Eight years ago this week, I wrote the 75th post of my Shakespeare read-through project.
That eighteen-line sequence when Romeo and Juliet meet got me asking the perennial favourite: how can we see new things about old texts? Surely, by now, everything worth saying has been said?
My answer — then and now — is absolutely not!
Elsewhere, looking back, it’s interesting to see me (perhaps quite wordily) riffing on something else which has become a huge part of my GCSE teaching: the intersection between reading and writing.
Let’s be more succinct in 2026:
In reading, we look closely at an author’s deliberate decisions.
In writing, we make our own deliberate decisions.
The more quickly students make and understand that connection, the better they can become at both. And perhaps controversially, I’m not sure you can be a great writer if you aren’t at least a good reader.
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