Brian Johnston – författare

Brian Johnston's approach to Ibsen, now well known, is unlike any other. Johnston sees Ibsen's twelve realist plays as a single cyclical work, the "realist" method of which hides a much larger poetic intention than has previously been suspected. He believes that the cycle constitutes one of the major works of the European imagination, comparable in scale to Goethe or Dante. And he has shown Ibsen to be the heir to Romantic and Hegelian art and thought, adapting this heritage to the circumstances of his own day.This work demonstrates how the language and scene, characters and "props," of the Ibsen dramas establish a bold and far-reaching theatrical goal: nothing less than an account of our biological and cultural identity in its multilayered totality. Johnston argues that Ibsen's realist text, while stimulating the appearance of nineteenth-century life, also objectively and precisely builds up an alternative image in which archetypal figures and situations from our cultural past repossess the realist stage. Thus he sees the Ibsen "strategy" in his realist plays as twofold: (1) the dialectical subversion of the nineteenth-century reality presented in the plays, and (2) the forced recovery of the archetypal from the past, in a procedure similar to James Joyce's in Ulysses. By "supertext" Johnston means a reservoir of cultural reference upon which Ibsen continuously drew in his realist work just as in is earlier poetic and historical dramas.

Following Brian Johnston's death in 1994, Prime Minister John Major appeared to speak for the nation when he remarked that 'Summers will never be the same.' To an Englishman's ears, the sound of leather against willow will always be closely associated with the cheerful tones of Johnners.Brian Johnston was a man who admitted: 'I have this absurd hankering to make people laugh.' He also summed up his books as 'the meanderings of a remarkably happy and lucky person, to whom life, like cricket, is a funny game and still a lot of fun.' Lovingly edited by his eldest son, Barry, A Delicious Slice of Johnners is a wonderfully enjoyable compendium of three of Johnners' best loved books, the autobiographies It's Been a Lot of Fun and It's a Funny Game, and Rain Stops Play

To the Third Empire was first published in 1980. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.Critical acclaim greeted Brian Johnston's 1975 book on Ibsen's final phase, The Ibsen Cycle. Choice called it "the single most provocative and critically exciting books of Ibsen criticism in decades." Johnston now turns his attention to the early works, using the same thematic premise - that the plays follow a clear progression, influenced by the Hegalian aesthetic that pervaded Europe in the mid-nineteenth century. The result is an explanation of the early career that demonstrates both its unity and its essential relation to the realistic cycle that followed. In advancing his argument Johnston provides close readings of ten plays, ranging from Cataline to Emperor and Galilean and including Brand and Peer Gynt. Scholars and students of drama, comparative literature, and Ibsen studies will find To the Third Empire an essential work.

This collection supports teachers and other educators to put key ideas about education to work in an accessible way, equipping them to realize the promise of their professional lives. Bridging school, further and higher education contexts, it draws on the distinctive contributions to research and scholarship that have been developed in Scottish education in recent times. Structured in three parts, it focuses first on key ideas and debates in education around posthumanism, education policy, professional standards, decoloniality; antiracism and children’s rights and agency. It then moves to themes specifically related to teachers, including identity, agency, educational leadership, professional learning and more-than-human teachers. The book’s final section deals with approaches to teaching such as curriculum making, creativity, play, outdoor and inquiry-based learning, transitions, and inclusion. Each chapter closes with with reflective questions co-created with practitioners, enabling readers to respond to the challenges, opportunities and recurrent themes that teaching presents.

This collection supports teachers and other educators to put key ideas about education to work in an accessible way, equipping them to realize the promise of their professional lives. Bridging school, further and higher education contexts, it draws on the distinctive contributions to research and scholarship that have been developed in Scottish education in recent times. Structured in three parts, it focuses first on key ideas and debates in education around posthumanism, education policy, professional standards, decoloniality; antiracism and children’s rights and agency. It then moves to themes specifically related to teachers, including identity, agency, educational leadership, professional learning and more-than-human teachers. The book’s final section deals with approaches to teaching such as curriculum making, creativity, play, outdoor and inquiry-based learning, transitions, and inclusion. Each chapter closes with with reflective questions co-created with practitioners, enabling readers to respond to the challenges, opportunities and recurrent themes that teaching presents.