The A level Literary Retreat to London was such stuff as dreams are made on – fleeting, but magical.
We began with a scavenger hunt around the British Library to find the oldest book, the origin of the Lindisfarne Gospels, and to transcribe 1540s handwriting. We were then treated to a walking tour through the sights of London, led by students who had researched one site each – but cunningly hiding one clever lie among their facts, to see if we could spot it. (Was the Millenium Bridge really named after a Robbie Williams song? This caused much consternation).
We continued with ekphrastic writing in the Tate Modern, before our evening theatre trip to see The Tempest by candlelight at the stunning Sam Wanamaker wooden theatre at the Globe, where cast members appeared from the audience as if by magic, blurring the boundaries between the play world and our own.
The next morning, we were wowed by London Literary Tours’ Bloomsbury Blast guided walk around the iconic sights of this hotbed of twentieth-century literature, with poetry recitals in costumes and voices at every stop; if you have never read any Rabindranath Tagore or Charlotte Mew, do it now! Our final stop was the Young Vic for Arthur Miller’s late and rarely-performed play Broken Glass, which, whilst written in 1994, spoke sharply to contemporary issues of warmongering, fear and racial prejudice.
Our revels may now be ended, but the memories will live long and everyone (including teachers) left with a new literary gem to explore and enjoy.
