Category Archives: Insights

Culture, Text and History, Early Modern and Shakespeare, Insights, Life writing, Creative writing and Performance

Reform, Rejection, and Renewal: Findings from the Shakespeare in the Royal Collection

By Kirsten Tambling and Sally Barnden

Dr Kirsten Tambling and Dr Sally Barnden, postdoctoral research associates on the AHRC-funded project ‘Shakespeare in the Royal Collection’, discuss their work and findings ahead of the launch of their online database and exhibition on the 15th of July.

Kirsten: In 2018, Cole Moreton wrote a piece for the ‘i’ on the ‘transformation’ of Prince Harry. Arguing that ‘Prince Harry’s transformation from wild child to hero is uncannily like that of Shakespeare’s warrior Hal’, Moreton traces the trajectory of the Prince of Wales’s second son from tearaway teenager – sent to rehab for smoking cannabis – to one of the royal family’s most popular members, alongside that of Prince Hal of Henry IV Parts 1 and 2.

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Insights, Life writing, Creative writing and Performance

Book Release: Daughters of the Labyrinth by Professor Ruth Padel, King’s College London

Book Release 1/7/21: Daughters of the Labyrinth by Ruth Padel, Professor of Poetry, King’s College London.

‘A daughter’s passionate quest for the truth about what happened to her parents in Crete during the German occupation and a sumptuous and sensuous evocation of Crete itself, its landscape and culture. ’ – Colm Tóibín

‘She winds us into coils within coils of a family’s dark history, horrific suffering and intimate sacrifice. She combines dramatic storytelling with moving reflectiveness, asking us to think again about whether it is better to remember or forget?’ – Marina Warner

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Aesthetics, Philosophy, Theory, Insights

Thinking in Crisis Times: A Collective Exploration by the English Department

Thinking in Crisis Times: A Collective Exploration by the English Department 2020-21.

For Thinking in Crisis Times, students at King’s responded to the first term’s readings with a series of poems (see https://thinking-in-crisis-times-a-collective-exploration.webnode.com/history/).

In the Spring term, a call was issued for submissions on the topic of the Extra/Ordinary, which elicited a range of powerful work in the form of writing and images.

The selected submissions for Thinking in Crisis Times on the topic of the Extra/Ordinary are:

Rosemary’s Bodies by Sarah Arnold, Body Talk by Finlay Cousins and Living in lock-down by Lauren Mappledoram.

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Insights, Interviews

Community and Connection: Editors in Conversation

As their tenure draws to a close, Katie Arthur and Harriet Thompson reflect on their time working together as editors of the King’s English Blog.

HT: It’s funny looking back on the time when we took over as editors in January 2019; I get that strange simultaneous feeling of it being very recent, but also a quite a while ago. A lot has happened since then! We were both in our first year studying for a PhD in the English Department at King’s and it was an exciting opportunity to be able to curate and commission such a wide range of writing from staff and students. Over two years later, I still have quite a lot of writing to do before I submit my PhD thesis. But having the blog to focus on alongside everything else has been a really nice (and productive) distraction. I didn’t imagine that we’d be spending practically a whole year inside, running the blog from our bedrooms on opposite sides of London. I think the last time we saw each other in person was in January 2020? That is so weird! I do miss the community and energy that comes with working inside the university buildings.

KA: Two years ago! I know what you mean about that odd simultaneous feeling of temporal contraction and dilation – I feel like there must be a word for it somewhere, in some language. Perhaps we should commission a blog on it! The blog has certainly been an anchor, both pre-Covid and now. Working with the department to publish publicly is really exciting, it has definitely helped me engage with the work happening here at King’s in a more thorough and thoughtful way than I might otherwise have given myself time to do. Though it was more fun conducted in the physical presence of the department as you say and it is a shame to have lost the sense of community that so often is linked to space. The blog also serves as a space of connection for the department. You did a wonderful round-up of all the work we had shared around the new year that received a very touching response from the department. Do you think that the functions of the blog have changed as our needs have moved online in the pandemic? It has always been interesting that the blog reaches out to and beyond the department but, perhaps now more than ever, it is also a meeting point of sorts when we cannot do in person.

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