The English Department is especially proud of its extensive, lively and popular programme of extra-curricular activities.
Visits with a literary theme, both at home and abroad, are an important - and highly pleasurable - part of the Department's schedule.
Lower Sixth Visit to Dublin Lower Sixth girls studying AS English Literature or IB spend three days in Dublin in October Half Term, exploring the historical and literary highlights of this great city, and paying a visit to Trinity College, Dublin.
Theatre Club
The Theatre Club organises regular visits to both West End and fringe plays. During the last year, these have included productions of Harold Pinter's 'Betrayal', Neil LaBute's 'In a Dark Dark House' and 'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof' by Tennessee Williams.
Debating is very strong at Godolphin. Over a hundred girls regularly take part in the Junior and Senior Debating Competitions.
Junior Debating Club (Upper Third to Upper Fourth)
A Junior Debating Competition is organised which all girls in the first three years are invited to enter. A team is entered for the Oxford Union Junior Debating Competition. The competition is extremely popular, and debates are very well attended.
Senior Debating Club (Lower Fifth to Upper Sixth)
The Senior Debating Competition is extremely popular. Girls take part in weekly debates in the Hall before large audiences. Subjects have ranged from the place of religion in modern life to whether Boris Johnson should be mayor of London.
Teams are entered for the English Speaking Union Schools Mace Competition, the London Schools Competition, the Oxford Union Competition and the Cambridge Union Competition. A team is also entered for the English Speaking Union Public Speaking Competition.
In April 2009, the Public Speaking team consisting of Daniela Raffel as chairperson, Kitty Parker-Brooks as main speaker and Francesca Humphreys as questioner won the National Finals of the ESU Public Speaking Competition. In recognition of this achievement the team was invited to Buckingham Palace in November to receive certificates from HRH. The Duke of Edinburgh.
Creative writing is an extremely popular activity, with groups of younger and older girls working on both short-term and long-term projects in a range of forms and genres.
Junior Writers' Club (Upper Third to Upper Fourth)
Girls work together with a teacher on a variety of projects, including a play writing workshop led by an older girl, and working towards producing their own magazine of writing.
Senior Writers' Club (Lower Fifth to Upper Sixth)
Girls work together with a teacher to produce their own magazine of creative writing. The club also attracts a number of high profile visiting speakers. We have had visits from Francine Stock, novelist, broadcaster and judge of the 2003 Booker Prize; the award winning poets Robin Robertson and David Harsent; the best selling novelist Richard Mason; the Observer journalist Barbara Ellen, and the Poet Laureate Andrew Motion, who specifically asked to come to the school on the basis of its outstanding record in creative writing.
The Club has an excellent record in writing competitions. In the last seven years, members of the club have won the poetry first prize in the London Metropolitan University writing competition twice, and have been commended three times. One girl, when in the Lower Fifth, won first prize in the Tate Modern / Morgan Stanley Surrealism competition, and had a professional artist interpret her short story. She also won a first prize in a screenwriting competition, enabling her to spend the summer working intensively on her project with a professional screenwriter. We have had one winner and two runners-up (one only in the Lower Fourth) in the Poetry Society Young Poet of the Year awards, a national competition attracting almost 6,000 entries. Girls have worked with a director at the Gate Theatre in Notting Hill in a project culminating in the performance of their plays by professional actors.
Catherine Webb, who took her A-Levels at the school in 2004, has recently had her fourth novel published. The Head of Department, Mr Bell, is a published and prize-winning poet, and two other members of the department have recently completed MAs in Creative Writing.
Visiting Writer
A visiting writer spends a day in school each year working with classes, funded by a bequest from a former parent.
Reading is also well-represented, with a variety of ways in which girls can widen their knowledge of literature, and respond to it.
Reading Group
The Reading Group meets three times a term to discuss classic texts, with a view to strengthening girls applications to university, and to encouraging a love of reading.
Reading Competition
There is a Reading Competition, in which all girls in the Lower School participate. Heats are held in lessons, and there is a Final in which one girl from each form reads. The Final is adjudicated by an outside judge and watched by the whole Lower School.
