Prizewinning Oxford PhD graduate with extensive and highly successful English tutoring experience.

Can’t recommend highly enough! Colin is a patient, kind and highly effective English tutor who prepared our son for his 11+, resulting in a place at a super selective grammar school in Sutton. Consequently, we have retained his services and our son is consistently among the top of his class as a result.

Colin's exceptional tutoring didn't just secure my place to read English at Oxford University, it prepared me for success through my A Levels and into my first year at university, all while fostering a lasting love of the subject.
I began sessions with Colin when I decided to reapply to Oxford and he worked hard with me from the very first lesson. He bought a rich and varied range of texts to our sessions (classical, modern, canonical, and obscure) unpicking each one with nuance, rigour, and infectious interest, bringing every piece vividly to life.
Colin was unfailingly engaged with every opinion that I put forward, drawing out a nuanced perspective from even my most tentative ideas, building trust in my own critical voice.
He is reliable, patient, and endlessly supportive, but is also incredibly inspiring. Many tutors rely on tactics designed to secure a grade or a university place, but Colin has to skill to do this many times over and with so much more. His teaching goes beyond exam technique to instil a genuine, enduring love of literature.
The results speak for themselves: I achieved 100% in my English Language and Literature A Levels (which is no mean feat). Then, at Oxford University, I found myself returning to notes from sessions and texts that Colin put forward, because he had helped me to get such a deep and nuanced understanding of complicated movements and ideas. Colin's influence on my academic journey and my relationship with English Literature has been immeasurable. I could not recommend him more highly.

I contacted Colin after my daughter decided to re-apply to read English at Oxford. Colin’s impressive credentials set him out to be an excellent tutor, but I believe he exceeded expectations. As a tutor he is reliable, patient, and supportive. In English it can often be that a student feels afraid to experiment with opinion and analysis, but Colin always creates an environment in which she feels comfortable and stimulated. After every session she comes to me buzzing. Colin has provided her with a great breadth of material, derived from his impressive and extensive knowledge of both mainstream and more unusual texts. He has also gone into great depth with her too, stretching her analytical skills and facilitating a more mature style of writing and thinking. I can give him nothing but praise.