The first book in a highly original and delightfully clever crime series in which Queen Elizabeth II secretly solves crimes while carrying out her royal duties.

On a perfect Spring morning at Windsor Castle, Queen Elizabeth II will enjoy a cup of tea, carry out all her royal duties . . . and solve a murder.

The morning after a dinner party at Windsor Castle, eighty-nine-year-old Queen Elizabeth is shocked to discover that one of her guests has been found murdered in his room, with a rope around his neck. When the police begin to suspect her loyal servants, Her Majesty knows they are looking in the wrong place. For the Queen has been living an extraordinary double life ever since her coronation. Away from the public eye, she has a brilliant knack for solving crimes.

With her household’s happiness on the line, her secret must not get out. Can the Queen and her trusted secretary Rozie catch the killer, without getting caught themselves?

Miss Marple meets The Crown in The Windsor Knot, the first book in the ‘Her Majesty The Queen Investigates’ mystery series by SJ Bennett.

Source: I received a review copy of the book via NetGalley. This review is my honest opinion. The Windsor Knot is out now from Zaffre in the UK. If you like audiobooks, check out the audio edition, read by Samantha Bond!

Overall, I found this book to be a delight and am absolutely recommending it. For those concerned about the Queen’s involvement in politics etc and needing to avoid such upsetting topics – this book is set in 2016.

I was fortunate enough to attend the online launch party for this lovely book last night, so as well as reviewing, I’m going to share one or two snippets I picked up with you.

Firstly, I loved The Windsor Knot and will definitely be looking out for the rest of the series. Sophia (the author – publishing for adults as S J Bennett) said that there are currently four books planned for publication, and she is keen to continue after that, so this is a series that could run and run! The novel is written with a lightness of touch that imbues the characters – even though many of them are world-renowned – with a reality and homeliness that makes them easy to relate to and root for. The Queen is particularly sympathetic here, and shines bright as an investigator who is sharp of mind and eyes, but gentle with her words. This is perhaps one of the reasons that she is underestimated by many – a reason given for her being able to carry out her investigations.

I was intrigued to learn that Sophia has had a fascination with the Queen from a young age – since 1977 – spurred in particular by a book about Her Majesty’s clothes. This book revealed a lot about her life, through explaining how details in her clothing would pick up on the colours or emblems of countries she was visiting; how she has to have weighted hems; she should not be too fashionable et cetera. Sophia also is fortunate enough to have learned about the Royals from family anecdotes, as her father has come into contact with them, and with the Queen in particular, through work. I was also fascinated that Sophia herself interviewed for the position of Assistant Private Secretary – Rozie’s job in the book – in the 90s, which gave her various insights that gave her research a head start.

I have always had a fondness for cosy crime and would agree with Sophia’s statement that what the genre offers is a sense of safety. I do also enjoy reading (and watching) ‘gritty’ crime, but that tends to leave you more aware of the dangers in the world, whereas the cosy crime stories are more focused on the disentangling and the wrap-up, treating crime more as an anomaly than a constant. I think that’s why cosy is more of a mood than a set of rules.

A final point I would like to share from the launch is this. Sophia was asked about the feminist slant to the books, which she stated was definitely deliberate. It was stated more than once that the Queen’s ability to investigate is largely due to people’s (I might be tempted to say men’s…) tendency to routinely underestimate her. There are several comic scenes in the book where the comedy derives from men explaining things to her, where she is, in fact, in possession of more of the facts than they are. But of course, she’s both too polite – and too shrewd – to reveal this.

So clearly, I’m advising you to read this if you like a good mystery. It’s out in beautiful hardback now (the endpapers are rather lovely…).

1. They help remind you to use features in your writing.
2. They push you to start writing and get some ideas down, in proper sentences and paragraphs.
3. They help you practise writing from a particular viewpoint, which you may not share, and/or about topics you might not care about.
4. They help show you how quickly you can get some words on a page.
5. Some also introduce you to new vocabulary, enabling you to use it in your writing.

