Alastair Lane

3 POSTS
Alastair Lane is the author of courses such as The Big Picture (Richmond, 2021) and International Express (OUP, 2019). He is currently Head of Publishing ELT at Fiction Express.

Access to the full listing of this author’s articles is available only to members or logged-in users. At this time, only the top 15 articles are displayed.

‘With one bound, he was free!’

Way back when, when families depended on another form of wireless for their entertainment, drama serials were all the rage on BBC radio. One of the favourites was Dick Barton, Special Agent (BBC, 1946), who would constantly end up in terrible scrapes at the end of each episode. Listeners weren’t fooled. No matter how well Barton was tied up or otherwise ensnared by that week’s villain, they knew that at the start of the very next episode, our hero would escape with ease. This gave birth to the satirical line ‘with one bound, he was free’. When was the last...

The two sides of the desk

It all started with the green circle of doom. You know the one, the green band that you put on your LinkedIn profile saying, ‘Open to work’. I had never wanted to do it, and after 18 years of working as a freelance author, I had never needed to do it before. But it was February and all my current contracts were ending in June, so I thought, why not give it a go? My intention was just to get some short-term writing projects to tide me over till the end of 2024. Never did I intend to return to...

What’s the point of the workbook?

Alastair Lane describes some of the advantages and disadvantages of a self-study workbook.