World Book Day was a strange day at Hall School Wimbledon. The Caped Crusader could be found patrolling the corridors, upholding order and justice as a Rogues’ Gallery of fabulously costumed students went about their business. His frenemy and fellow member of the Justice League, Superman, could be found extolling historical facts as his students sat enraptured, soaking in his rhetoric about truth, justice and the American way – his GCSE classes do, after all, cover the Cold War. 

Downstairs, students were given an impassioned speech about Gothic Romanticism as Lady Macbeth eulogised over the 19th century masterpiece Wuthering Heights. Just across the corridor from her in the opposite classroom, the bard himself chose to put aside his own penmanship by celebrating Maus, a graphic novel that is every bit as worthy as any novel on this literary tour. Elsewhere, Shylock pranced around with a literal pound of meat, while Shere Khan terrified her students into learning about the urbanisation of Lagos.  

At break time, Nicole in Year 8, impressively dressed as Alice in Wonderland, wandered down the rabbit hole and into the strange world of the library, where she was met by the Three Blind Mice, The Cat in the Hat, and an array of other weird and whacky characters from the literary world. Her imagination ran wild!

There were Doctors of Poetry sat in neat rows, bespectacled in colourful wayfarer glasses and sporting doctors’ tops and fetching wigs. Each doctor was ready to listen to her problems and prescribe her with the best medicine that a Year 8 student is legally able to proffer: an uplifting poem! 

The timing of Alice’s surge in confidence could not have been more perfect for in the corner of the library, carrying battered, old scripts and a leather pouch of gold coins, was William Shakespeare looking for actors for his newly penned plays. Alice assuredly approached for her audition before dazzling her audience with an exceptional performance as Desdemona before her tragic death in Othello. She was rapturously applauded and given deserved payment for her rendition: a gold coin that was unravelled to reveal a delicious morsel of chocolate inside. It had certainly been a sweet day thus far.