All of these are important for success in the writing half of the two exams. The main reasons students get disappointing marks in these tasks are:

• not varying sentences, vocabulary or punctuation (so the 200-word challenges get you to do this)
• not using linguistic, rhetorical or structural features (see how your checklist helps you to remember to use some of these on purpose?)
• writing non-fiction texts that don’t ‘feel’ like the form set (i.e. a speech that doesn’t address the audience, a broadsheet article that is too formal, a leaflet with no headings – again see how the 200-word challenge steers you to use appropriate features?)

So, if you’ve been moaning about doing 200-word challenges, it may be time to embrace them as a useful tool to help you sharpen up your skills and close in on that better grade!

Apparently, quite a lot of people have had similar focus issues this year. I felt a lot better about it when I saw Malorie Blackman, of all people, tweet that she’d struggled to focus on reading during lockdown. If a grande dame of YA like Malorie has been struggling, who am I to expect to be able to focus?

I’m a bit behind on my reviews (to say the least) for this reason, but it also got me thinking about the pressure we put on reading. Reading is not a benign leisure activity. There is all sorts of pressure and value attached to what – and even how – we read. I was really interested to see Jess Mason’s research into reading and identity – see her pinned tweet for a talk about her initial findings.

People will misrepresent what they have read or what type of thing they tend to read, and there’s all kinds of snobbery about the medium of reading (audiobooks being ‘not real reading’, for example, which is nonsense, never mind ableist nonsense). Ebooks also face snobbery, when in fact reading electronically is convenient and easy to accommodate, as well as hiding covers if you don’t want people to judge you for your tastes!

And in schools, of course, we see people pressuring kids to read classics or ‘better’ or ‘harder’ books over books they enjoy regularly. This is pointless (and often self-defeating) when they are meeting those kinds of books in class already and could easily be left to read what they like in their own time.

Quick links for any teachers wanting to discuss this with students (might be of interest in an A Level Eng Lang CLA lesson, or GCSE tasks could be built around one of the articles…):

• Secondary school pupils are picking books that are too ‘easy’ for them – so here are 10 titles all kids should read (The Sun online, 28 Feb 2020)
  • (I’d discuss which of these are most appropriate, and for which ages. Do students have other suggestions? Why – and how – have these ‘too easy’ titles been chosen?)
• Reading: Are teenagers falling out of love with books? (BBC Wales, 3 Dec 2019)
  • (Again, lots to discuss here in terms of why, and what assumptions is the piece making? What ‘counts’ as reading, for example?)
• Audiobooks aren’t ‘cheating’: here’s why (Rewire, Oct 5, 2019)
  • (This ones’s here as a more positive example, and gives some evidence, which is helpful. Do students use audiobooks or podcasts? Do their families? How/under what circumstances?)
• Why can’t I concentrate? How to find focus as lockdown eases (Stylist)
  • (Here as helpful evidence, and advice on improving concentration in these times…)

So, for example, you might be asked about why people object to politically correct language. These objections might relate to:

• what people perceive as ‘top-down’ change rather than natural change
• simple prescriptivism and resistance to change of any kind
• ideas about ‘purity’ and ‘others’ infecting the language
• concerns about ‘correctness’ and ‘accuracy’

As you can probably see, most of those are ‘change’ arguments, and you’d link them to ideas like Crumbling Castles and standardisation, but they aren’t so different to arguments made against dialect usage.

More conceptually, people also argue about ‘offence’ and ‘identification’, particularly when it comes to gender and pronouns. These arguments relate far more to ideas in the realm of representation, and you might want to bring in concepts like Muted Groups to construct your argument.

It is likely that most of you will have encountered the idea of PC language under the heading of Language Change, as it is a key driver of new vocabulary in the last 50 years. However, it is well worth remembering that the Diversity topic (for AQA, at least), asks us to consider language used ‘about’ and ‘to’ social groups, not just ‘by’ them, and this is definitely also a place that PC language is important.

My path to writing textbooks and resources really began with a revision website years ago, so I would strongly recommend sharing resources online in some form to get your name known/ prove your value, if you want to build a career in textbook writing. These days, a lot of people start with a solid Twitter presence. Think about what your niche specialism is (mine was loving English Language, a subject that many English teachers felt under-qualified to deal with). How can you make best use of your experiences and interests? What are you passionate about that could make you helpful to others?

