Lower Sixth Reading Trip to Stratford and Haworth

Shakespeare, Bronte, Plath and Hughes are names that regularly trip off the tongues of students and English teachers alike, names that trip, perhaps, too easily. So the chance to go and visit the places where these writers lived and worked and to read their writing in the context of a physical location is something to be valued.

In the May 2011 half term a number of L6 students and teachers made a tour of Stratford-upon-Avon and North Yorkshire to explore the physical, emotional and intellectual landscape of these writers. We started in Stratford where, after a student-led seminar, we visited Shakespeare’s home and watched a mesmerising version of Macbeth in the new Theatre. We then went North to stay in Haworth where again students led seminars on Wuthering Heights and the poetry of Plath and Hughes.

Walks over the moors and visits to the Parsonage at Haworth and Plath’s grave all gave a particular force and new dimensions to our reading. What was evident was that time in new places with a concentrated focus on reading, thinking and talking of books was tremendously rewarding and exciting.