altar =)
ga
fd
oy)
More spelling revision ga
f)

Exercise 10.11 }
Work on these ten words with a partner until you both know all the meanings
and spellings.

monologue openness

pseudonym mnemonic
pneumonia quarrelsome

bewildered embarrass

rheumatism clamorous

CORES COREE HEHEHE SEH EE EE HEE ESSE EES CAD oes HOA ere ee esse Hee eee eH OE SOSH EH OEE SEH HED EE OEE OEE SESE SEE SES OED

Language for newspaper reporting

Modern newspapers include many different sorts of articles, but news
stories - factual accounts of things that have happened - are still
their central purpose. Paul Bentley has the job of reporting to readers
of the Daily Mail that research has been conducted into arranged
marriage, and how weil it works, by an American academic.
When informing readers, journalists writing news reports are
traditionally expected to answer the questions Who? What? Where?
and When? at the beginning of their pieces. That is why a typical news
story opening might be:
The Queen distributed silver Maundy coins to 85 men and 85
women - signifying her current age - at a service in Westminster
Abbey yesterday.

Who? The Queen

What? She gave Maundy money to 85 men and 85 women.

Where? In Westminster Abbey

When? Yesterday

131
 When a journalist attempts to explain a story in further detail, they
will deal with the questions How? and Why?

The 85 men and 85 women are retired pensioners who have been
invited in recognition of their community service, and will receive
purses in a tradition that dates back hundreds of years.

How? Pensioners are invited to receive the coins.

Why? The ceremony continues a long-standing national tradition.

Most journalists work to a code of practice - a set of agreed rules —

which says that they must not confuse news with opinion. That is why
news stories are usually on pages clearly headed ‘News’. Other pages,
on which journalists analyse the news and state their views, have
headings such as ‘Comment’, ‘Views’ or ‘Analysis’

Paul Bentley:
e uses a headline which summarises what the article is about
@ summarises the article in the first three short paragraphs; you could
stop reading after paragraph three but you would not have fully
understood his message
e keeps his paragraphs short - often just one sentence
@ summarises what Epstein says
e uses direct quotes from both Epstein and Kaye.

Exercise 10.12
Write a short news article (up to 300 words) for a broadsheet newspaper about
anything you wish. Be as direct as you can. Summarise the news first. Use the rest
of it to give more detail. Use some of the techniques demonstrated by Paul Bentley.

CeCe eee eee eee Eero EEE S HSH ME De ses eersrer ose ose se ses es esses eH esse sesseeseseesses

1 If you have people in your class from different cultures, organise a

session in which you tell each other about wedding customs in your There are writing
families. guidelines for this
2 Discuss marriage in a small group. What do you think is the best exercise in the
age to get married and why? answers. Look for the
3 Discuss your views about arranged and forced marriage. Make sure section at the end of
id) you are completely sure about the difference between them. the answers called
1s) | Writing guidelines’.
© 4 Work with a partner. Rehearse a shared reading and perform it to
5 the rest of the class.
= 5 Invite into school a speaker from Relate, a charity which works with
=)
=
couples whose relationships are in difficulties. Question the speaker
about Relate’s work.

(132)
6 Interview a married couple who have been together for a very long m
Pas
time (grandparents perhaps?) about how things have changed since co
te})
they were first married. You might also quiz them about what makes =x
@
a long and happy marriage. pe)
2.
a|
lope}

Extra reading
These books all have marriage and ideas about it at their centre:
My Dad Is Ten Years Old by Mark O’Sullivan (2011)
Love, Aubrey by Suzanne LaFleur (2009)
Tamar by Mal Peet (2005)
The Photograph by Penelope Lively (2003)
Second Honeymoon by Joanna Trollope (2006)
Good Wives? Mary, Fanny, Jennie and Me 1845-20017 by Margaret
Forster (2001)
© Small Island by Andrea Levy (2004)
® Marie and Pierre Curie by John E Senior (1998)
® The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope (1875)*
@ Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray (1848)*

® Mansfield Park by Jane Austen (1814)*

@ Love ina Headscarf by Shelina Zahra Janmohamed (2009)

e (Un)arranged marriage by Bali Rai (2001)

