Leavers' Post

Sadly, at the end of this term, Mr Sanderson and Mr Cullen-Hewitt are leaving St Paul's, but they very kindly paused while packing up their books to answer the blog's questions. 

What were you reading when you were a teenager?

Mr Sanderson: Honestly, shamefully, hardly anything for pleasure, until I left school; then Waugh, Greene, Orwell. More recently, McEwan, Roth. 
Mr Cullen-Hewitt: I think I tried to be a bit edgy with my reading as a teenager. I got really into the Stephen King horror novels for a while. The Shining, Salem's Lot, Misery and Carrie were all brilliant, and The Tommyknockers was bizarre but entertaining. 

However, things fell apart when I tried to read one of his newer horrors; I got about two chapters into Cell and had to stop reading it. The magic had gone and I haven’t read a Stephen King since. I also got really into dystopian novels; Riddley Walker was challenging but very rewarding, and I really enjoyed A Clockwork Orange, but it was 1984 that I loved the most. My GCSE English teacher had hinted that we might study 1984 as one of our set texts and I devoured them all over the summer holidays before starting Year 10; in the end we studied Silas Marner instead and (despite being a brilliant teacher) I’ve never quite forgiven him for it. I won’t share his name as he may or may not be a current teacher at St Paul’s…

Leaver's Post

Surely it's too early in the term for a leaver's post? Sadly, it's not: this week we say goodbye to Mr Staniforth, our Theatre Technical Manager, who has been overseeing Pauline productions with patience and calm good humour for the last fifteen years. Mr Staniforth has also been a regular contributor to the blog, and his memorably eclectic suggestions for our annual Book of the Year posts have steered us well off the beaten path, towards many new, intriguing and excellent books and writers. We are deeply honoured that he took the time to answer the blog's questions before he departs.  

What were you reading when you were a teenager?

As an early teen I was saving pocket money to buy second hand copies of Alistair MacLean and Jack Higgins, action adventure books. These haven’t lasted, although I am not immune to the pleasure of the airport novel. 

I have kept The Way to Dusty Death and The Golden Gate on my shelves as an adult, as well as a signed copy of one of Jack Higgins’s books. I wrote to him to settle an argument I was having with a friend, who insisted that Frederick Forsyth and he were the same author writing under different names. They are not, and I have a signed letter from Mr Higgins (calling me David, curse my handwriting!) confirming such. 

Jack Higgins and Frederick Forsyth. Not the same writer.  

My mother – who is an English teacher – put Thomas Hardy and Jane Austen in my hands, but while I read them, they never really stuck.  

Leavers' Post

It's our final post of the year, and sadly, at the end of this term, Mr Adelman, Miss Brennan, Miss Dillon, Miss Ahmed, Mr Thumwood, Mr Harris, and the mighty, mighty Dr Mayfield are leaving SPS - but they very kindly paused while packing up their books to answer the book blog's leavers' questionnaire. Dr Mayfield notes that while he can remember the three books he read for his English Literature O Level - Pride and Prejudice, Goodbye to All That and An Inspector Calls - they were possibly the last three 'friction' books he read. So he's answered the questions with classical music - a book blog first, and one we'd definitely be happy to continue.  

And if these suggestions don't give you enough ideas for summer reading, why not check out the library's Book Advisor posters, or their map of the world (outside the Kayton Library), which gives you ideas for books connected to places you might be visiting over the summer. Plus, Mr Gardner has put together an epic list of reading suggestions for the 4th, 5th and 6th forms, which you can find along with other suggestions  on the blog's reading lists page here.   Have fun choosing your summer reading!  

What were you reading when you were a teenager?

Mr Adelman: Some of the most memorable books from my teen years are Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, The Stranger by Albert Camus, The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood and my senior year term paper book, The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner. While the last one felt more like a lesson in discipline and patience than pleasure reading, each book stood out not only for its impressive writing, but for its commentary and ability to make me question my own beliefs.

Leavers' Post

It's our final post of the year, and sadly, at the end of this term, we're saying goodbye to Dr Field, Mr Madden, Mr Gazet, Ms Malhotra, Mr Thompson, Mr Roberts, Ms Trepanier and Ms French: but - with typical generosity - they all paused while packing up their books to answer the book blog's leavers' questionnaire.  

What were you reading when you were a teenager?

Dr Field: Reading was a real struggle when I was a teenager, I’ve always found words to be quite tricky but I love stories. I had to read Pride and Prejudice and To Kill a Mocking Bird because they were our GCSE set texts and I loved them – gaining confidence by being made to read books in school really opened up reading for me and now I am rarely without a book.

Mr Madden: I wasn’t a great reader in early adolescence but my love for books was rekindled when I was twelve when my dad passed me down his copy of The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. I watched the Richard Burton movie shortly afterwards and was then hooked on Le Carré novels for most of my teens.

