By Mrs Graves (Head of English)

We are very proud to announce that one of last year’s English Language Upper Sixth cohort, Chloe Howe (BGS 2023), has been named runner up in an exciting national creative writing competition run by the University of Leicester.

The competition celebrates and pays tribute to the work of acclaimed playwright and satirist Joe Orton, drawing on his well-known spoof letters, penned using the pseudonym Edna Welthorpe.

Students across the country are invited to write their own Edna Welthorpe letter in the spirit of Joe Orton, a task which is happily well aligned with one of the key aspects of the A Level English Language course where students use a piece of published writing as a style guide for their own creative piece.

Once introduced to the task, Chloe worked completely independently to produce and submit her entry, choosing the increasingly bizarre world of reality television and dating shows as the subject; the judges felt that the letter was ‘most amusing’ and that it ‘effectively gave Orton’s satire on prudery and religion a modern twist.

Congratulations, Chloe, on this impressive achievement.