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2 months ago | 
juliangirdham.substack.com | Laura Hilliger |Julian Girdham |Josh Brake |L. M. Sacasas
Neil Postman died in 2003 at the age of 73. Probably his best-known book is Amusing Ourselves to Death. Recently I picked out my copy of Technopoly: the surrender of culture to technology, which was first published in 1992, and re-read it. Postman is being cited a lot these days, in the context of the development of AI and the dominance of our tech over-lords (see for example on Postman’s Prophetic Provocations).
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Jan 15, 2025 | 
juliangirdham.com | Julian Girdham
Education seems particularly susceptible to clichés. ‘In the real world’: is there any more triggering phrase to someone who actually works in a school?
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Jan 11, 2025 | 
juliangirdham.com | Julian Girdham
The first Fortnightly of 2025 went out this morning, number 180. Included: Tim Winton’s new novel Juice, helpful thinkers and writers for AI and English, Hanne Ørstavik's short novel Love, the King Lear scene by scene podcast, Emma Smith and Todd Borlik discuss As You Like It, Tom Newkirk on the ‘art of slow reading’, the #edchatie revival and lots more. 180: The only sheep in town.
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Jan 10, 2025 | 
juliangirdham.com | Julian Girdham
There is no doubt about the key word on the cover of my copy of Thomas Newkirk’s The Art of Slow Reading: six time-honored practices for engagement. SLOW is in a huge font-size, misleadingly strident as we head into a book by an author whose intelligence is so measured and gentle. The lower half of the page features tortoise on a book, in case the message has not got through.
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Jan 8, 2025 | 
juliangirdham.com | Julian Girdham
A page which gathers together the thinkers and writers I am finding most useful in considering the implications of AI for my subject, English. I plan to update it whenever I find another helpful voice. There are no mindless boosters here, because you can easily find those everywhere else. While I put together my thoughts, here are previous pieces on: AI, English and the thermostatic principle (featuring many of those below).
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Dec 10, 2024 | 
juliangirdham.com | Julian Girdham
TRANSCRIPTAfter the noisy drama of the previous scene, this one is quiet but still immensely charged with emotion. At the end of Act 4, we have a logical and possible ending to the whole story, as Lear and Cordelia are reunited and forgive each other. The perfect happy ending. James Shapiro, in 1606 - Shakespeare and the Year of Lear, tells us that at the point of the reconciliation between Lear and Cordelia, we are 3 hours/2,800 lines in,the typical length of one of Shakespeare's plays.
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Dec 7, 2024 | 
juliangirdham.com | Julian Girdham
This morning’s Fortnightly, the 178th since 2016, is the penultimate one this year, with next week an early issue of 179 so you can do your Christmas shopping: Books of the Year. Today, Richard Flanagan’s Question 7, Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These - contingency and decision, linking King Lear, Brian Klaas’s Fluke, Robert Frost and Maud Gonne. Teaching and Learning from Conor Murphy, Alan Gorman and Natalie Wexler. Katja Hoyer on Shakespeare in Germany. Bennie Kara on a tragic loss.
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Dec 5, 2024 | 
juliangirdham.com | Julian Girdham
In episode 10 I whizz through three quick scenes first - Act 4, scenes 3, 4 and 5, and then pay proper attention to the immense and complex scene 6. Also on podcast services like Spotify, Apple and more (search for my name). TRANSCRIPT:Act 4 scene 3This brief expository scene shows Kent hear from an unnamed Gentleman how Cordelia reacted to Kent’s letters describing what had happened since her departure from France.
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Nov 30, 2024 | 
juliangirdham.com | Julian Girdham
The fifth edition of The Occasional, for paid subscribers of The Fortnightly, has lots of book recommendations. Included: books by Brian Dillon, Rita Wilson & Emma Fitzgerald, Musa Okwonga, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, George Saunders, Meriel Schindler, Ali Smith, Tim Winton, Jonathan Coe, Maria Dahvana Headley, Eavan Boland, Sara Baume, Deborah Levy, R.M. Christofides, Damon Galgut, James Harpur, Craig Bromfield, Bernard MacLaverty, Wendy Erskine, Jessica Au, David Park and Fintan O’Toole.
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Nov 26, 2024 | 
juliangirdham.com | Julian Girdham
Act IV scene 1Immediately after the blinding scene, as the second and third servants (in Shakespeare’s first version of the play) look after the brutalised Gloucester, we hear from his older son Edgar, commenting on how he is surely at the worst, and welcoming the unsubstantial air, a typically cruel juxtaposition from Shakespeare, with his father being led past him by an Old Man. Edgar, still not revealing who he is, says to himselfO Gods! Who is’t can say “I am at the worst”?
