What's New for Di Beddow
Summer 2020
After a pretty hard opening to the year with my mother dying and then lockdown, I am currently making better progress on the thesis and trying hard to ignore those people who say, “It must be easier for you to write with no distractions at the moment!” Oh yes, simps, global pandemic, racism, recession; no distractions there.
I have added to the website the piece I wrote for @sylviaplathinfo on the uncovering of the Plath student file from Newnham College; I was the first scholar to be allowed access and I am very grateful to Anne Thomson, the college archivist, for such a privilege. Last year The Ted Hughes Society Journal published my piece on ‘Cambridge was our Courtship’ and that is included in the academic writing section. I also attach the link to the Sylvia Plath Zoomposium; I kick off the second event with a virtual walk around Plath’s Cambridge. In August I have been invited to speak at the Milton Road Library Friends group; we are waiting to see if that will be a Zoom event or more traditional.
Di Beddow
Site Guide
Below is a map of my website
Pieces I have written for academic work including essays and drafts for my PhD thesis on a psychogeographical study of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes’ Cambridge. Plath and Hughes wrote their history upon Cambridge; my research walk will begin with both writers’ Cambridge poetry and loiter along the way in their stories and memories, sketches, archives and places. The doctoral thesis will record this wander to construct the first shared literary, psychological, sociological and biographical geography of Hughes’ and Plath’s Cambridge.
In 1994 I collaborated with a friend on an article on raising the achievement of GCSE students; this was published in the Times Educational Supplement as, “Return on the right kind of interest” on the 11th February. Here is the start of my journalistic writing, covering mainly education issues such as boys’ mindset; ‘A’ level research; the development of support staff and the skills of senior leadership. I became a regular columnist for the TES in the noughties, writing on aspects of middle leadership development. Recently, my journalistic writing has focused more on political issues in relation to education, feminism and socialism. I am a contributor to Guardian Comment.
Creative writing pieces that I have written for clients.
Di Beddow offers a full range of consultancy services for journalism, academic writing and the education sector.
Things I am interested in
Potter and Crocker This is my interest in vintage
Scrap Book A scrapbook of selected images