* Recommended for very keen readers and for those taking scholarship

133
 Progress further
e@ When a couple have been married for 25 years they can celebrate their
silver wedding anniversary. The 50th wedding anniversary is called a golden
wedding. Find out what the 15th, 20th, 30th, 35th, 40th and 60th wedding
anniversaries are called. Why were there more golden wedding anniversary
parties than usual in 1995?
e Both partners in the following marriages were famous, either because they
worked together or because they each achieved something separately:
Leonard and Virginia Woolf; Sidney and Beatrice Webb; Pierre and Marie
Curie. Find out what they did. Can you add some living couples in which both
partners are achievers?
@ The traditional ending for a story is a wedding and a happy life ‘for ever
after’. Think of Snow White, Cinderella, Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice and many
others. How realistic do you think this is? Think about, and discuss, whether a
wedding is an end or a beginning.
e Anton Chekhov wrote a play called Three Sisters. How many stories, plays,
etc., can you find, or think of, which, like Mansfield Park, feature a trio of
female siblings?
e Read and discuss the following leader column, ‘Date expectations’, published
in The Times on 5 January 2006. Who was/is Cupid, Lady Bracknell and
Thomas, Annie and Clarabel? How far are the ‘rules’ of good journalism, set
out earlier in this chapter and the last, applied?

Date expectations
The humble mouse has replaced Cupid’s quiver. Last year, more than 3.5 million
single Britons used an online dating service to find romance. Instead of directing
inquiries on comparative pulchritude to the mirror on the wall, 65 per cent of all
those in search of a compatible mate turn now to the screen on the desk.

5 The internet’s reputation as a panderer needs some burnishing.To most

people, chat rooms mean chat-up rooms. But some of today’s internet
chaperones are as strict at protecting the reputation of their matchmaking
and the virtue of their charges — mostly female — as any Victorian matron.
They begin with a catechism as searching as any of Lady Bracknell’s inquiries:
10_ likes, dislikes, values, beliefs, favourite films and horrible habits. No chatting
is allowed unless the protocol is observed, the psychometric profile
completed and often the fee — real, not virtual, cash — paid up-front. Then,
®
L=)) with suitable caveats, the lonely questor on love’s tortuous path may be
& vouchsafed a personalised selection of three tantalising e-mail addresses.
5 15 Pictures come later, though lookist sites — beautifulpeople.com or
=
gorgeousnetwork.com — will post your portrait only if found attractive by a
(=)
= panting team of superficial selectors.
 O
@
An online search has huge advantages. It is quick. It is open at any time in any et
wo)
place (even, surreptitiously, from the office). It carries none of the hangdog )
bad
ao)
20 associations of the mournful dating agency or the drink-sodden sleaziness ©
fe
of the bar. And it can refine the field as narrowly as you wish: gardeners, ct
ey)
Catholics, redheads, Chelsea fans or even steam enthusiasts. Thomas, meet ,
‘e)
Annie or Clarabel. =|
M4)

From an article published in The Times (2006)

135
The tools of poetry
Poets use tools to create poems in the same way that a wood carver
uses a chisel to shape a carving or a chef uses a whisk to beat eqg
white. For the poet the raw material is words and the tools are the
devices he or she uses to shape the words. And just like any other
sort of device, every item in the poet’s tool kit has a name. Some of
these have been mentioned in this book and/or in English for Common
Entrance One. They are referred to in the related answer books too.

You need to know the names of the tools and what exactly they do in
order to be able to write about poetry accurately and well. So here,
in summary, is a list of the main ones with examples taken from the
poems used in this book.

Alliteration - the repetition of the same letter or sound, usually at

the beginning of neighbouring words. You can also use the adjective
alliterative:

...downward smoke, the slender stream

(From ‘The Lotos-Eaters’ by Alfred Lord Tennyson: see pages 71-72)

Assonance - the repetition of the same vowel sound (not necessarily

spelt the same way) in neighbouring words. You can also use the
adjective assonant:

Plump unpecked cherries

and the repeated:

Come buy, come buy

(From ‘Goblin Market’ by Christina Rossetti: see page 19)

Caesura - a break in a line of poetry. This was usual in Latin poetry

and still exists in some English poetry. It is usually marked with two
vertical lines when analysing poetry.