Leaver's Post ...

Sadly, at the end of this term, SPS is saying farewell to Miss Muir, dedicated supporter of all things environmental and literary, founder of EcoSoc (and its excellent blog) and generous contributor to many of our posts over the last six years. After Easter, Miss Muir is returning to her original career as an English teacher: she very kindly paused in her preparations for next term's teaching to answer the book blog's leaver's questionnaire.   

Leaver's Post

As you may know, Mrs Jones is retiring at the end of this term, after ten years in the Kayton Library patiently helping Paulines find, read (and return!) their books.  We're all very sad to see her go - but we were delighted that she kindly agreed to answer the book blog's Leaver's Questionnaire before departing,

What were you reading when you were a teenager?

I loved Agatha Christie. My favourites were Death on the Nile and Cat among the Pigeons. 

I also loved Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle. I was given The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes which I treasured.

Leavers' Post

Today is our final post of the year: sadly Mr Parris, Mrs Mackenzie, Mrs Graham, Dr Ruddick, Mr Barile, Miss Leconte and Mr Yao are among those leaving SPS at the end of this term. But they very kindly paused in the middle of their packing up to answer the blog's Leavers' Questionnaire ...

What were you reading when you were a teenager?

Mr Parris: Iain Banks – The Wasp Factory, Irvine Welsh - Trainspotting

Mrs Mackenzie: I went to boarding school at 8. The house bookshelf had a full set of the Encyclopaedia Britannica and a Times Atlas of the World. I loved looking at the atlas - I find maps fascinating - but generally there were slim pickings and I read books that were passed around the house. So, lots of Judy Blume, Jilly Cooper, Danielle Steel and Wilbur Smith. Lace by Shirley Conran came out when I was about 13 and was immediately banned by the Housemistress so of course several copies did the rounds, covered in the dust jacket of something more improving. I don’t recommend that anyone spends any time reading these. 

The first book I remember reading that wasn’t a bodice ripper or a spy novel was Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. It rocked my world and changed my reading habits. 

Leavers' Post (2) ...

 It's our last post of the year - and sadly, at the end of this term, we're saying goodbye to lots of people, including Head of Classics Miss Waterfield, and Colet Fellows Mr Rao and Miss Henry, who very kindly paused in the middle of their packing to answer the book blog's leavers' questionnaire.

What were you reading when you were a teenager?
Miss Waterfield: A mixture really. Some of the ones I remember are: Robin Hobb, Patrick Rothfuss, William Gibson, Isaac Asimov, etc. for fantasy/sci-fi; Allende and Garcia Marquez when I was going through a South American phase; the Brontes, Jane Austen, Georgette Heyer, etc. for romance; in historical fiction, Gillian Bradshaw, Rosemary Sutcliff, Judith Merkle Riley, Elizabeth Chadwick, Dorothy Dunnett (while doing my scholarship exams, which was a bit of a distraction!), and Pamela Belle. 

I remember my English teacher despairing of my reading taste and giving me what she considered good books (The Color Purple, Brideshead Revisited, The Great Gatsby, Catcher in the Rye…) – I read them all dutifully, and liked only one (Brideshead), from which I concluded that a) you should read what you like when you like it, b) tastes change. I recently read Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, because of the tv series, which I also read as a teenager – I hated it then, but was blown away by it now.

Mr Rao: My very first high school reading assignment was the first chapter of The Source by James Michener. I liked it so much I read the whole book. 

I was fascinated by how he wove together the stories of contemporary characters with the stories of older generations going all the way back to the Stone Age, so I credit him with inspiring my love of history. I spent the next few years reading every James Michener book I could get my hands on. 

Miss Henry: I had a phase around 16 where I read a lot of American history nonfiction. I remember reading a book on George Washington’s war tactics in the Revolutionary War, and the biography of Alexander Hamilton that inspired Lin-Manuel Miranda to write Hamilton. 

I also unapologetically loved (and still love) the Twilight series. 

Leaver's Post (1) ...

Today is our penultimate post of the year, and we're extremely grateful to outgoing Captain of School, George Davies, and Vice-Captain, Will Shackleton, for finding the time (between filming Friday briefings, of course) to answer the book blog's leavers' questionnaire.

What were you reading when you were in the fourth form?
George: Probably not as much as I should have been! Casting my mind back, I do remember this being roughly the first time that I read Catch-22 and some good dystopian novels like Brave New World, 1984, and Fahrenheit 451 during the holidays. 

But I think I was mainly in my comics phase during that year, so my enthusiasm for Marvel probably drowned out most other forms of fiction!

