I'm already annoyed by this Vanity Fair adaptation.

[Ash]

His house in Tunbridge Wells is now a rather fine restaurant - or at least it was 15 years ago. wd wmt.

He lives in Kensal Green now.

[Ash]

Pìss, pot, all, same. Having suffered this sort of shíte at Eng Lit 'A' Level, I care not one jot for it now.

I had to read The Trumpet Major by Hardy at school. Dreadful experience.

[Burney]

He lives in Kensal Green now.

I think 'lives' may be pushing it. As that other underrated Victorian man of letters Chesterton put it:

"For there is good news yet to hear and fine things to be seen,
Before we go to Paradise by way of Kensal Green."

[Sir C]

I had to read The Trumpet Major by Hardy at school. Dreadful experience.

Hardy's great though, as a rule. The Mayor of Casterbridge is a triumph.

[Viva Prat Vegas]

I had to read Canterbury Tales at school
Couldn't make head nor tale of it

[Sir C]

I seem to remember having eaten there many moons ago.

Didn't he also have something to do with the Post Office?

And he wrote Barry Lyndon, which is very underrated.

Downstairs used to be a casual bistro-type affair, which was excellent. But I'm thinking back to the mid-90s now

Of Thackeray and the Post Office know I nothing.

That's the opening line of a poem if ever I wrote one.

[Burney]

I had to read The Trumpet Major by Hardy at school. Dreadful experience.

My take on Hardy is that he's a wildly overrated novelist (although beloved of school curricula by virtue of his plots and themes having all the nuance of a sledgehammer to the nuts) and a wildly underrated poet.

[71 Guns - channeling the spirit of Mr Hat]

I had to read The Trumpet Major by Hardy at school. Dreadful experience.

I feel for you, A. Don't even get me started on Austen, Shakespeare or Chaucer...although at least Chaucer had some smut.

[Burney]

I had to read Canterbury Tales at school
Couldn't make head nor tale of it

In 'translation' or in the original middle English?

I can still recite the first 12 lines of the Prologue in Middle English. You'd be amazed how few people ask me to do so, though.

[Viva Prat Vegas]

'Twas in Middle English
Given the book to read over the Summer Holidays in preparation for the start of A Level English Lit
Fretted over failing to comprehend the text whilst on a 2 week trip abroad and was then told in September that it didn't matter whether none of us had even looked at the book
Choc full of apostrophes, I seem to recall