A group of 24 students from the Junior College, Msida, recently travelled to the UK and France on a whirlwind tour following the tracks of the British writers who feature in their English Advanced and Intermediate syllabus.
This literary trip, organised by staff members of the college’s English Department, has become a well-established event in the department’s calendar, and enables the students to experience a unique immersion in the worlds of their textbooks.
The highlight of the journey involved travelling to France via the Channel Tunnel to visit the trenches where the Battle of the Somme was held and where so many soldiers, including the war poet Wilfred Owen, lost their lives.
Students recited poems and left crosses bearing red poppies on the ground which holds thousands of World War I victims – officers, soldiers, churchmen, stretcher bearers and anonymous men, only ‘known unto God’, as the dreary rows of gravestones say.
The students were allowed to visit the little patch of earth where Maltese WWI volunteers are buried and where the snow-tinged grass bore witness to the unbearable conditions the young men were exposed to.
Stratford-upon-Avon and the Globe Theatre were among the students’ favourite sites as they were able to work with established actors to delve into the language and rhythms of Shakespeare’s Othello.
Standing inside the workshop of the glove-maker, Shakespeare’s father, or in front of a huge fireplace in Anne Hathaway’s cottage, they had a taste of life in Elizabethan England, a place where, as the guide pointed out, ‘potluck’ could have meant eating food that had been sizzling in the pot for a fortnight.
A visit to Berkhamsted School was in place, the famous ‘green baize door’ creaking open to let the group into Graham Greene’s depressing childhood, a source of inspiration for so much of his work.
The evenings were brightened with the exceptional puppeteering skills of the War Horse actors as well as the merry tunes of Matilda.
The group was led by Abigail Zammit, Clyde Borg and Charles Sammut.