Wordsworth Lecture

Deputy Grecian (Year 12) Deborah wrote the following review:

On 26 June, I was included in the small cohort of A level English literature students representing Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s alma mater at The British Library for ‘The Wordsworth Lecture: Richard Holmes and Seamus Perry on Coleridge at 250’. The evening was filled with incisive commentary from the three scholars – Richard Holmes, Seamus Perry, and Drummond Bone. These Coleridgean enthusiasts delivered readings and detailed analyses of the famous Old Blue’s most renowned works such as Kubla Khan and The Ancient Mariner. They also spoke about him beyond his role as a Romantic poet, covering his influence as a critic and philosopher in the late 18th to the mid-19th century.

As Fellows of Oxbridge Colleges Balliol and Churchill respectively, the trio did not fail to uphold the high academic reputation of the two universities. Within the 90-minute lecture, a multi-dimensional approach was applied to the talk, which made for compelling questions at the end from the audience and further added to our understanding of Coleridge’s thought process. The lecture was of immense value for our studies as A level English students, and intriguing in its own right.