Olivia

After studying Advanced Higher English, History, and Biology at school in Scotland I began a law degree at Pembroke College, Oxford. While there I founded a women’s debating society, helped manage an intercollegiate mooting programme, and was president of my college’s Law Society. I graduated with a first-class degree, winning Law Faculty prizes for Best Dissertation and top performance in Moral and Political Philosophy.

During and after my degree I gained experience in the book industry in all sorts of capacities: at the Oxford Literary Festival, at two publishing houses, as a freelance editor, and as a bookseller. This multifaceted engagement with literature is something I enjoy passing onto my students. Above all I love talking about culture of all kinds with people from all walks of life – a big part of my most recent job as a bookseller was programming author talks and encouraging customers to come along!

I try to tailor my lessons to the individual student’s needs as much as possible, focusing on their specific aims, learning style, and interests, making sure we consistently reflect together on their progress. Lessons work best when they are enjoyable as well as challenging, and I like being imaginative about making this possible. Alongside focused work on the subject matter or skillset at hand, I take seriously the opportunity 1-to-1 tuition affords for fostering creative and critical engagement with the world more generally, helpful for young people in many subjects and even beyond their studies.

With English tuition, I feel strongly that students are too often encouraged by schools to see the aspects of the subject as discrete, rather than different ways of testing whether the student possesses an overarching temperament: mastery of grammar, stylistic flair, but also intellectual curiosity, and an alertness to playfulness in language.

Alongside working as a tutor I am a writer. At present I’m working on a novel (I’m a graduate of Curtis Brown Creative’s ‘Writing Your Novel’ course) and a short film. In my spare time I also love taking advantage of all the culture London has to offer, especially its galleries and theatres.