Books studied in English

Share your memories and stories from the Hertford Christ's Hospital School, which closed in 1985, when the two schools integrated to the Horsham site....

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Katharine
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Books studied in English

Post by Katharine »

John recently gave me a Kindle, and I have been re-reading some of the free classics. Currently I am almost at the end of Jane Eyre - so why am I putting this in a Hertford Memories Thread you may ask?

I can distinctly remember "doing" it in Upper IV - we had the top floor classroom, science block side. OK I may not have concentrated on the book too much - but did we read a special schools version - a bowdlerised version? I'm sure I would have remembered some of the torturing love self confessions if I had read them. I know we all fell in love with Mr Rochester and we started calling the school surveyor (?) Mr Rochester! He was a mysterious man who appeared now and then, who looked at the buildings.
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Re: Books studied in English

Post by MaryB »

I don't remember doing Jane Eyre, but I do remember that classroom - we had it in the UIVth too. I remember being taught French there by Miss Mercer - we had failed to learn any before that and she was brought in as a last resort. And I think we had the classroom at the opposite end the following year. So presumably the parallel class in each year was next door, nearer to the stairs? In the UVth we were all the way back downstairs again, next to the reference library, and in my case next to the classroom where I'd started out in III.2.
Way off topic......
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Re: Books studied in English

Post by Angela Woodford »

The UV room - where we were condemned for "classrooms" - not that you'd remember that, Mary! I remember that room, miserably trying to re-think my Latin prep at 12.15 on a Saturday! Oh; dreary punishment!
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Re: Books studied in English

Post by midget »

I remember doing "Emma", and also 'Silas Marner' which we all loved. Of course e had a Shakespeare play every term. WE did Julius Caesar several times, RichardII, Macbeth several times (including for school Cert)
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Re: Books studied in English

Post by MaryB »

Angela Woodford wrote:The UV room - where we were condemned for "classrooms" - not that you'd remember that, Mary!
True - cleaning the whole house's black shoes was more my kind of punishment.
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We did "My Family and Other Animals" with Mrs Betterton. Some of the class laughed so much they almost fell out of their desks, but I just found it gently amusing. I can't remember anything between that and "Bran the Bronzesmith", though there must have been at least one book per term.

I have a Kindle too (it was a Christmas present) and am enjoying the free books. Not just classics - I recently read Angela Brazil for the first time. Interesting as a period piece, but rather dull.
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Re: Books studied in English

Post by englishangel »

I was in the same class as Mary (MKM) and I have just re-read My Family and Other Animals, not that different from an adult perspective, (except you don't giggle at Widdle and Puke) but as I have now been to Corfu I can picture the scenes which helps.
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Re: Books studied in English

Post by englishangel »

We also did Macbeth (probably for O Level) and went to the Roundhouse at Chalk Farm to see it performed by the National Youth Theatre, and very good it was too.
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Re: Books studied in English

Post by Jo »

I remember Mrs Bet reading aloud to us from My Family and Other Animals, and seamlessly reading a "bl**dy" as "blooming" :D I can't imagine even the mildest swear word ever passing her lips*, even if she was only quoting someone else.

I remember Bran the Bronzesmith with Miss Champion in the first year, and Then-the-little-Hiawatha. I've just got a Kindle too, must relive some old memories....


*nor mine evidently, if phpBB has anything to do with it :roll:
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Re: Books studied in English

Post by Katharine »

Thanks for the memories - but did we read special school editions? Did I just miss all the love bits? BTW I was often bottom of the class for English, so I may well have done!
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Post by MaryB »

There definitely weren't any love or otherwise naughty bits in our O level set books - Macbeth, Androcles and the Lion (BJM loved Shaw), Brazilian Adventure by Peter Fleming (eh?) and Memoirs of a Fox Hunting Man. I don't remember ever reading anything even mildly titillating in class - or did I just not notice? I don't think we had special school editions of anything.
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Post by englishangel »

Never mind BJM, it was the books/plays the school had. I remember Androcles, and Arms and the Man. That was the first West End production I saw with Richard Briers and Alice Krige (later to find fame as the Borg Queen) in her first role outside South Africa.

Lord of the Flies was another one.
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Re: Books studied in English

Post by icomefromalanddownunder »

Jane Eyre, Cider With Rosie.
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Post by fra828 »

A very rare (!)cheer went up in the class when Miss Morrison announced that our set texts would be Jane Eyre, Macbeth , and poems of Thomas Hardy: 'when dunkery frowns on Exon Moor....' Can anyone else remember this poem? Wish I could find the Summer 1972 (London Board) O level Eng Lit paper online, for nostagia's sake!
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Re: Books studied in English

Post by sejintenej »

I can remember quite a bit about "The Scottish Play" but nothing about "The Trumpet Major" by Hardy, both of which we had to do for O level.
What really got me was earlier on when I had to learn all about what seemed to be a Scottish lake but what the rape was I had no idea. Long time later I guessed it was all about a bit of hair (lock) but why they couldn't have used intelligible language I don't know. I still don't know what the poem was about - it was total gibberish
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