Shakespeare in Pieces.

Off to the British Museum to see the astonishing Staging the World exhibition, looking at Shakespeare's life and times through a series of remarkable artefact both from the museum's own collection and beyond.

It's a deliberately eclectic display of stuff which leads you through some key themes London as a global city, the rural countryside of Shakespeare's youth, kingship and the English nation and rooms dedicated to Shakespeare's view of classical civilisation, the religious conversions of the sixteenth century and finally a look at the brave new worlds of the Americas that were being explored during the Jacobean age.

Almost every object carries a fascinating story and help to paint a picture of the World 400 years ago and the three hours I'd given myself to explore wasn't nearly enough time.

Early on you come across an evocative revision from the multi-authored play, Sir Thomas More. The corrections are clearly in Shakespeare's spidery hand, including crossings out, experiments and inserts. It's a reassuringly familiar document of trial and error.

 Next door is Henry V's 'bruised helmet' along with the shield and saddle used at Agincourt. From Henry's death in 1422, right up until 1972 these tributes were displayed on the crossbeam above the King's tomb in Westminster Abbey. Visual icons of our ancestors triumphant victory over France, and well known to the citizens of the Elizabethan city. I had never seen them before.

Towards the end the gorgeous intricacy of the Lyte Jewel, presented to Thomas Lyte by James I in thanks for the genealogical research that helped the new King establish noble credentials by tracing his blood line, somewhat unbelievably, back to Brutus, the mythical founder of Britain.

There are more gruesome exhibits as well, the skull of a bear found in excavations of the baiting pits in Southwark, a fossilised calf's heart stuck with pins, used as a counter charm to protect livestock from witches and hobgoblins and most stomach churning of all, the shrivelled eye of Father Edward Oldcorne, a Jesuit priest, saved as a relic at his execution. 'Out vile jelly! Where is thy lustre now?'

Finally, right at the exit, modestly sits The Robben Island Bible, opened at Mandela's signature. After four years following it's story it was a strange experience to actually see it, proud, battered but still and lifeless, protected behind in a glass case. It was like meeting a familiar friend in a strange place and not quite knowing how to react.

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How to Destroy a Sixteen Year Old's Confidence.

Assessment is a fascinating area of education practice.

We spend hours each year looking at each student's work and then trying to match what we're seeing or reading against pre-ordained criteria, in order to set a grade or value. We spend almost as much time looking and re looking at how those criteria are written, to make sure that they record, as accurately as language will allow, a description of the kinds of accomplishments that we believe will be needed for a successful future.

In fact, it could be argued that as educators, it's the most essential role we play. Assessment is a powerful teaching tool.

The most important aspect of assessment is that students believe it. They knock on our doors and ask us to explain the grades they've been given. They rightly celebrate first class marks and look to try and analyse what they could have done differently when the grade disappoints. They trust that the mark written on the bottom right of their feedback sheet actually carries meaning.

And so it's distressing to hear this week of the GCSE debacle where it appears that the desire to send a strong message that exams are there to discriminate has led to Ofqual downgrading thousands of marks in the name of academic rigour.

There has, of course, until this year, been year on year improvements to the GCSE grades.

It makes sense, reflecting the investment in Schools over the past twenty years and the fact that teachers get better year on year at delivering successful candidates against the exam criteria. In other disciplines this would be cause for celebration. Teachers improving year on year their own performance in the art of making students more successful at exams. In education, however, the worries around grade inflation mean that politicians and the media greet these improvements with profound scepticism and accusations of dumbing down. Damned if you do...

It's why at Drama St Mary's we review the criteria each year. Are they too tough? Are they too easy? We revise accordingly before publishing them for the students to see. Thus the grade thresholds are manipulated gently to keep them relevent and challenging, but, vitally this is done before anybody undergoes their assessment. This means the staff are also clear on how a standard of performance links to a mark before they begin to teach their modules.

The cruel and arbitrary way in which the boundaries have shifted for GCSE students mid session, means students who would have been awarded a C had they taken the exam in January have, simply by taking the exam in July been given a D. Intelligence is not assessed here. It's more important to have been born in the right year!

It's hard to persuade young people of the importance of education. Many are already suspicious and some increasingly cynical of the notion that qualifications are a surefire path to employment or happiness. Trust is the vital element in any relationship between teachers and learners and once young people begin to lose confidence in the formal processes by which their work is judged then it's not long before they lose confidence in the need to study or train at all.

If we expect children to stick to school rules, it might be useful if we let them know when we've decided to change them.
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Teddington Libraries and Political Diaries.