Admit impediments; || love is not love

Which alters || when it alteration finds,

(From ‘Sonnet 116’ by William Shakespeare: see page 124)

Consonance - words close together that use the same consonants

(the vowels may differ).
 Alone and palely loitering io
>
4)
(From ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’ by John Keats: see pages 5-6) t+
(2)
oO.
wn
Enjambement - the continuation of meaning from one line of poetry {e)
into the next so that the sentence (as it were) does not end at the
=—hs

a”)
end of the line: 12)
iv)

Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands 2

As if alive...

(From ‘My Last Duchess’ by Robert Browning: see pages 43-44)

Metaphor - the comparison of one thing with another by pretending

that the thing described really is what it is being compared to. Like
personification or a simile (see below) a metaphor is a form of image.
The adjective metaphorical and the adverb metaphorically are useful
too. Metaphors are not diterally true. The man in the example below is
not actually dying in water. He has been gassed:

I saw him drowning

(From ‘Dulce et Decorum est’ by Wilfred Owen: see pages 112-113)

Onomatopoeia - the use of words to imitate sounds. A single word,

like ‘sneeze’, can be onomatopoeic, but poets also often put words
together onomatopoeically. In the example below the repeated
hissing or sibilant (see ‘Sibilance’ below) and ‘z’ sounds suggest the
sound of the insects.

hushed with buzzing night-flies

(From Henry IV Part 2 by William Shakespeare: see page 98)

Personification — the giving of human qualities and abilities to non-

humans. Poets often personify things as a way of describing them. It
creates an image or picture in the reader's mind:

The winds were lovesick with them

(From Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare: see pages 55-56)

Sibilance - the repetition of hissing ‘s’ sounds (not necessarily spelt

the same way), including ‘sh’, within neighbouring words. You can
also use the adjective-sibilant:

a seep silent all summer

(From ‘November’ by Ted Hughes: see pages 29-30)

137
 Simile — a comparison of one thing with another which makes it
clear that it is a comparison by using the words ‘like’ or ‘as’ It is yet
another sort of image.

sodden as the bed of an ancient lake

Like hammered lead

(Both from ‘November’ by Ted Hughes: see pages 29-30)

Many of these devices are used over and over again in the poems we
study in this book. To make sure that you have understood - and to
‘fix’ your learning - go back and look for examples of each device in
each poem.

But remember that the important thing - once you've identified the
device - is to work out what it’s there for, why the poet used it and
what it adds to the poem ... and that’s the real joy of poetry!

