About

I’m an English teacher and writer. Occasionally, I get some spare time.

My book Reading Lessons, about the books we read in school and why they matter so much, was published by Fig Tree in April 2024 and is out in paperback in March 2025. I’m currently writing a memoir about adoption, Someone Else’s Child, which is due out in Summer 2026. My editors at Fig Tree are Helen Garnons-Williams and Ella Harold, and I’m represented by Charlotte Atyeo at the Greyhound Literary Agency.

I studied English at St Edmund Hall, Oxford, and later did a PGCE at Manchester Metropolitan University and a PhD at the University of Nottingham. My thesis was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2005 as the snappily-titled Defining Literary Criticism: Scholarship, Authority and the Possession of Literary Knowledge, 1880-2003. With Gary Snapper and Andrew Green, I co-wrote Teaching English Literature 16-19 (Routledge/NATE, 2013) and the textbook for AQA’s A level English Literature B specification (Cambridge University Press, 2015).

I’m a member of NATE (the National Association for the Teaching of English) and a Fellow of the English Association. I’ve written for the British Library, the Poetry Archive and various other subject-related organisations. My work has been published in Teaching English, emagazine, The Use of English and a number of other publications.

I like long walks, slow ploddy running, horse riding and red wine.