Here are some ideas for places to start or make approaches, in the world of English teaching although I will say that a lot of my work has come to me through word of mouth or via other connections. Also: being an examiner is a great way to build connections and expertise.

• Submit to Teachit, bearing in mind that they’re looking above all for classroom-ready materials which don’t require explanation/ contextualisation and which fit the latest specs. Material you’ve used in your own classroom with your own students needs adaptation in order to be suitable for other teachers to use. Be warned: they can take a LONG time to get back to you.
• Approach Emagazine, Mediamag, the English Review or other similar magazines with ideas for articles you could offer. Do not write an article without discussing it with them first, as you don’t know what they’ve got ready for the next issue. The best way to judge how to write for these (or any) outlets is to read and analyse their contents for tone, address, sentence length etc.
• For broader teaching ideas, the TES is also worth approaching. Again, look at stuff they’ve published recently to model yours on first, and approach them with a pitch before going in too deep, to make sure they haven’t already got a piece on exactly what you’re suggesting just about to go.
• If you have a blog/website, always cite this as a writing sample as well as sending any resources or articles you have produced or already had published.
• You can approach publishers directly with a CV and writing samples as well as a clear statement of what you are available for writing. To find out who’s accepting submissions, the Writers and Artists Yearbook (published by A & C Black around July each year) is invaluable – start there and double check online for the latest info on submission guidelines.

I think (hope?) many of us can agree that GCSE set text lists do not inherently encourage students to become readers. By exposing young teenagers to  books deemed ‘classics’ or ‘great’ and requiring detailed analysis, we often in fact risk putting them off reading. This is, unfortunately, especially true for those not from a reading background whose only exposure to books is in school and who are left with the impression that the set texts they are given is what all books are like.

It is important, therefore, to try to share with pupils good examples of recently-published, engaging fiction for Young Adults (YA novels or Teen Fiction – although these are not interchangeable labels; teen is generally a little ‘younger’ and less likely to feature romance or tackle gritty issues). Here are some suggestions for ways that this can be achieved without going too far off-piste – especially if your school doesn’t have a school-wide initiative like DEAR (Drop Everything And Read) time

1. Use YA novel extracts when teaching writing skills. I know we often reach for the classics here, but especially now that this skill is tested in an exam and not as a CA, the boards are no longer looking for pre-1950s-style (and currently unpublishable) purple prose. More modern exemplars are likely to be useful to students.
2. Offer extracts from YA novels as early practice texts for reading skills before moving on to the more demanding types of texts set by the boards (e.g. the 20th century lit set by AQA). See my YA feature posts on The State of Grace, Proud and A Change is Gonna Come for some ideas – and there will be more.
3. Share recommendations, possibly supported by extracts, or simply blurbs and covers on slides for topical reads or good reads linked to students’ interests (including the canny use of TV shows and films as genre guides). This makes a nice plenary as a ‘how do these link to the lesson?’ or an end of half term task: choose one or two to look out for and read over half term (it’s always worth promoting libraries – kids don’t have to BUY books to read them…). The image at the top is one such slide, which I have used in the past as a ‘settle slide’, to engage students as they enter class.

Research tells us that many buyers and borrowers of YA do not, in fact, fit within that age bracket themselves. This is not, in itself, odd. Those who buy children’s fiction also tend not to be children – although they are more often buying it for children.

So what is it about YA that gives it broader appeal? And what, if it’s not a genre (it’s not) is YA?

I would argue that YA is often full of possibilities, that many of the most interesting premises and explorations are being allowed right now in YA. That because it is shelved as a block and not split into genres, although we do talk about YA Contemporary, YA Fantasy and so on, authors are often freer to blend and switch genres in a way that is often not permitted when writing for adults.

As for what makes it YA? Well, YA is, essentially a marketing category, and it seems to hinge on the age of the protagonist above all else. There have been academic discussions about coming-of-age, self-discovery, protest or rebellion, whether endings must always be hopeful, what the morality of YA is (or should be), but ultimately the age of the characters seems to matter more than anything else. However, looking at YA broadly (forgive me, this is a generalisation, and there are many exceptions), as a mature reader, I enjoy YA because it generally offers:

• tight writing
• directness
• big emotions
• high stakes
• varied representations and viewpoints on our world
• creativity in structure and presentation

I don’t have a strong preference for first person narrative, but I am aware that this is assumed to be the norm for YA (there is plenty of third person YA, just as it isn’t all either vampires or dystopias…).