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Index
Abercrombie, Sir Patrick 22 Bible, archaisms in the 79 satincal 107
acronyms, neologisms based on 63-4 Birdsong (Faulks) 110-12, 115, Sweeney Todd review 45-6
adjectives 116, 118 “Date expectations’ article (The Times)
and adverbs 23 Bleak House (Dickens) 28-9, 33, 134-5
converting to nouns 36, 40 determiners (modifiers) 35-6
the disappearing u 65 BBC serialisation of 41 diary writing 39
‘n’ endings 78-9 semicolons for lists in 37 Dickens, Charles 34
as modifiers 35 sentence fragments in 38, 39 Bleak House 28-9, 33, 36, 40
adverbial clauses of time 23-4, 27 Bonfire Night 32 BBC serialisation of 41
adverbs 22-4 Bright Star (film) 16 semicolons for lists 37
as modifiers 35 Britten, Benjamin sentence fragments in 38, 39
placement of ‘only’ 89-90 War Requiem 122 direct and indirect speech 60-2
split infinitive 90 Bronte, Charlotte direct questions 77-8
advertising, language of 25-6 Jane Eyre 16 discursive language 120-1
All Saints’ Day’ 31 Browning, Robert Dolan, Andy
All Souls’ Day 31 marriage 54 “Sacked over ‘elf and safety...
alliteration 14, 136 “My Last Duchess’ 43-5, article 73-5, 80-1
Ancient Greek words 47, 137 Du Maurier, Daphne
silent letters in 51-2, 92-3, 106 subtext of 52, 53 Rebecca 3-5, 10, 11, 12
ang- words 24-5 “The Pied Piper of Hamlyn’ 47 writing in sentence fragments 39
Anglo-Saxon words 38 Bryson, Bill 20, 21 ‘Dulce et Decorum est’ (Owen)
Animal Farm (Orwell) 96-7, 102, 105, caesura 136 MNZeasy, 1837)
106, 109 Campaign to Protect Rural England “Easter Island’ (Elkin) 7-9
ante- and anti- words 12-13 (CPRE) 20, 21, 22 eBay 22
anticipatory phrases 48-9 Chekhov, Anton Elkin, Susan
Antony and Cleopatra (Shakespeare) Three Sisters 134 “Easter Island’ 7-9
55-6, 67, 137 clauses, adverbial 23-4 “Hair today and gone tomorrow’
apostrophes 36 Clinging to the Wreckage (Mortimer) 58-9, 65
for possessive plurals 49 87-8, 93-4 ‘November thoughts’ 31-3
Arabic words 37 Collins, Wilkie enjambement 137
archaisms 79 The Moonstone 10 Eugene Onegin (Pushkin) 31
arranged marnages 128 commas 11 Faulks, Sebastian
Daily Mail article on 125-7, 131, 132 in direct speech 60-1 Birdsong 110-12, 115, 116, 118
assonance 136 for lists 37 “fewer and less’ 103-4
atmosphere, creating through Commonwealth War Graves First World War 110-16
language 14-15 Commission 122 Birdsong (Faulks) 110-12, 115,
Austen, Jane 128 coniumgere, words from 129-30 116, 118
Mansfield Park 1, 123-4, 127, 129 conjunctions “Dulce et Decorum est’ (Owen)
Badsey, Stephen and indirect questions 77 A=
article on Britain’s entry to the consonance 136-7 peace treaty 116
First World War 113-15, consumer protection laws 27 Stephen Badsey’s article on
N20), 21) counter- words 24 sails), A402 tl
The Barchester Chronicle (Trollope) 54 Cranford (Gaskell) 17-18 formal language
Barchester Towers (Trollope) 42-3, Daily Mail 76 discursive 120
47, 53-4 a article on arranged marriages Gaddafi, Omar Mohammad 99-101,
subtext 53 AZ5=/pe Seas 2 108
Barrett Browning, Elizabeth 54 “Sacked over ‘elf and safety’... Gaskell, Elizabeth 22
Bentley, Paul article 73-5, 80-1 Cranford 17-18
article on arranged marriages Daily Telegraph articles “gg’- words 38
W5ei, Wssil, ilsy2 on dropping litter 20-1 “gh’- words 37-8

