William Shakespeare’s Macbeth (1606) is a play that, at its very core, warns of the dangers of unchecked ambition and accepting your God-given role in the Great Chain of Being. Functioning as a didactic force of royalist propaganda, Shakespeare aimed to ingratiate himself with the newly crowned King James I by discouraging attempted acts of regicide following the Gunpowder Plot.

In Prayer Before Birth and The Tyger, both poets explore fears of the depths of humanity’s evil. While The Tyger questions a non-responsive Christian God how he could have created both a fearful predator such as a tiger, in Prayer Before Birth, the speaker is far more concerned with the fear that society will rob them of their innocence and reshape them into an instrument of violence, highlighting a deeper terror of losing one’s humanity.

Moral values describe deciding what actions or beliefs are correct and incorrect, just and unjust, thereby ascribing the labels of being either moral or immoral. Yet morality is subjective and in flux, influenced by time, place, culture and individual experience. Banana Yoshimoto’s Kitchen (1988) and Dario Fo’s Accidental Death of an Anarchist (1970) tackle moral values in diverging ways, with Fo being far more explicit in his vision of morality, and Yoshimoto favouring a more subjective and implicit manner of exploring moral values.

Hughes explores the celebration of human spirit in Football at Slack by revealing the Yorkshire men to be at one with the wild and tempestuous nature found in the British countryside. Through this poem, Hughes reveals the strength and resilience of the human spirit embodied by the men. The title may initially call to mind the “beautiful game” – football as a deeply loved British sport.

Revision video lesson, PowerPoint and study notes for Death and the King’s Horseman IGCSE Literature. Review context, character, symbols, themes, language, form and structure.

Revision video, PowerPoint and study notes for The Whale Rider IGCSE English Literature, especially for students of Edexcel 4ET1.

Read my A* exemplar for Directed Writing formal letter writing. Video lesson, PowerPoint, study notes and full length model answer.

Video lesson, PowerPoint and study notes for An Inspector Calls IGCSE revision. Review: context, characters, themes, symbols, form and structure.

What is evaluation for IGCSE Directed Writing? Find out with my free video lesson, PowerPoint and study notes for FIrst Language English 0500.

There was an efficient hum of activity in the hotel lobby of the New York hotel that day. Men in expensive suits, women in designer dresses, and the staff in smart uniforms were all going about their business. The scene was reminiscent of the days of old: art-deco architecture, heavy carpeting, brass fixtures, and crystal lamps — luxurious surroundings at their finest.