About this day
For A-level English Literature students
This inspirational and popular study event will provide fascinating insights, comprehensive support and new perspectives for all A-level English Literature students, with a particular focus on Shakespeare’s Othello and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. The day will explore a close analysis of these works, including their broader context as well as a fascinating look at how Shakespeare’s plays were brought to the stage. The programme will include clear links to support Assessment Objectives 1-5 for all exam boards and there will be an additional exam session, together with an unmissable presentation from a leading poet.
This inspiring and interactive event promises to give students the vital information, expert insights and new-found confidence to propel them to maximum examination success this year. Book now to secure your places!
“An excellent day that was so relevant to our students – the sessions will considerably enhance their confidence in forming their viewpoints.”
— Regent High School, Autumn 2025 —
“There was varied content and plenty of highlights which kept me interested and engaged throughout.”
— Student, Autumn 2025 —
Programme & speakers
Poetry session with Carol Ann Duffy Carol Ann Duffy DBE, Poet and Playwright
Dame Carol Ann Duffy introduces and reads from Feminine Gospels, as well as from some of her other collections, and takes questions from the audience.
About Dame Carol Ann Duffy DBE
Dame Carol Ann Duffy is a former Poet Laureate and Professor of Contemporary Poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University. She is best known for writing love poems that often take the form of monologues, and her award-winning poetry collections include Mean Time, The World’s Wife, Rapture and The Bees. Her collection Feminine Gospels is a core set text on the A-level AQA A specification.
The antihero’s journey: the structure of The Great Gatsby Luke McBratney, Author and former Principal Examiner
In this talk, Luke McBratney reveals the hidden architecture beneath Fitzgerald’s glittering surface. Although The Great Gatsby is modernist, fragmentary and experimental, it is also a tightly structured novel built around two potential heroes. One is a dazzling antihero who gives the novel its myth; the other is a participant narrator whose changing perspective creates its classic arc of development. The talk’s main textual readings explore Chapter 5 as the novel’s pivotal midpoint and consider the structural importance of Nick’s narration.
About Luke McBratney
Luke McBratney is an examiner, author and editor. A former Principal Examiner and specification writer for a major examining board, he is a member of the English Review editorial board and co-series editor of the Hodder Study and Revise guides to set texts for A-level English Literature. He is co-author of a textbook for A-level English Literature (OUP) and author of guides to love poetry, including Skirrid Hill and New Selected Poems.
Themes and perspectives in Shakespeare's Othello Will Tosh, Shakespeare's Globe
Will Tosh explores Shakespeare’s Othello through the themes of tragedy, love, migration and identity. He will share the latest critical perspectives and demonstrate close reading of specific passages. There will be an opportunity for questions.
About Dr Will Tosh
Will Tosh is Director of Education (Higher Education and Research) at Shakespeare’s Globe. He teaches, writes about, and researches the literature and culture of Shakespeare’s England. Will’s work at the Globe also includes dramaturgy, new writing development and public engagement in person, in the media and online. He is the author of Straight Acting: The Many Queer Lives of William Shakespeare (2024, winner of the Theatre Book Prize 2025). Will’s other books include Playing Indoors: Staging Early Modern Drama in the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse (2018) and Male Friendship and Testimonies of Love in Shakespeare’s England (2016). Will is also co-director of the Shakespeare Centre London, a research collaboration with King’s College London committed to widening understanding of and participation in the field of Shakespeare studies. (Image credit: Sarah M Lee)
From page to performance: staging Shakespeare's Othello Nick Hutchison, Theatre director, actor and educator
Nick Hutchison looks at how the play would have been staged in Shakespeare’s time, considering the effects of rehearsal constraints, cue scripts, and a visible audience; he will consider the text as a blueprint for performance, and how all these factors affect productions today.
About Nick Hutchison
Nick Hutchison is a theatre director, actor and educator who has directed Shakespeare’s plays across the globe. He lectures for Shakespeare’s Globe, LAMDA, RADA and universities worldwide on Elizabethan and Jacobean Theatre, specialising in original Shakespearean staging practice and theatre performance derived from close textual analysis. As an actor he has worked in film, TV, theatre and radio, including for the Royal Shakespeare Company and in films including About A Boy, Miss Potter, 102 Dalmatians, Fierce Creatures and Restoration.
The Great Gatsby in context Laura Rattray, University of Glasgow
This session will explore a number of key ideas which informed American literature between the wars and discuss issues concerning wealth and poverty in The Great Gatsby. It will consider gender roles, 1920s America, symbolism, the concept of The American Dream, the composition and reception of the novel, and whether The Great Gatsby can in any way be seen as a love story.
About Dr Laura Rattray
Laura Rattray is Reader in American Literature at the University of Glasgow and served as Director of its Centre for American Studies. She specialises in modern American literature and culture and has published widely on early twentieth-century American fiction. Books include The Bloomsbury Handbook to F. Scott Fitzgerald (co-editor with Linda Wagner-Martin), Twenty-First-Century Readings of Tender Is the Night (co-editor with William Blazek), The Unpublished Writings of Edith Wharton, and Edith Wharton and Genre: Beyond Fiction. She is currently completing a book on US Fictions of the Great Depression.