So, as you can see, this is the reason I find it upsetting to see YA characterised as weak derivative writing. It’s really anything but! Usually those making such claims haven’t actually read any…

Most episodes have included an interview with an academic linguist about a specific topic and their research into it. Helpful show notes are also provided, via the accompanying Twitter feed and Google docs. These show notes provide detailed supplementary reading and links to all texts referred to, to support sixth-formers’ engagement with the podcast (and allow for further, in-class, development or wider reading). All material covered has been highly topical, of interest to switched-on sixth-formers and relevant to A Level topics such as Language Change and Linguistic Diversity.

The most recent episode, a special on Northern English varieties, covered the particular news story in depth that a special kind of dialect levelling is happening in the north of England. The podcasters discussed how this was being presented in the media and interviewed one of the researchers to learn more about the methodology of the study and its finer-grain findings.

The podcast is, as you would expect from this team, well-pitched for A Level students. It is engaging and topical and offers good links with current academic work, which is always harder to achieve via textbooks. It is suitable for the full range of ability in the A Level classroom.

Dylan is forced to come out after his secret relationship with Ellis is exposed on social media, but to his surprise, everyone is really supportive – or appears to be. But Dylan’s and El’s happiness is short-lived, and following a tragic accident, Dylan begins to realize how little he knows about the boy he loves or those closest to him.

Source: I received a review copy of the book via NetGalley. This review is my honest opinion. Hideous Beauty is out now from Usborne in the UK.

I loved this book! Spending time with these characters has been a wonderful lockdown distraction and I have found myself more fully absorbed in a book than has been the case for months. The narrative construction is partially responsible for this – starting near the end and offering alternate chapters of ‘then’ and ‘now’ as Dylan pieces together what happened, we as readers are also offered more insight into the boys’ past. This was brilliantly handled and ensured that there was always something I wanted to follow up and keep reading.

The characters themselves were also vividly drawn. Not just the two mains, but also side characters. I (like many other readers) really liked Mike, Dylan’s best friend, and his family in particular. This believable characterisation helped the novel’s main message that acceptance needs to be full, not conditional, to be clear and fully supported.

I also really appreciated the resources offered alongside the book – both the trigger warnings* at the front, which will be useful to some readers, and the multiple support resources at the end. These go beyond the simple list of organisations to contact (although that is present also), with a great written contribution from a relevant professional. If I were in a position to use this novel in class, I would definitely want to talk about this as well as the text itself.

I haven’t read a gay romance/thriller before, so this has set the bar pretty high! I’m definitely recommending it…

*the novel is described as “a work of fiction but it deals with many real issues including grief, trauma, drug use, cancer, physical and sexual abuse”

Age Range: 12+ (according to publisher’s website; I would happily use this throughout the secondary school – plenty to engage older teens, nothing ‘unsuitable’ for yr7/8, although they will be less interested in the romance aspects)

Themes: family, friends, being different, romance

Narrative style and genre: Strong first-person narration plants you firmly in Grace’s world and gives you clear access to her thinking. She is highly self-aware and able to explain in-depth how her world is different to everyone else’s being painfully aware of her differences.

This gorgeous YA novel, focusing on Grace’s normal teen issues, handled in her atypical way, is a brilliant #ownvoices look at Asperger’s. Grace’s way of engaging with the world is clearly filtered through the symptoms and differences she experiences and these are rendered crystal-clear for the reader right from the start. The plot deals with changes around Grace’s family life and friends – there is a romance plot – and there is plenty to get caught up  in.

It’s very easy to root for Grace, and Rachael Lucas’s first-person narration plunges us into her thoughts and feelings with ease, with some interesting direct address telling about her unique take on the world.