With the new year approaching time is running out for summer reading. Soon enough our inboxes will begin filling up with reports, committee papers, minutes and journal articles. This year with so much else going on the time for tucking up with a good book has been limited, but the last few days and the week ahead seem open enough to allow page turning time.

I had an hour or so in ever so friendly Teddington library, which has plenty of armchairs and a small walled garden out the back. Recently I've taken more effort to use the local libraries. They're a brilliant resource and are inevitably under threat as the council tries to make savings. This in turn has meant that I've bought less books this year than ever before. It's not a bad discipline to get out of the house to read the papers and to browse the shelves for interesting titles, and if the effort helps the footfall and therefore the life of the libraries, everybody wins.

In the end I picked up former MP Michael Spicer's diaries, which have just come out.

Spicer was first elected to parliament in 1974, but seems to have spent most of his first five years avoiding the house and building up his business interests. He failed to back Margaret Thatcher in her successful bid for the Tory Party leadership, but slowly, mostly working alongside Cecil Parkinson, began to climb the greasy poll, once she'd led her party to victory in 1979. As a Euro-sceptic he spent much of the early nineties happily undermining John Major's leadership, before finally becoming the chair of the 1922 committee. I disagree with almost everything he says, whilst revelling in the delightful way he spends thirty years slipping from one conspiracy to conspiracy about the corridors of power.

I do find political diaries endlessly fascinating. Chris Mullen, Gyles Brandreth and Alan Clark have all, in slightly different ways given us fascinating, gossipy insights into the Blair, Major and Thatcher administrations respectively and Spicer's journals seem a worthy addition to the genre.

What makes these works so interesting is that they're not written by those directly in power, who, even in hindsight, are compelled to fight hard to control the historical narrative and their own personal reputation, but instead they present the perspective of backbenchers, thrilled to be bit players, present at key moments, occasionally adding breathe to the sails, but for the most part standing unnoticed in the backwaters.

In this respect they follow in the noble Pepysian tradition, majoring in voyeurism, whilst minoring in personal ambition. It's the perfect balance for a diarist. Without the former they couldn't pull us readers in, but without the latter they wouldn't be in position from which to record in the first place.
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Isabella Plantation at Dusk.

Back in London and a lovely evening walk into Richmond Park and the gorgeous Isabella Plantation, a couple of hundred metres in from Ham Gate.

The plantation is fenced off, mostly to protect it from the deer, and has over the hundred and fifty years of its existence provided a lush ornamental garden, quite in contrast with the wild openness of the rest of the park.

Large enough to get lost in, it's real beauty lies is its subtle seasonal changes and fades as the Japanese Irises and day lilies close up to be replaced by the Autumn glory of the Acer trees blazing red. Elsewhere the rowan and spindle trees and beginning to swell, their berries riping for harvest.

Most visitors come to the plantation in Spring, glorying in the bluebell carpets and explosive displays of azaleas and rhododendrons, but tonight in the calm and warmth of late Summer it was as beautiful as I've ever seen it.

It has the air of a secret garden and passing through the gate we followed the deep cut stream that leads from Peg's Pond, with its jumping fish, through Fallen Oak Glade to Still Pond and the Southern end, without meeting a soul. Finally we headed back along Camellia Walk, round to the Beech Bay and back to the peace of the pond.

This part of London really is a fantastic place to live. The park itself is the biggest green lung south in the capital and the Thames is also at its proudest as it winds past Hampton Court and Richmond on its way to regal splendour of London. I often wonder whether the students, heads down as they run from lectures to the library, to the clubs and bars in Kingston are aware enough of these magical places that lie just a leap of imagination and short walk away from the routines of undergraduate life. I hope some of them, maybe staggering home on a Sunday morning after a big night out, do stumble across the Isabella Plantation. It's as magical as falling down a rabbit hole or stepping through a wardrobe into a snow covered world.
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The Handsome Hanson Way.

I've been back in Oxfordshire for a couple of days enjoying what's left of the Summer break before heading back to St Mary's and as the weather was onside I spent most of the afternoon exploring the Hanson Way which runs between steam trains in Didcot and the city of Dreaming Spires.

It's one of the many routes on the Sustrans National Cycle Network, an organisation which gently, over the past couple of decades has created a wonderful collection of cycle paths across the UK, encouraging commuters and families back onto their bikes for work and leisure.

Oxfordshire, it a bit of a plateau. The Ridgeway lies South and the Chilterns to the East, but in the main it's perfect biking country.

The route from Didcot, cuts through Sutton Courtney and took me up the charmingly named Peep O Day Lane, through Abingdon Marina and into St Helen' heads out towards thes before heading out through Abbey Gardens, across the river just above the weir and away across the fields to Radley.