139
Gilbert, W.S. indirect questions 77-8 subtext of 52, 53
‘I'm called Little Buttercup’ 27 internet dating 134-5 names, origins of 62-3
“Goblin Market’ (Rossetti) 19-20, 22, inverted commas neologisms 63-4, 91-2, 105
25), Zo), MBG in direct speech 60 newspaper reporting
golden wedding anniversaries 134 Jane Eyre (Bronté) 16 R direct and indirect questions 77
got/gotten 117 jerky grammar’ language for 131-2
grammar creating atmosphere by using 14 satincal 107
adverbs 22-4 Keats, John 16 see also Daily Mail; Daily Telegraph
anticipatory phrases 48-9 death 10 articles; The Times
breaking grammatical rules 38-40 “La Belle Dame Sans Merci’ 1, 5-7, North, Thomas
direct and indirect questions 77-8 iA, A, ANSi7/ translation of Plutarch’s Lives 55,
direct and indirect speech 60-2 creating atmosphere in 14-15 56
fewer’ and ‘less’ 103-4 language, functions of nouns
hyphens in adjectival phrases 62 creating atmosphere 14-15 adjectives converting to
‘jerky grammar’, creating discursive language 120-1 the disappearing u 65
atmosphere by using 14 humorous language 93-4 ‘n’ endings 78-9
‘lay’ and ‘lie’ 103, 104 newspaper reporting 80-1, 131-2 ‘November’ (Hood) 30-1, 40
modifiers 35-6 polemic use of language 65-6 ‘November’ (Hughes) 29-31, 33, 137,
past participles 116-17, 128-9 satire 106-7 138
placement of only’ 89-90 selling techniques 25-6 ‘November thoughts’ (Elkin) 31-3
pluperfect tense 128-9 sentence fragments 38-40 obsolete punctuation 12
sentences 10-12 spelling out a subtext 52-3 The Odyssey (Homer) 71
split infinitive 90-1 Lawrence, D H Old English 38
witty advice for journalists 118, “Storm in the Forest’ 68 ‘only’, placement of 89-90
129 ‘lay’ and lie’ 103, 104 onomatopoeia 137
Grasshopper (Vine) 69-71, 76, 105 ‘less’ and fewer’ 103-4 opus, words from 119
Greek words ‘lie’ and ‘lay’ 103, 104 Orwell, George 102
silent letters in 51-2, 92-3, 106 lists Animal Farm 96-7, 102, 105, 106,
Guy Fawkes Day 32 semicolons for 36-7 109
“Hair today and gone tomorrow’ separating by commas 11 Politics and the English language’
(Elkin) 58-9, 65 litter, problem of 20-1 109
health and safety rules Lives (Plutarch) 55, 56 Owen, Wilfred 116, 122
news article on 73-5 “The Lotus-Eaters’ (Tennyson) 71-3, “Dulce et Decorum est’ 112-13,
Heffer, Simon 82, 136 137]
satirical news article 107 magazine articles past participles 116-17, 128-9
Henry IV Part 2 (Shakespeare) 98-9, “Hair today and gone tomorrow’ Perry, Reed
LOS IOS A109 F 37 (Elkin) 58-9, 65 article on Gaddafi 99, 108
heteronyms 49-51 malapropisms 79-80 personification 137
The Hollow Crown (BBC series) 109 mania- words 91-2 “The Pied Piper of Hamlyn’ (Browning)
Homer Mansfield Park (Austen) 1, 123-4, 47
The Odyssey 71 U27, N29) Plath, Sylvia 34
homophones 130-1 manus, words from 119 pluperfect tense 128-9
Hood, Thomas 34 Mark, Jan plurals
‘November’ 30-1, 40 Turbulence 84-5, 91, 105 apostrophes for possessive plurals
Hopkins, Gerard Manley Marmion (Scott) 31 49
Pied Beauty’ 68 metaphor 137 words ending in y’ 13
Hughes, Ted 34 mnemonics (memory aids) 52 poetry
‘November’ 29-31, 33, 137, 138 modifiers 35-6 sentence fragments in 39
humorous language 93-4 mono- words 91-2 tools of 136-8
hyphens The Moonstone (Collins) 10 polemic use of language 65-6
in adjectival phrases 62 Mortimer, John 95 “Politics and the English language’
disappearing 12 Clinging to the Wreckage 87-8, 93-4 (Orwell) 109
‘Tm called Little Buttercup’ (Gilbert) “My Last Duchess’ (Browning) 43-5, prefixes
yop Mill ang- words 24-5
 counter- words 24 Shakespeare, John 60 subtexts 52-3 5
stressed syllables 50 Shakespeare, William 60, 65 suffixes Ky
words from vertere 118 Antony and Cleopatra 55-6, 67, adjectives converting to nouns *
pronouns as modifiers 35 B37) 78-9
Proud, Alex archaisms in 79 -ee 80
