The following is a list of some of the English texts I have been working on with my students at various levels. If you don’t see your texts on this list, fear not: I am always looking to expand my list and can research the plays, poems or stories you are reading in class in order to help you with your analysis.
Texts Covered at Higher Level
Drama
Robert Bolt: A Man for All Seasons
John Byrne: Slab Boys
John McGrath: The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black, Oil
Arthur Miller: A View from the Bridge, All My Sons, Death of a Salesman, The Crucible
William Shakespeare: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, Much Ado About Nothing, Othello, Romeo and Juliet, The Tempest
Tennessee Williams: The Glass Menagerie
Prose
Fiction
Chinua Achebe: Things Fall Apart
Chris Cleave: The Other Hand
F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby
Kazuo Ishiguro: Never Let Me Go
Harper Lee: To Kill a Mockingbird
Robin Jenkins: The Changeling, The Cone Gatherers
Cormac McCarthy: The Road
George Orwell: 1984
J. D. Salinger: The Catcher in the Rye
Muriel Spark: The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
Theresa Tomlinson: The Oakum Room
Non–Fiction
George Orwell: Shooting an Elephant, The Hanging
Jonathan Swift: A Modest Proposal
Poetry
Rupert Brooke: The Soldier
Robert Browning: My Last Duchess, Porphyria’s Lover
Robert Burns: Holy Willie’s Prayer, To A Mouse
Iain Crichton Smith: The Iolaire
Carol Ann Duffy: Anne Hathaway, Havisham, In Mrs Tilscher’s Class, Originally, Shooting Stars, Stealing, The Suicide, War Photographer, Originally, Mrs Midas, Valentine
Seamus Heaney: Digging, Mid-term Break, The Early Purges
Philip Larkin: Afternoons, Church Going, Mr Bleaney
Liz Lochhead: Box Room, Ambulances, For My Grandmother Knitting, The Bargain, Some old photographs, My Rival’s House, View of Scotland/Love Poem, Last Supper
Norman MacCaig: Assisi, Aunt Julia, Basking Shark, Memorial, Sounds of the Day, Visiting Hour
Edwin Morgan: Glasgow Green, The Death of Marilyn Monroe, Trio, King Billy
Edwin Muir: The Horses, The Almond Tree
Wilfred Owen: Anthem for Doomed Youth
Don Paterson: 11:00 Baldovan, Nil Nil, The Ferryman’s Arms, The Thread, Two Trees, Waking with Russell
Slyvia Plath: You’re, Morning Song
Texts covered at National 4/5
Drama
Rhona Munro: Bold Girls
J. B. Priestley: An Inspector Calls
Alan Spence: Sailmaker
Ann Marie Di Mambro: Tally’s Blood
Prose
Maurice Bearing: The Old Woman
William Boyd: On The Yankee Station
Iain Crichton Smith: The Telegram
Anne Donovan: All That Glisters
Siobhan Dowd: Bog Child
Graham Greene: Brighton Rock
Daniel Keyes: Flowers for Algernon
P. D. James: The Lighthouse
George Orwell: Animal Farm
Michael Morpurgo: Private Peaceful
Robert Swindon: Stone Cold
Poetry
Carol Ann Duffy: War Photographer, Havisham, Originally, Anne Hathaway, Mrs Midas, Valentine
Edwin Morgan: King Billy, Hyena, Good Friday, Winter, Slate, Trio, In The Snack-Bar
Norman MacCaig: Assisi, Aunt Julia, Basking Shark, Memorial, Sounds of the Day, Visiting Hour
Spike Mulligan: Unto Us…
Abel Meeropol: Strange Fruit
