WORLD BOOK DAT AT THE SENIOR SCHOOL
We have loved our storytelling adventures DURING World Book Day. Sharing stories and our favourite books.
Activities at the Senior School included sharing book recommendations and favourite reads during form time, a book reading flash mob, author visits and a themed whole school assembly. You can read Mr Benedict's assembly speech in full below.
Our theme for World Book Day this year is sharing stories, and I would like to share a story of sharing stories, which really is the oldest story there is to share.
This story does not begin, as you might expect, with the invention of printing technologies, either in 15th Century Germany in a small workshop near the banks of the Rhine, when a man called Gutenberg toyed with moveable type face and hot metal, nor in the sprawling dynasties of China centuries before, where woodblock printing had long been deployed to disseminate literature to the literate few.
No, for this story of sharing stories I would like to start with fire.
Because, when our ancient ancestors discovered fire, the course of human history changed. Not, I would argue, because cooked food accelerated the development of the brain; and not because fire afforded protection from predators or weapons for hunting; not even because fire catalysed tool-making or our tribal migrations to new lands. No, I would argue that the course of human history changed because we found a place to share stories. And in that moment, the nature of social interaction changed; gathering around the fire became a focal point of storytelling and connecting, of the social bonds that bind us, and of what makes us, ultimately, human. In short: forged in the first fires of man was a space for sharing stories. The embers, first literally and then figuratively, of our humanity.
And from those fires came poetry and drama and – much more recently – books. If you stare at a fire you see the only sight on earth that has never changed; you can see through the eyes of our prehistoric selves, and while language has evolved, the rudiments of story-telling have not.
Fast forward some considerable millennia and we land in ancient Greece. The epic verses of classical antiquity were spoken poems, performed by young male rhapsodes on the streets of Athens (think Kendrick Larma in a tunic). It was a culture defined by the sharing of its foundational myths, its attitudes to the gods, to political power, to the structures of social order all encoded within the quests and conquests of love and war. Homer’s two Greek epics, the ‘Illiad’ and the ‘Odyssey’, and Virgil’s Latin ‘Aeneid’ are stories layered within stories that shaped empires and the stories we tell of them.
Fast forward again and sail to England and the compulsion to share stories underpins so much of the literary heritage of our canon, either as fictional conceit or as a means to find connection and humanity.
Chaucer’s ‘Canterbury Tales’ – a Medieval masterpiece – is a series of poems built upon the essential idea of an eclectic group of travellers on a holy pilgrimage to Canterbury. They pass the time by each telling a story. Each ‘tale’ – full of dirty jokes and dreadful behaviour – satirizes a snapshot of Medieval society. In other words: one of the foundational texts of English literature is a story about sharing stories, in which characters within the stories share stories.
And the more I think of sharing stories the more I see it everywhere. The prolific Victorian novelist Charles Dickens was revered as much as an exceptional story-teller as a celebrated author, who could command a room with an opening syllable and who published his novels in three-chapter serials so that his stories were shared in smoggy streets with the fervour of political pamphlets.
I think of the origin story of ‘Frankenstein’ – Mary Shelley’s proto-science fiction masterpiece written, extraordinarily, when she was a teenager – that was born from a debauched and Gothic night when a bunch of poets partied hard and told ghost stories round a fire.
Many famous stories have story-telling embedded within: a narrator aware of their function. I think of Marlowe, the protagonist of Joseph Conrad’s ‘Heart of Darkness’, a narrator talking to friends on a boat on the Thames at the turning of the tide, who shares a story of the Ivory trade in the Congo, but really shares a story of the horrors at the heart of man. I think of Carraway, the narrator of Fitzgerald’s ‘The Great Gatsby’, who shares a story of decadence and desire in the doomed Gilded Age of New York with both infatuation and irony. I think of Scout, the narrator of ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’, sharing a story of a child’s awakening to the cruelties of her world through an ambivalent voice of innocence and knowledge.
And, of course, I think of Shakespeare. Why do we continue to share those stories? Why does he continue to sell more tickets than any other artist on earth? Because those of you who have studied ‘The Merchant of Venice’ this year have shared a story about insidious structures of privilege and prejudice; while in our world the American president frequently embodies the worst of both. Because those of you who have studied ‘Romeo and Juliet’ this year have shared a story of teenage rebellion and gangs of boys who feel they have to perform violence for their tribe and their honour; while in our world confused notions of masculine strength permeate the internet. Because those of you who have studied ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ this year have shared a story of fantasy and desire; while in our world you carry fantasy on the apps in your pocket and the love potion of desire is defined by algorithm. Because those of you who performed in ‘Macbeth’ shared with us a story of power and guilt; while in our world success is a competition and shame is a weapon. Because those of you who have studied ‘Hamlet’ this year have shared a story that interrogates the essence of the self with the poetry of consciousness; while in our world the question of ‘what makes us human?’ is becoming all the more urgent and all the less philosophical.
And now I sit with my sons and read about snails and whales and Gruffalos and buffalos and share stories as an act of connection and an act of being human and an act of being a dad and an act of being sentient and alive.
My eldest has never been a good sleeper. He’s nearly four and he wakes at least four or five times a night. I now sleep on the floor of his room because it’s easier that way. He wakes me with questions and his questions are shaped by the bed-time books we read. This week’s focus is on reality. Are Dragons real? Is Paddington real? Are horses real? And if that sounds cute, you try answering ‘Are burglars real?’ at four o’clock in the morning.
Jonathan Swift called books the ‘children of the brain’ and Focault described each book as a ‘node within a network’ and if you combine both these ideas you get a community of children – that is to say a school – bound by the stories we share.
There is a central paradox here that reading can feel like an insular, introspective, introverted activity. But the more you read, the more you realise it is the fire that burns in all of us.
Books can be rude and dangerous and funny and intoxicating. They can change what you think you know about the world, and give you respite from its constant noise. There will be books out there for you, and you will feel better and think better for reading them.
So, find your story-tellers, find your voice and share some stories this week.
Mr Benedict, Head of Sixth Form and English Teacher
