A-Level English Literature students found themselves walking in the footsteps of great authors, poets and writers on the annual Modernism walking tour trip.
The trip featured a walk around the St. James’ area of London where students were treated to a range of fascinating anecdotes about the lives of those living and writing in the interwar period, from Sigfried Sassoon to Aldous Huxley, Graham Greene to Evelyn Waugh, and of course Virginia Woolf to Edith Sitwell and Nancy Cunard.
Hosted by London Literary Tours, the period was brought vividly to life with dramatic readings and even opportunities for the students to perform themselves, all against the backdrop of the very buildings in which these literary icons were living and writing. This allowed students to really immerse themselves in the literature of the interbellum period, developing a stronger appreciation for their subject.
The trip concluded with a trip to the National Portrait Gallery, where students were able to engage with further artistic outputs of the period to broaden their understanding of modernist art of the period. Inspired by the writing of Woolf, Waugh and Greene, students were encouraged to use modernist literary techniques to devise a short fiction piece based on a portrait.
This trip helped to prepare the A-Level students for the unseen modernism prose aspect of the English Literature course, enriching their understanding of the period, the authors and the art.
Below are extracts of creative writing written by Y12 students:
Lady Morrell surveyed the painting with an indescribable gaze. Bright colours evoked measured emotion. It was not boredom which plagued her. No. Each individual day was a perfectly pleasant experience. She profusely thanked dear August and bade him farewell as she stepped out into a brisk gust of wind. The streets were quiet, affording Lady Morrell a moment for contemplation. Ah yes. Boredom. It was not that one day was like this but rather than every day began to appear rather too similar. The same poems she once read with a fervent intensity now simply washed over her as another work within the sea of literature known to her. Certainly she did not resent such a sea, not that she may have rid herself of it regardless. She decided that her role as patron of such artistic endeavours was surely too entrenched to back out. She paid sparing attention to the various house façades which she passed by, yet their presence served as a comfort nonetheless. She has walked this way many times before. It seems as though they are sentinel, forming familiar walls around her. She will not become lost in her mind.
Aiming home still preoccupied, although now with thoughts regarding the painting (for thoughts are so very loathe to remain centred on the topic), surely it would divide opinion. Only the most bland art left its viewers with a pleasurable nothingness. Division therefore was no undesirable quality. Lady Morrell realised the weariness which had settled over her as she sank into her armchair. To be alone is seldom something which doesn’t bring relief and, this being a typical day, Lady Morrell certainly felt less dejected. She flipped over the hourglass which resided on her desk. Golen beads fell with a pleasing rustle, reflecting the golden sunshine of the late afternoon. This was a rather comforting action for Lady Morrell yet today her dejection returned with unusual force. However pretty the golden beads, it became repetitive to watch one after the other fall (how it pained her to think such a thing). Indeed nothing more unique was brought to her day than a new piece to read, something which already incited Lady Morrell’s odd lack of interest. Nothing felt quite right in this day. As the beads finished falling, Lady Morrell flipped over the hourglass once more and continued her contemplation with a largely neutral, if minorly disturbed, expression.
Amabel (Y12)
Florence wiped non-existent dust from her fingers and onto the dark purple folds of her dress, (she liked to imagine it was this colour, rather than the sombre black perceived and frequently remarked on by her father as he sat thickly in his chair behind the desk, a supreme overseer of his own small world he had created – as it raised her to a level of handsomeness and refinement otherwise unachievable) she straightened her petticoat, and turned towards the owner of the expectant voice behind her. What an imposing man, she thought, but being the tactful businesswoman she prided herself as, and with a desire to please her father by promoting to all the cordial atmosphere of his bookshop, she peeled her lips over jutting (but regal and not unpleasing to the eye) teeth, and asked how she may help he who with a lifted forehead regarded her now curiously.
Mr Boot almost laughed (for he recognised her pretence with admiration for the work), and returned her something-of-a-smile.
Florence thought, this is a unique case of a sensitive man who understands my business, and perhaps (for his eyes pieced) my soul. She held herself well, as she ought to, even as a wave of indescribable weakness passed through her, exposing first her head and then the quiet, throbbing ache in her heart.
“I should like to have a copy of Joyce.” And for his cousin, too – yes, it was his birthday in July – and perhaps another for his sister so that he could come back on another day. His sister, like she who also stood firmly in front of him, was one of those diligent and reserved types who could gauge a classical experience. Florence – that was her name, he now knew – let Boot walk just behind the slow, dignified trail of her almost purple coloured dress, (for it certainly was not black, though some short-sighted people might see it like that) until they stopped abruptly at the necessary shelf.
This shelf, Boot would come to learn, was inhabited by all of Florence’s favourite authors, the majority of which – in later life – would come back to London with them both in a ribbon-trailing motor car.
Isla (Year 12)
‘Time is indeed of the essence!’ affirmed Mr Harley as his wife continued her blabbing on about the horrendous and the horrific – oh how horrific – and harrowing events of the day. Ridiculous, preposterous the end of life as well know it, grey, black even, something about today’s paper, no more cheese anywhere and oh, how much she needed some cheese in this moment of rage. But alas, there was no more cheese to be found because everything was lost. Nothing could be found anywhere. Everything had moved… shifted beyond what anybody could have imagined.
And now Mrs Jane’s words suddenly appeared, uninvited into Mr Harley’s mind; but again, everything seemed to show up uninvited these days, he remembered. ‘Foolish, foolish men’ Mrs Jane would say, ‘they’ll be knee deep in wires and rats before they realise what they’ve got themselves into.’ At first Mr Harley had thought the old woman was anticipating the enemies regret for ever coming having come near British soldiers. But it was only one cold Tuesday morning when a letter to his neighbour told her of her son’s death – two weeks ago in the trenches – and she opened the door in her white dressing gown and a cup of hot water in one hand, as though welcoming an old friend, Mr Harley realised she already knew. She had known her son was dead for weeks.
The next day she was gone. Gone like the cheese, like the music, like freedom. Mr Harley looked at his wife who had tired now and settled on the sofa, still holding that flame of rage in the tapping of her foot on the floor. She had stopped talking now, though, looking up every now and then from the sieve of her hands, waiting for Mr Harley to tell her it would all be okay.
Lora, Y12
