Who I am.

I’m an English tutor and former teacher with eleven years of classroom teaching experience, including as Head of English. Specialising in Shakespeare, poetry and ‘classic‘ literature, I help students build confidence, think independently, and achieve the grades they need – but I’m interested in more than exam technique alone.

Because I know what it feels like to arrive late to your potential and talents.

I went to university at 39: graduating with a First Class BA (Hons), and winning the Staff Departmental Prize. I like to think that the years before that were an equally useful education in what the world of work looks like, and which skills are truly useful and/or transferrable. English, and especially English Literature ticks a surprising number of those boxes.

I had to hit my 40s to understand all those things … I’m glad I got there, but sometimes wonder how my life would be different if I’d arrived twenty years earlier.

At university, I discovered something unexpected: I loved helping people learn. Especially students who were bright, thoughtful and capable, but not always convinced of it themselves. So I went from helping uni friends out into teaching.

Too often, I see young people absorb strange – unhelpful – ideas about Literature:

• that Shakespeare is boring,
• that reading deeply is somehow uncool.
• or that great books belong to somebody else.

I’ve never believed that. I never will.

Shakespeare wrote for noisy theatres packed with ordinary people.¹ As an art form, Literature has never belonged to one accent, one background, or one type of school.

And curiosity? It’s open to everyone.

That’s ‘the mission‘ dealt with.

Why ‘Upstart‘?

So what’s with the name, “Upstart”?

The inspiration comes from Shakespeare himself. A contemporary critic (Robert Greene) once sneered at him as an “Upstart Crow”: an outsider with no university education daring to write above his station.

History hasn’t been especially kind to that criticism. And, actually, Greene died very shortly after writing it? Cosmic Karma? I’ll leave that up to you …

What I believe.

I’ve always liked the idea of the ‘upstart’: great readers, great writers – and great thinkers – often begin as outsiders. I often say to students that if you think the same as everyone else, and say the same as everyone else does, guess what? You’ll get the same mark everyone else does …

Asking questions; making unexpected connections; refusing to believe that intelligence comes in only one form?

That’s what I try to encourage in my students.

My aim is simple: to help young people read more deeply, think more clearly, and walk into their exams knowing exactly what they’re doing.

If they end up genuinely loving literature along the way, I’ll consider that a huge bonus. Ultimately, I think the world would be a better place if we were all curious, independent readers …

If that sounds like the kind of support you or your child is looking for, I’d love to hear from you.

1. Don’t get me started on the number of deaths in the plays. Or the attitudes and moral dilemmas. When people say that if Shakespeare were alive today, he’d be writing soap operas, it’s difficult to disagree ↩︎