5 minutes with ... Glenn Fosbraey
What's your favourite Uni memory?
There have been so many great things: seeing the students graduate in the cathedral; getting to know a new cohort; that thrill when you mark an outstanding piece of work... but the best single memory is directing a student-written play as a double-bill with Harold Pinter's 'The Lover' at Winchester Theatre Royal.
What do you write?
After starting my writing life as a Copywriter, and publishing the occasional short story and poem, I now specialise in the academic study of song lyrics. I have recently published chapters and articles about Pink Floyd, Leonard Cohen, and Morrissey, as well as releasing the book Writing Song Lyrics: Creative and Critical approaches (with fellow CW lecturer Andy Melrose).
What's your favourite book?
I spent 2018 catching up on books that I really should have read before, and, I'm ashamed to say, these included the Harry Potter series. I'd seen the films and hadn't been blown away, but I now sorely regret waiting so long to read the books as they are worth all the hype (and possibly more). As a pure reading experience, then, I might be tempted to go for The Deathly Hallows, but as it's reliant on the other books in the series, I'll say Catcher in the Rye as my favourite stand-alone. I still can't figure out how J.D Sallinger wrote a book with barely any plot and a dislikeable protaganist and still managed to create such a masterpiece, but I shall keep trying!
Best thing about The University of Winchester
Its intimacy and sense of community. I'll walk from my office down to a classroom and have 5 conversations and 10 'hello' waves along the way. Having studied at a much larger Uni, I understand how important it is not just to be a face in a crowd, and to have a proper identity, and that's very much the case here at Winchester, for both staff and students.
Guilty Pleasure
Travelling all over the country watching Spurs play. After a week's intellectual conversation (well trying to be intellectual, anyway), writing, and teaching, there's nothing like getting on the terraces and simply focusing on football for 90 minutes!