37
Dad during his school days, in the late 1950s I spoke to my niece a few weeks ago. She has just started Year 12 (lower sixth to those of us born north of 1990), and she needed a copy of The Tempest for her A level Lit course. Rather you than me , I thought. As the resident English teacher, I was more than willing to plunder the dusty store rooms of my school's almost redundant department store cupboards (so-narrow is our choice of texts, thanks to Mr Gove). Personally, I have never warmed to Shakes's supernatural-come-comedic shipwreck; the so-called comic relief that Trinculo and Stephano are meant to provide amongst the motley brigade of castaways has never done it for me. Give me the maudlin tale of a son and his murderous uncle, or the shallow megalomaniac celtic king and his bloody endeavours any day of the week. It was 8.30 at night when I called my 16 year old niece, and I had just got in from a PiYo session; a double attack on both the summer paunch, a hangove