From GCSEs to global English: A personal reflection on language

What’s on your bedside table? Earplugs? Headache tablets? Eye mask? Virginia Woolf’s keeping me company right now, along with a watch, my mobile phone, and truthfully, my GCSE and A-level results – buried under Hemingway and Isherwood. Printed on wafer thin paper from the days when they were still typed. It’s a kind of memento mori – every morning I’m reminded of those fateful results days. Keeps me on the straight and narrow.