Will: A lot of trash crime fiction. My knowledge of corpse disposal was unparalleled as a 14-year-old.

That being said, And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie is a masterpiece of mystery and plotting. Just don’t read it late at night – I did and didn’t sleep for weeks…

Leavers' Post ...

Sadly, at the end of this term, we are bidding farewell to Mr Collinson and Mr O'Brien - but they've been kind enough to answer the book blog's leavers' questionnaire before departing.  

What were you reading when you were a teenager?

Mr O'Brien: As an early teen I was obsessed with the Alex Rider series. I progressed to reading a lot of SAS Fiction, especially by the author Chris Ryan. 

Mr Collinson: I grew up on the edge of the West Yorkshire moors, just outside Bradford and very close to Haworth, home of the Brontës. I was absolutely mesmerised by the novels and also by the landscape, which is still wild and somehow unforgiving. My surroundings definitely made the books come alive. I still like to visit the Brontë parsonage museum from time to time, when I am up there.

Leavers' Post

It's (almost) the end of term, and this year, sadly, SPS will be saying farewell to Mr Hager and Miss Ramsay-Overall, both of whom have been regular contributors to the book blog over the past few years. They were kind enough to take a moment to answer the book blog's leavers' questionnaire.  

• What were you reading when you were a child, and when you were a teenager?

Mr Hager: To be honest, not as much as I should have, and certainly nothing literary. It was more adventure stories or spy thrillers. I don’t remember reading ‘proper’ literature, really, until I was maybe sixteen. My A-level teachers would talk about great books they’d read and that inspired me to try them out. I remember buying The Brothers Karamazov because of a philosophy of religion lesson, and taking forever to read it, but it started me off reading quite a lot of other Russian literature from the 19th century which I really loved. I realised that books were much more interesting than pretty much anything else. I read quite a bit of Victorian literature after that, as well as more modern American stuff; Paul Auster was, I think, the first writer whose work I tried to read in its entirety when I was still at school.

Miss Ramsay-Overall: I was really big into Harry Potter (I actually still have my crisp first edition Philosopher’s Stone from 1997… I refused to bend the spine, even at 8)

A signed first edition of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, sold at auction in 2017 for £85,000
 

Leavers' Post ...

Our final post of the term is our leavers' post: sadly, we're saying goodbye to lots of people - but Mr Edwards, Mr Jacoby, Mrs Mitchell, Mr Williams and Mr Kerr very kindly took a break from packing up their virtual classrooms to answer all or some of the book blog's questions.

What were you reading when you were a teenager?

Mr Edwards: Harry Potter was a staple - I was nine when the first came out so we were roughly the same age. In early teens I read all the Willard Price books; I confess my mid teens were a bit of desert partly as my school decided in some millennial wisdom to sell all their books and replace with six desktop computers; in later teens I went through a Raymond Chandler phase.

Mr Jacoby: I remember having a very serious list of books to have read before starting secondary school, from the Odyssey to Rebecca. However I wasn't really a fan of classical literature and must admit I spent my teenage years reading Tolkien!

Mr Williams: Orwell, Buchan, Dylan Thomas, PG Wodehouse, Graham Greene? As a teenager I was an avid reader, voracious and a frequent user of the public library, but apart from some wonderful A Level set texts (Hamlet, Under Milk Wood, The Power and the Glory, Tonio Kröger, Andorra, Les Mains Sales and others which sparked an interest in ‘serious’ reading) memorable reading really started in my gap year and through university.

The final scene from Mr Williams's production of Hamlet, with Will Attenborough in the title role

Mr Kerr: I always loved reading. I got hooked on Stephen King novels. I remember having an argument with my English teacher as he said he wasn't a proper writer! I picked up his On Writing last summer- highly recommend these inspirational words for all future Pauline authors.

Leaver's Post: Mrs Waller

Sadly, this term we're saying goodbye to Mrs Waller, Head of English at SPJ, whose brilliant teaching has enabled so many future Paulines to navigate their way successfully through their entrance exams, and who also steered 6H at SPS through the murky waters of their iGCSEs last year. She has also been a regular contributor to our book blog posts, and very generously found time to contribute to our regular leavers' questionnaire.

What were you reading when you were a teenager?

Short stories by Ian McEwan and Angela Carter, The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall, novels by Flann (quirky) and Edna (well-wrought) O'Brien, Perfume by Patrick Suskind, Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons, all sorts of urban stuff by Michael Bracewell (The Crypto-Amnesia Club was my favourite I think) and Martin Amis ...

... the Gormenghast trilogy by Mervyn Peake, the Philip Pullman of his day perhaps, dystopia by George Orwell and Aldous Huxley, obvious teen winners like The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks, the Hitchhikers ‘trilogy’ by Douglas Adams and in my more earnest moods almost anything by George Eliot (though one of them’s AWFUL – can never remember which…possibly Felix Holt), and comics (like Stray Toasters, Tank Girl, Arkham Asylum, 2000AD)

Final Post of the Year ...

