Course description

We will cover the following topics in the live classes:

Set texts for examination in 2025 – Paper 1

Section A: Poetry

From Songs of Ourselves Volume 1, Part 4, the following 15 poems:

 Margaret Atwood, ‘The City Planners’

 Boey Kim Cheng, ‘The Planners’

 Thom Gunn, ‘The Man with Night Sweats’

 Robert Lowell, ‘Night Sweat’

 Edward Thomas, ‘Rain’

 Anne Stevenson, ‘The Spirit is too Blunt an Instrument’

 Tony Harrison, ‘From Long Distance’

 W H Auden, ‘Funeral Blues’

 Thomas Hardy, ‘He Never Expected Much’

 Fleur Adcock, ‘The Telephone Call’

 Peter Porter, ‘A Consumer’s Report’

 Judith Wright, ‘Request To A Year’

 Charles Tennyson Turner, ‘On Finding a Small Fly Crushed in a Book’

 Percy Bysshe Shelley, ‘Ozymandias’

 Stevie Smith, ‘Away, Melancholy’

These may be found in Songs of Ourselves Volume 1: The University of Cambridge International Examinations Anthology of Poetry in English (Cambridge University Press). Poems printed in the paper will be as printed in this text

 From Songs of Ourselves Volume 2, Part 3, the following 15 poems:

 Nancy Fotheringham Cato, ‘The Road’

 Sarah Jackson, ‘The Instant of My Death’

 Arun Kolatkar, ‘The Bus’

 Julius Chingono, ‘At the Bus Station’

 Imtiaz Dharker, ‘These are the Times We Live in’

 Elizabeth Jennings, ‘The Enemies’

 Sampurna Chattarji, ‘Boxes’

 W H Auden, ‘The Capital’

 Arthur Yap, ‘an afternoon nap’

 Elizabeth Smither, ‘Plaits’

 Elizabeth Daryush, ‘Children of Wealth’

 Thomas Love Peacock, ‘Rich and Poor or, Saint and Sinner’

 Musaemura Zimunya, ‘A Long Journey’

 Stevie Smith, ‘Touch and Go’

 George Szirtes, ‘Song’

These may be found in Songs of Ourselves Volume 2: The University of Cambridge International Examinations Anthology of Poetry in English (Cambridge University Press). Poems printed in the paper will be as printed in this text.

Ted Hughes, the following 15 poems:

 ‘The Thought-Fox’ 

 ‘The Jaguar’ 

 ‘The Horses’ 

 ‘Wind’ 

 ‘Relic’ 

 ‘Hawk Roosting’ 

 ‘Cat and Mouse’ 

 ‘Snowdrop’

 ‘The Harvest Moon’

 ‘Football at Slack’

 ‘Roe-Deer’

 ‘A Memory’

 ‘Telegraph Wires’

 ‘Anniversary’

 ‘The Other’

These may be found in New Selected Poems 1957 – 1994, by Ted Hughes (Faber and Faber). Poems printed in the paper will be as printed in this text.

Section B: Prose

Chinua Achebe Things Fall Apart

Anita Desai Fire on the Mountain 

Charles Dickens Great Expectations

Daphne du Maurier Rebecca 

Harper Lee To Kill a Mockingbird

Joan Lindsay Picnic at Hanging Rock

H G Wells The War of the Worlds 

From Stories of Ourselves Volume 2, the following 10 stories:

 no. 3 Christina Rossetti, ‘Nick’

 no. 14 Olive Schreiner, ‘The Woman’s Rose’

 no. 26 Ralph Ellison, ‘The Black Ball’

 no. 30 Mulk Raj Anand, ‘The Gold Watch’

 no. 35 Margaret Atwood, ‘When It Happens’

 no. 37 J G Ballard, ‘The Man Who Walked on the Moon’

 no. 38 Jamaica Kincaid, ‘A Walk to the Jetty’

 no. 40 Jane Gardam, ‘Showing the Flag’

 no. 47 Aminatta Forna, ‘Haywards Heath’

 no. 49 Romesh Gunesekera, ‘Fluke’

This selection of 10 short stories may be found in Stories of Ourselves Volume 2: The University of Cambridge International Examinations Anthology of Short Stories in English (Cambridge University Press); passages from these stories in the paper will be printed as in this text.

Set texts for examination in 2025 – Paper 2

Candidates must answer on two different set texts from the following:

 Shelagh Delaney A Taste of Honey

 Wole Soyinka Death and the King’s Horseman

 Tennessee Williams A Streetcar Named Desire

 William Shakespeare A Midsummer Night’s Dream

 William Shakespeare Antony and Cleopatra