newspaper article on litter 20-1, Henry IV Part 2 98-9, 105, 108, -some words 105-6
26 109, 137 stressed syllables 50
public holidays 32 plays about tyrants 102 surnames, origins of 62-3
punctuation “Sonnet 116’ 124-5, 127, 128, 136 Sweeney Todd
apostrophes 36, 49 Shendan, Richard Brinsley *A Little Priest’ song 46, 54
changing fashions in 12 The Rivals 79 film of 47
contractions of the verb “to have’ sibilance 137 review of (Charles Spencer) 45-6,
128 silent letters 65
direct and indirect questions 77-8 ‘ch’ 106 tautology 103
direct and indirect speech 60-2 “h’ 92-3 Tennyson, Alfred, Lord 76, 83
hyphens 12, 62 ‘mM 52 archaisms 79
meaning changed by 91 ‘n’ 64 “The Lotus-Eaters’ 71-3, 82, 136
semicolons for lists 36-7 ‘p’ 51-2 Three Sisters (Chekhov) 134
sentences 10-12 ‘ps’ 106 The Times
witty advice for journalists 118, simile 138 “Date expectations’ article 134-5
129 -some words 105-6 Trollope, Anthony
Pushkin, Alexander solar eclipses 130 Barchester Towers 42-3, 47, 53-4
Eugene Onegin 31 “Sonnet 116’ (Shakespeare) 124-5, subtext 53
questions, direct and indirect 77-8 WAT, MX}, SYS Turbulence (Mark) 84-5, 91, 105
Rebecca (Du Maurer) 3-5, 10, 11, spelling verbs
as; adjectives converting to nouns in direct speech 60
creating atmosphere in 14 65, 78-9 in indirect questions 77
film of (1940) 16 ante- and anti- words 12-13 past participles 116-17
and Jane Eyre 16 changes over time 14 and the pluperfect tense
Relate 133 ‘gg’- words 38 128-9
Remembrance Day 34 “gh’- words 37-8 past tenses of ‘to have’ 128
Rendell, Ruth 76 heteronyms 49-51 split infinitive 90-1
‘rh’ words 93 homophones 130-1 Versailles, Treaty of (1918) 116
The Rivals (Sheridan) 79 mono- and -mania words 91-2 vertere , words from 118
Rossetti, Christina plurals of words ending in y’ 13 Victoria, Queen 76, 83, 102
“Goblin Market’ 19-20, 22, 25, revision 119-20 Vine, Barbara 83
26, 136 ‘rh’ words 93 Grasshopper 69-71, 76, 105
Rossetti, Dante Gabriel 19, 22 -some words 105-6 vocabulary
Royal British Legion 122 silent letters adjectives converting to nouns
Rubens, Peter Paul 60 “h’ 92-3 the disappearing u 65
“St Cecilia’ 68 Tw ‘n’ endings 78-9
SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) 41 ‘n’ 64 ang- words 24-5
satire 106-7 “p’ 51-2 ante- and anti- words 12-13
Scott, Walter stationery/stationary 130 archaisms 79
Marmion 31 words from coniumgere 129-30 counter- words 24
Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) 41 words from manus and opus 119 creating atmosphere 14-15
semicolons for lists 36-7 words from vertere 118 disappearing u words 65
sentences Spencer, Charles “gg’- words 38
creating atmosphere through review of Sweeney Todd 45-6, 65 “gh’- words 37-8
structure 14 split infinitive 90-1 heteronyms 49-51
grammar and punctuation 10-12 stationery/stationary 130 homophones 130-1
humorous language 94 Stonehenge 10 malapropisms 79-80
writing in sentence fragments “Storm in the Forest’ (Lawrence) 68 mono- and -mania words 91-2
38-40 stressed syllables 50-1 neologisms 63-4, 91-2, 105

141
old forms of words 14 *pcbie2 “We Are Seven’ (Wordsworth) 85-7, 95
origins of names 62-3 ‘ps’ 106 “The Wild Swans at Coole’ (Yeats)
plurals of words ending in -y’ 13 stationery/stationary 130 56-7, 67
silent letters the suffix -ee 80 Wordsworth, Wilham
‘ch’ 106 words from coniumgere 129-30 \ “We Are Seven’ 85-7, 95
“h’ 92-3 words from manus and opus 119 *y’, plurals of words ending in 13
im 952 words from vertere 118 Yeats, W.B. 60, 65
‘n’ 64 War Requiem (Britten) 122 ‘The Wild Swans at Coole’ 56-7, 67
Resources for all subjects covered at
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Key Stage 3, Common Entrance and other independent school entrance exams at
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