Sadly, this term we say goodbye to Mr Hempstead, Miss Cogbill, Dr Weller, Mrs Holmes, Mr Toller and Colet Fellow Mr Espey - but they very kindly offered to answer the book blog's leavers' questionnaire before departing: if you're looking for some summer reading, here are plenty of suggestions ...

What were you reading when you were a teenager?
Mr Hempstead: I spent a lot of time on the cricket and football pitch as a teenager, but as I lived in the middle of nowhere I did manage to read quite a bit. The Lord of the Rings absorbed me for an entire Christmas holidays when I was about 15, and I read pretty much the complete works of Steinbeck from the ages of 14 to 17 as my parents had the full set on their bookshelf. I particularly like The Winter of our Discontent – it seemed to me to be a bit more nuanced than some of the others – and I enjoyed the more comedic works. The ne’er-do-wells of Cannery Row reminded me of a lot of men in my village!

Final Post ...

Sadly, this term we say goodbye to Miss Good, Dr Hudson and Mr Young - but they very kindly agreed to answer the book blog's leavers' questionnaire before departing.

What were you reading when you were a teenager?
Miss Good:To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Dr Hudson: Aged 13 and 14, mostly Marvel comics. I collected them and had complete sets of all the major titles. I have just depressed myself by checking how valuable one of the comics I then owned would now be: Amazing Fantasy No.15, the first appearance of Spider Man, apparently sold seven years ago at auction for $1.1! I bought it for half a crown (12½ p) – that price including a few others – at a second-hand bookshop in Aldershot in 1969.

I also had a copy of each of the original Incredible Hulk series, which ran to only six issues. I sold the lot when I was 15 in order to buy a guitar amp. And I started reading proper books, too, beginning – as I recall – with Great Expectations. Moral of the story? If you want to be rich, kids, keep away from Rock and Roll and Dickens.
 Mr Young: Well, I have to admit that I tended to prioritise playing sport of any kind during my teenage years but did get stuck into a few books by the saints – St Basil's On the Making of Man, St Bonaventure's The Soul's Journey into God, etc.

I also loved the Chronicles of Narnia and then later on moved onto reading arguments for and against God - The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, God is not Great by Christopher Hitchens, The Rage against God by Peter Hitchens, Straw Dogs by John Gray, There is a God by Anthony Flew.

Leaver's Post ...

Sadly, this term sees the retirement of Mrs Aslett, who's been school librarian at St Paul's since 1999: that's almost twenty years of gently guiding Paulines around the library's vast collection of resources, helping them to host author's visits, put on exhibitions, and discover the treasures of the archives and rare books room (as well as issuing the occasional fine).  She oversaw the seamless transition from the Walker Library (now, alas, mere rubble) to the new Kayton Library, and very kindly took the time during the busy last week of term to answer the book blog's questionnaire.

What sort of books were you reading when you were a teenager?
As a teenager I was into detective stories for recreation – Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers while also reading a lot of the classics.

This developed out of the texts I was reading at school eg a love of Dickens came from reading David Copperfield and A Tale of Two Cities. We studied Thomas Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge so I read almost all of the Hardy collection and still have some copies. My eldest daughter has my school copy of Pride and Prejudice.

Final Post ...

The last word on the book blog this year goes to Mr Joy, who, sadly, is leaving SPS at the end of this term, but was kind enough to answer the book blog's questionnaire before departing.

What were you reading when you were a teenager?
A lot of history, with more than a smattering of: crime; legal; action,‘thrillers’!

Sadly, Ms Pick is leaving St Paul's at the end of this term, but she very kindly paused in the middle of packing up all her books to answer the book blog's questions:

Q: What were you reading when you were a teenager?
 A: Harry Potter and the His Dark Materials trilogy were the favourites.

Summer Reading

For our final post of the term, Rev Blackstone, Dr Perkins, Mr Boss, Dr Gardam, Ms Padelford and Mr O'Keeffe, all of whom (sadly) are leaving SPS this year, very kindly answered our questions about the books they enjoy.  Here, to inspire you with ideas for summer reading, are their responses.

Final post of term ...

Sadly, Mr Shouler is leaving St Paul's - but he very kindly paused in the middle of packing up all his books to answer the book blog's questions:

Q: What were you reading when you were a teenager?
A: In my early teens, not much. Doing Tess of the d'Urbervilles for GCSE made me want to do English A-level, and then I didn't look back. An unhealthy cocktail of DH Lawrence, EE Cummings and Martin Amis when I was about 16 or 17.