Reviews
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Five Things We Can Learn from Faking Hitler: Lies, Truth, and the Seduction of Fiction
I wrote this piece after finishing Faking Hitler, the German drama now streaming on Channel 4. It’s a gripping, ironic, and surprisingly funny retelling of the Hitler Diaries scandal, a real event where forged Nazi documents were sold to Stern magazine in the 1980s. What drew me in wasn’t just the slick production or the fascinating story, but the deeper questions the series raises about truth, memory, and the fictions we choose to believe. This drama isn’t just about a historical hoax; it’s about our relationship with the past — and how easily we rewrite it. Through sharp writing and unforgettable performances, Faking Hitler explores how trauma, ambition, ideology, and denial can cloud even the sharpest minds. It’s a series that resonates disturbingly with our own times, when truth feels fragile and authoritarian myths resurface in new forms. I wanted to unpack five key takeaways from the show — about journalism, fascism, generational reckoning, and the seductive power of lies. This article is my attempt to make sense of a drama that is as psychologically rich as it is entertaining. If you’re interested in truth, fiction, or the strange space in between, read on. #FakingHitler #Channel4 #MediaEthics #Fascism #TruthAndFiction #BlogPost #CriticalMediaLiteracy #CreativeNonfiction #HistoricalDrama #MindfulMedia
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Five Salty Lessons from The Salt Path: Walking the Edge of the World
I wrote Five Salty Lessons from The Salt Path after watching the new film adaptation of Raynor Winn’s powerful memoir. Having read the book, listened to the radio version, and walked sections of the South West Coast Path myself—often with my son—I was moved by how the film captured the raw, weather-beaten truth of Raynor and Moth’s journey. This piece blends personal reflection with literary and philosophical insight, drawing on thinkers like Deleuze, Spinoza, and Wordsworth, and weaving in texts like Beowulf to explore the deeper meanings of salt, walking, homelessness, love, and home. More than a review, it’s an essay about transformation: how walking can be a form of becoming, how landscapes tell stories, and how we find belonging not in possessions, but in presence, connection, and kindness. If you’ve ever felt changed by a path, haunted by a film, or comforted by a wild blackberry on a wet day, I hope this speaks to you.
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Review of Creativity in the English Curriculum: Historical Perspectives and Future Directions by Lorna Smith
Lorna Smith’s book could not be timelier. It is published at a point when creativity – in all its manifold forms and iterations – is under serious attack in educational jurisdictions across the world.
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Review of Out of Time: Poetry From the Climate Emergency
A review of ‘Out of Time: Poetry From the Climate Emergency’
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Review of “Real-World Writers: A Handbook for Teaching Writing with 7-11 Year Olds”, by Ross Young and Felicity Ferguson
“Teachers themselves should be writers” and the ways in which writing for pleasure can be nurtured by English teachers.
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Review of autobiography
Task: Write a review of an autobiography Summarise briefly why you chose the book and what happened in your person’s life. Explain what interested you about their life, relating it to your life if you can. Explain what were your favourite parts of the book, quoting from your favourite passages and saying WHY the language and […]
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That’ll learn ’em
SEVEN KINGS by Fran Abrams Atlantic Books, £9.99; 272pp THE HAPLESS TEACHER’S HANDBOOK by Phil Ball Ebury Press, £10.99; 320pp IT’S YOUR TIME YOU’RE WASTING : A Teacher’s Tales of Classroom Hell by Frank Chalk Monday Books, £7.99; 226pp DOES SCHOOL REALLY make a difference? Do all those thousands of hours of children sitting in […]
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A class struggle for Jilly — Francis Gilbert’s review of Wicked! A Tale Of Two Schools
This romp opens with Janna Curtis — a young, flame-haired, attractive deputy head — being appointed to take over Larkminster, which is threatened with closure because of its appalling results and the behaviour of its pupils. The school is on Shakespeare Estate, a shameful pocket of social deprivation in the prosperous, historic, fictional Cotswold town […]
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Paperback Review Of ‘Teacher On The Run’
Authors usually write about their working lives in order to escape them, draining them of the juicy bits (carefully changing the names and hair colour of key players), then tossing away the husk to enter the glam of literary life. Not Gilbert. This young teacher chronicled his earlier career in ‘I’m A Teacher, Get Me […]
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The Times’ Review of ‘Yob Nation’ — Diary of a plagued society by LEO MCKINSTRY
FEAR OF CRIME CASTS AN increasingly dark shadow over modern British society. We seem to be beset by problems such as binge-drinking, drug-taking, antisocial behaviour, aggressive mugging, and gang warfare. Many liberal commentators have argued that this perceived decline in social cohesion is an illusion, fuelled by a reactionary press and nostalgia for a mythical […]
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Unsentimental education — Book Review
IS THERE ANYTHING new to say about public schools? Some great books have been written about them, most notably Evelyn Waugh’s hilarious and devastating satire Decline and Fall (1928) and William Golding’s fable about public school morality, Lord of the Flies (1954). These classics, and a raft of others, portrayed these revered, eltitist institutions as […]
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The truth about audiobooks
Blandness and apathy prevail in the world of audio books, but there is a little rebellious corner fighting for the imagination: Naxos AudioBooks. As part of the budget classical CD company Naxos, Nicolas Soames, the managing director, is able to draw upon an amazing back catalogue to provide music for each audio book. ‘ Sometimes,’ […]