Surrey English Blog

Recently, Hamish Hamilton Canada announced plans to publish Michael Winter’s forthcoming novel, Minister Without Portfolio, in September 2013. I’m a fan of Winter’s work and will look forward to reading the novel; I found his last novel The Death of Donna Whalen (Penguin, 2010) challenging, disturbing, and engaging. It also prompted me to consider current cultural preoccupations […]

Last Saturday was the University of Surrey’s first Open Day of the academic year and the biggest that the university has ever held! Over two thousand people came to Guildford to find out about courses, accommodation, funding, employability and student life. It took an enormous amount of planning to make the day run smoothly, but […]

In March 2011 the final line of Alfred Tennyson’s poem ‘Ulysses’ – ‘To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield’ – was selected as the inscription for a wall in the athlete’s village at the 2012 London Olympic Games. The line, it was hoped, would motivate athletes to strive for success in their […]

Events have been taking place throughout 2012 to mark the bicentenary of the birth of Charles Dickens. Dickens is an iconic figure in British culture and English literature, and over the course of the year so far the celebrations of his bicentenary have often seemed to merge, along with the Diamond Jubilee and the build-up […]

On Monday 9 and Tuesday 10 July, the School of English and Languages at the University of Surrey will co-host a conference on Dickens and the Visual Imagination, in association with Watts Gallery and the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art. The first day of the conference will take place at the University […]

On 14 June, 2012 the School of English and Languages will host An Audience with Jon Ronson: Goats, Psychopaths & Censorship at the University of Surrey, Lecture Theatre G at 5 p.m with a free wine reception and book signing immediately following. Jon Ronson, award-winning journalist, filmmaker and cultural critic is the author of several […]

    Over the past three years I have been writing and researching for a PhD in Creative Writing in the School of English and Languages at the University of Surrey. The aim of the project, from the outset, was to produce a novel for publication, and in June 2012 that novel, So It Is, […]