World Book Day Quiz - the answers ...

In the last post of this term, we're bringing you the answers to this year's World Book Day Quiz - and (even more importantly) announcing the winners ...

In Round One, Mr Harris wondered whether you could identify five books by their covers. By and large, it turned out that you could.  The first cover - 

belonged to Mario Puzo's The Godfather: 

Most of you knew this, although Noughts and Crosses was a popular alternative, plus titles along the lines of 'Pinocchio', 'Muppets or Puppets?' and (sigh) 'The Installation of the Ceiling Mounted Fan'. It's a visual metaphor, people. 

Book of the Week

A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle
Recommended by Aman Parekh

A Study in Sherlock?

It’s a Sherlock Holmes book! If I had to convince someone to read A Study in Scarlet, that's all I’d say. In fact, I could probably make this a one sentence recommendation. I won’t. In all seriousness, the best thing going for A Study in Scarlet is simply that it is a Sherlock Holmes book, one of the most popular and influential series of books in the history of English literature. It is no coincidence that Sherlock Holmes is the most portrayed human fictional character in all film and television.

Rathbone, Cushing, Brett, Downey Jr, Cumberbatch, McKellen ...

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner - the results!

One of the highlights of last week's World Book Day celebrations was the Kayton Library's 'Guess Who's Coming to Dinner' quiz. In today's post, Mrs Cummings reveals the answers, as well as the lucky winners of those Nando's chicken dinners ... 

'We set the table for 8 and put props at each place setting so you could work out who our literary guests were. Did you work them all out?

International Women's Day

It's International Women's Day on Wednesday, so today's 'Book of the Week' post features recommendations of books in relation to this year's theme, #EmbraceEquity, and to women's writing and writers in general.

Top Girls by Caryl Churchill
Recommended by Mr Dormandy

Sarah Lam, Lesley Sharpe, Lesley Manville and Deborah Findlay in the Royal Court's 1991 revival of Top Girls 

The best known and most influential play by England's greatest living playwright (sorry Tom Stoppard!), Top Girls is at once a theatrical and human delight - rich, layered characters; effortlessly natural dialogue; exhilaratingly unpredictable tone - an endlessly intriguing exploration of female experience and gender politics, responding to the complex challenges posed to feminists by Margaret Thatcher’s premiership, and an epoch-making series of experiments in dramatic form.  Its influence, especially on contemporary European dramatic writing, is hard to overstate.  An all-male school version of this all-female play would be a blast!