This is a brilliant contemporary YA which centres on Grace, an autistic girl who is just trying to negotiate the world. In the novel she deals with family issues, the problems of not easily fitting in with what school wants, and the complexities of first love. It’s a great story, which also teaches about autistic experience. The author is autistic herself and has an autistic child, so it’s written with clear knowledge and understanding that there is a range of experience within the condition.

[Note that the cover is very ‘feminine’, but there’s no reason that the lesson tasks described couldn’t be used in mixed classrooms. Some of the book’s content may be of more interest to some girls than some boys, but the book is not ‘unsuitable’ for boys to see – do check out the extract below to help you decide. The issue of ‘girls’ books/’boys’ books is raised further down this post, by the way…]

The publisher’s website has the opening extract available to download and this could be shown to pupils as the focus for a lesson activity (although of course I would also recommend picking up a copy or three for your school/classroom library).

The opening two paragraphs are very suitable for an AQA Eng Lang paper 2 q3 type task focusing on language (although I know that this is likely to focus on the older text – the skills are the same, it’s all practice and I’m keen to boost confidence and showcase worthwhile/enjoyable outside-of-lesson reading).

Show the extract and ask ‘Looking at the first two paragraphs, how has the writer used language to present an impression of being autistic?’ The passage in question is brilliant for discussion of the impact of imagery and the verbs used to create a sense of repeated/constant happenings. The State of Grace is out now from My Kinda Book at Pan Macmillan in the UK.

Teaching Ideas: Gender and Book Sales

One thing that makes me a little sad about this book is that it its cover is coded in a way that is designed to mark it as ‘girly’, which reduces its potential audience. But probably the publisher believed that boys would not be likely to read it anyway. There is a belief among many adults – parents, publishers and teachers included – that boys are reluctant to read books about girls, and that is problematic for various reasons.

This idea can be seen as contributing to a society where women are seen as ‘other’ and potentially even less than human (witness the size of the sexual harassment/assault scandals we’ve seen in recent years). But of course it also simply reduces the art available to boys and men as they grow – concepts centred around a male character are seen as universal, while those centred on a woman are reduced to ‘women’s interest’. Obviously, this is not always the case, and those few exceptions may be showing that the world is more than ready for a wider range of stories. This article, citing writer Shannon Hale on how her ‘Princess Academy’ books are marketed and received, and providing clear feminist analysis of the issues might also be useful.

These concepts could be introduced for a media lesson at KS3, a non-fiction writing lesson for KS4 and as peripheral to the gender topic for A Level Lang.

For KS3, I would first allow students to read the opening extract from the publisher’s page, so that they have some familiarity with the content. They can then discuss the idea of ‘boy’ books and ‘girl’ books, with some careful questioning. I might give them prompts in groups such as:

• Do you believe that there are topics that boys and girls are naturally more interested in? What kinds of topics would they be?
• Do you think a book with a girl character is more ‘for’ girls and a book with a boy character is more ‘for’ boys? Why/why not?
• Are you aware of having read and enjoyed a book that you think was ‘supposed’ to be for the other gender? What was it?

They could go on to discuss the book’s cover and then create alternative covers for the book which are less ‘girly’.

For KS4, I might choose some obviously boy-targeted and girl-targeted novel covers (or even go to the adult shelves for books the students are less likely to be) and pop them on a powerpoint with the 200-word challenge prompt:

Write an article that argues FOR OR AGAINST the idea of marketing books and films by gender.

You should include:

• a sentence that opens with an adverb (e.g. obviously, clearly)
• a rhetorical question
• a reference to a well-known film, book or myth
• a sentence of five words or fewer
• a metaphor
• the word ‘segregation’ (n) or ‘segregate’ (vb): the division of people into groups against their will/ to divide people… e.g. This is nothing less than segregation/ This idea segregates us

For KS5 Eng Lang, I might open with some covers, discuss their graphology and then dive into a couple of blurbs to do a bit of language analysis. If time allows, you could look at a body of four of five blurbs aimed at each gender to try to show methodology and model investigation practice.  Alternatively, you could take a more theoretical route and ask students to relate the ideas of boys not being expected to read about girls/from girls perspectives to representation theories. It might be a good way to make muted/dominant group theory a bit more concrete, for example.