Les Wilkinson – the accidental English teacher…

 

I never set out to be an English teacher; in fact, I when I went to university, I appled to read French.  Luckily, however, my course was sufficiently flexible to allow me to study a number of other subjects as well, including Moral Philosophy, Theology and English.  I found that I was reading more and more in my first years at university, and so opted to read Honours in English Language and Literature rather than French when the time came to choose.

 

I also came to drama by accident, too.  When I was studying for my teaching qualification in , the Professor of Spanish was looking for someone to perform a small walk-on part in a play called The Prodigious Cobbler’s Wife by Garcia Lorca.  Two of us auditioned,  I got the part – and from that moment on I was hooked.  As a result, producing plays has been one the real sources of enjoyment in my career.  I’ve produced a number of Shakespeare plays (Macbeth, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Twelfth Night), a number of modern plays (Look Back in Anger, Our Country’s Good, A View from the Bridge) and a number of older plays, too, including my own translation of Moliere’s The Miser (so the years of studying French came in handy after all).

 

I really enjoy teaching plays, and teaching Shakespeare in particular.

 

My literary interests were formed when I was a student in , and I still have a real passion for Scottish Literature.  I’d love to see more English students reading Robert Burns’ poetry and the novels of Sir Walter Scott!  Other Scottish writers who interest me include John Galt and James Hogg, two nineteenth century novelists, and the poets Hugh MacDairmid and Edwin Muir.  The novels of Lewis Grassic Gibbon and William McIllvaney I would also recommend wholelheartedly to anyone who wanted to find out how Scotsmen think differently to Englishmen.

 

Other novelists I enjoy are John Buchan and Anthony Trollope.  I also read the Inspector Brunetti novels by Donna Leon:  they’re detective novels set in, a city I love.

I’ve just finished reading Mr Golightly’s Holiday by Salley Vickers.  I bought it because I’d enjoyed her novel set in , Miss Garnett’s Angel.  I thought they were both brilliant: I’d certainly recommend Mr Golightly to anyone who is interested in religion, philosophy or soap operas.  To tell you too much about the novel would be to ruin the puzzle that is at the heart of the book!