On turning out of the village I got stuck on the main road, but only for a couple of miles before the route turns down a side track and cuts along parallel with the railway line on one side and the  sparkling Thames on the other, past the fishermen looking for pike by Sandford lock and on to Ifley, with it's ancient Norman church. There's a sense that Oxford is near at hand.

The last few miles are lovely, under Donnington Bridge, and then up past the University boathouses before finally emerging at the Head of the River, St Aldgates and Christchurch Meadow.

The whole trip took about an hour but sitting in the late afternoon sun with a welcome beer and the day trippers boarding Salters ferry for a leisurely cruise back to Abingdon it felt good to have taken the effort to enjoy such a picturesque route into town.
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Troilus and Cressida.

To Stratford to see a strange and largely unsatisfying production of Troilus and Cressida, a co-production between the RSC and New York's experimental Wooster Group.

The idea behind the production - to direct one army, the Trojans, in New York using the techniques and rehearsal approaches developed by the Woosters over the last thirty years, whilst simultaneously directing the Greeks using the RSC's traditional rehearsal process is interesting - wars are indeed normally begun because two cultures clash over disputed territory; but what comes out in the wash is a self-conscious mish mash of game playing and cleverness, which abandons narrative clarity and imposes abstract philosophical ideas about appropriation, virtuality and the authority of text on the audience.

The Trojans are a miked, post-modern parody of native Americans, whilst the Greeks are a modern NATO force. It could be an intriguing anachronism, but in effect is just a callous assault on the audience's intelligence. After initial delight, it's as boring as a child's unstructured rambling. None of this is helped by some fairly dire verse speaking on the American side and a strange decision to keep most of the play in tact, keeping us in our seats for well over three and a half hours.

If you can entertain the frankly spurious notion, spelt out by co-director Mark Ravenhill in the programme note, that the intention is to create something 'inconsistant in tone' you're still left with the bewildering casualness of arbitrary choices. Even the use of monitors to screen snippets of Inuit cinema, which are then mirrored through the stage choreography, suggesting perhaps that behaviour and action are mediated through a dominant hegemony, is made inconsequential simply because the screens are too small.

There are some moments. Scott Handy is smashing as Ulysses and Zubin Varla brings a snarling malcontent to Thersites, but these are the rare occasions when the company relaxes back on Shakespeare's verse and allows it space to breathe.

The play already has its problems, mostly to do with Shakespeare's decision to begin and end the action within the siege of Troy, creating almost a fly on the wall documentary without context or conclusion. This seems to me fascinating enough for post-structural exploration, the additional layers introduced by both directors, seem ultimately to obscure rather than elucidate this fascinating play.
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The Great Olympic Wedgy.

And so the Olympics comes to and end with a fun packed closing ceremony featuring waves of surprises and a very British mixture of the sublime and the ridiculous. Tim Spall, again appearing as Churchill, nonsensically speaking Caliban's lines from atop a newsprint decked Big Ben, whilst Julian Lloyd-Webber played the cello. Russell Brand out of key as Willy Wonka, Fat Boy Slim emerging from an inflatable octopus. Eccentric and meaningless stuff.

In keeping with the style over substance theme the athletes were corralled into trivial pursuit shaped wedges so that a complicated, cat walk union flag stage could be made in the centre of the stadium. A global TV audience marvelled at the coherence stage management, but apart from the moment when The Spice Girls united the crowd with childhood memories of Zig-a-zig-ah, the athletes looked lost, disconnected and, trapped in their zones, unsure of where the focus of the show should be.

The tight marshaling and designation seemed to me to be the real metaphor for modern Britain, where the rebellious conditions that broke appeasement, created a magical chocolate factory and championed surrealism, have long since disappeared in clouds of conformity and regulation. The legacy runs deep, the identity cards we've been asked to wear during St Mary's time as a training camp, are to be kept in place. Ours is an odd culture, enthralled both to rules and to those who get away with breaking them.

There is a sense of empowerment engendered by the games that I hope will lead to some positive investment in Schools and clubs. The fact remains that 40% of Britain's Gold medallists were educated in private schools, where resources and facilities are plentiful. It's not defeatist to suggest that confidence and entitlement develops much faster when the conditions are right, but it is offensive for those from privileged backgrounds, to suggest that all that is needed is a change of attitude amongst those who are forced to structure their provision around a football and two rusty sets of goalposts. World class resources and investment promote world class athletes. It's underinvestment, not working class conservatism that leads to squabbles and tribalism.
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