SAM QUILL

Specialism: Public School Scholarship Exams (13+)

I specialise in tutoring students who wish to sit for a scholarship at one of the major British public schools; most often Winchester College, Eton College and Westminster School.

Since 2019, many of my students have won scholarships:

Many other students of mine have won non-scholarship places, including, alongside those schools named above, at St. Paul’s Girls’ School.

Academic Qualifications

• Ph.D., Queen Mary, University of London, 2014–18
  Thesis: ‘Fast Influencings: Figuring Necessity in Percy Bysshe Shelley’
  Supervisor: Prof. Paul Hamilton
  Secondary supervisor: Dr. James Vigus
  Funding: Principal’s Studentship
• M.Phil., University of Cambridge (Gonville and Caius College), 2013–14
  Eighteenth Century and Romantic Studies: Merit (73)
• B.A. (Hons.), University of Oxford (Christ Church), 2009–12
  English Language and Literature: First Class

Discretion (High-Profile Clients)

I have experience working with public figures and their families, for whom privacy is paramount; discretion is part of what I offer. I have excellent rates of success under such circumstances. References can be provided, in confidence, on request.

University Entrance

• One of my students successfully won a place to read English Language and Literature at Keble College, Oxford.
• Another won a place to read Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Balliol College, Oxford.
• A third won a place to read English Language and Literature at Christ Church, Oxford.
• I can help students craft successful personal statements for entrance to U.K. universities, with particular experience in Oxbridge applications.
• I have experience in assisting applications for postgraduate study: writing cover-letters, personal statements and research proposals.

A-Level

• The AQA syllabus in A-Level Philosophy.

GCSE

• The AQA syllabus in Religious Studies.
• The Edexcel International GCSE in English Literature.
• Shakespeare for GCSE English.
• General tuition in History.

Key Stage Two

• English poetry and prose, including for internal school exams.
• Religious Studies, including for internal school exams.
• History, including for internal school exams.
• General Studies, including for internal school exams.
• Creative writing, including for internal school exams.

Essay Prizes

I have, for the past three years, both individually and in classes, helped students to prepare their submissions for the John Locke Institute’s Global Essay Prize.

Preparation involves a combination of teaching around the broader subject of their question (which will be on some philosophical or political matter), recommending reading and studying that reading, and helping them structure their writing for the final submission.

Critical Thinking (Interview Preparation, 11+)

I am experienced in preparing younger students for their school interviews.

Typically, this involves learning and practising intelligent spoken responses to news articles, and paintings and photographs.

Creative Writing

I am a published poet and librettist with a good deal of experience in teaching students how to improve their creative writing, both in the specific context of examinations and their broader literary attempts and endeavours.

School Teaching

Auxiliar de Conversación at Colegio León Felipe, Madrid (January–June 2019). I was a language assistant in a primary school just outside of Madrid.

Teaching Qualification & Higher Education Teaching Experience

• Certificate in Learning and Teaching (CILT): Distinction (2018)

I am an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

From 2015 to 2019, I was a seminar leader for undergraduate courses in English Literature at Queen Mary, University of London. I have taught on the following courses:

• ‘Poetry’, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019. (First Year)
• ‘English in Practice’, 2019. (First Year)
• ‘Romantics and Revolutionaries’, 2016–17, 2017–18. (Second Year)
• ‘Representing London: Writing the Eighteenth Century City’, 2017–18. (Second Year)
• ‘Imagination and Knowledge’, 2016. (Second Year)
• ‘Reading, Theory and Interpretation’, 2015–16. (First Year)

General Publications

• Two reviews published in the Times Literary Supplement:
  • A review of Don Paterson’s poetry collection, The Arctic (February, 2023).
  • A review of Deja Whitehouse’s book on tarot and the occult, The Lady and the Beast (June, 2025).
• A chapter on the Peterloo Massacre in English Radical History, ed. Stephen Basdeo (Barnsley: Pen and Sword, 2021), 8,000 words.
• A ‘defence of poetry’: ‘How Heavy’s the Albatross?’ in New Defences of Poetry (Newcastle Centre for the Literary Arts, 2021).
• Editorial advisor, overseeing the curation and reissuing of the Percy Bysshe Shelley entry in the Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism series (Layman Poupard, 2022).

Poetry Publications

• ‘Cleopatra’, a forthcoming commission for an anthology of poems on ‘Shakespeare’s Women’ (Broken Sleep Books, 2026).
• ‘She was so unlike him. She was so much like us’, commissioned for Anne-thology: Poems Re-Presenting Anne Shakespeare (Broken Sleep Books, 2023).
• Hey Ho The White Swan By God I Am Thy Man (a small book of poems on Broken Sleep Books, 2022).
• ‘The Lost Decade’ and ‘The Ship of Theseus’ in Poetry Birmingham Literary Journal (Autumn/Winter, 2020).
• ‘Damnatio Memoriae’, poem of the week on the London Review of Books Bookshop Blog (August 2020).
• ‘Coiner’ in BLACKBOX MANIFOLD (No. 24, Summer 2020).
• Various poems in The Next Review (Aug–Sep 2016).
• ‘14 Sonnets’ in PN Review (May–June, 2016).