Grammar Gazette- Issue 2, 2014

A FBLLOWSHIP OF MINTDS

with my most memorable experience being readings and discussion with former Poet Laureate Professol Andrew Motion. Our site visits involved private tours with the librarians of some of Cambridge's great libraries: The Wren Library (Trinity College), The Parker Library (Corpus Christi College) and the Coilege libraries of St John's, St Catharine's and Newham College. In these historic halls we leafed through the veilum pages of illuminated manuscripts and Elizabethan texts, as well as poring over the scribblings of A.A Milne's original manuscript of The I{ouse at Pooh Corner, Isaac Newton's pocketbook (recording not only his innovative ideas but also his daily spending on candle-sticks, ink and teal), and J.R.R Toikien's WWI letters to his fellow scholars The lunch breaks each day provided me with the opportunity to visit The Polar Museum, Fitzwilliam Museum of Art and Antiquities and the Whipple Museum of Science, as well as a tenth century Norman Church, a 'haunted' bookstole, and many of the renowned College chapels. In each of these places I was learning, absorbing information, and like having a whirring whirlwind above my head, I was developing ideas for teaching on my return to Girls Grammar Waiter Pater wrote, 'The service of . . . speculative culture, towalds the human sptrit, is to louse, to startle it to a life of constant and eager observation' (1873) and this was certainly the outcome of my Cambridge

AUTHOR M iss Rachael Ch ristopherson English teacher

[thel morning when the wheels Rolled over a wide plain o'erhung with clouds, ... nothing cheered our way till first we saw The long-roofed chapel of King's Collegle...' 'I was the Dreamer, they the Dream; I roamed Delighted through the motley spectacle; Gowns grave, or gaudy, doctors, students, streets, Courts, cloisters, flocks of churches, gateways, towers: lViigration strange for a stripling of the hills, A lsouthern] villager.' From The Prelude: 'Residence at Cambridge' - William Wordsworth (177A - 1850), 1850 ed. WHAT IS IT IN CULTURAL HISTORY THAT INFLUENCES PEOPLE'S MINDS AND VALUES? Professor James Basker asked this question and his answel was literature (2014). The poet P B Shelley beiieved that it is the poets who are, 'the legislators of the world' (1840). For me, I support Professor Peter Holbrook's notion that 'writers are the liberators; without writers we ale not free' (2013) I found myself privileged to have the opportunity to take pause from the busy-ness of Girls Grammar and spend a week at Cambridge University ciosely reading and discussing the poetry and plose of English and American authols -- and the experience was indeed enlightening, stimulating and liberating This year's Oxbridge Academic Teachers' Seminar Programme at Cambridge University offered four subject strands: Engiish Literature, Art History, Libraries, and F1istory, and the coulse combined the rich cuiture of Cambridge university with the academic rigour of intensive subject focus. Participants from Australia, Canada, China (Hong Kong), France and the USA engageC in stimulating and animated discussions. I studied with the English Literature class and our superuisor was Dr Michael Fiurley, Flead of English Faculty, Cambridge University and Fellow of St Catharine's College. The Oxbridge Academic programme's vision of, '[brrnging] teachers into direct contact with leading scholars, wrilers, and public flgures, in an historic and stimulating environment, sunounded by cultural and academic resources' was certainly realised at Cambridge. Leclures included presentations by Professor James Basker: 'F{ow poets hetped end slavery'; and Professor Michaei Banner: 'Inventing and Representing Suffering',

Vliss Rachael Christopherson at Newham College Library, Cambridge University