{"id":456,"date":"2016-02-22T12:07:48","date_gmt":"2016-02-22T12:07:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.staffs.ac.uk\/ecw\/?p=456"},"modified":"2016-02-22T12:07:48","modified_gmt":"2016-02-22T12:07:48","slug":"456","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.staffs.ac.uk\/ecw\/2016\/02\/22\/456\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Harper Lee, the author of the iconic <em>To Kill A Mockingbird<\/em>, has died at the age of 89. The novel tells the story of the heroic lawyer, Atticus Finch, who defends an innocent black man accused of raping a white girl in segregated Alabama. The novel, scandalously, was removed from the GCSE syllabus recently to make room for more \u2018English\u2019 literature about drawing rooms and manners. It\u2019s a shame, as generations of students have been given a genuine insight into the legacy of slavery and the pernicious effects of racism and have, I suspect, become better people as a result. Lee, interestingly, grew up in the same small, Southern town as Truman Capote (author of <em>Breakfast at Tiffany\u2019s<\/em>) and helped him to research his seminal non-fiction crime novel, <em>In Cold Blood<\/em> (which we study on the Crime Scene America module).<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/c\/ce\/Atticus_and_Tom_Robinson_in_court.gif\" alt=\"File:Atticus and Tom Robinson in court.gif\" width=\"228\" height=\"174\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Atticus Finch and Tom Robinson in the Oscar winning\u00a0film of <em>To Kill A Mockingbird<\/em> (WikiCommons)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Harper Lee, the author of the iconic To Kill A Mockingbird, has died at the age of 89. The novel tells the story of the heroic lawyer, Atticus Finch, who defends an innocent black man accused of raping a white &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.staffs.ac.uk\/ecw\/2016\/02\/22\/456\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":312,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40445,40444],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-culture-room","category-the-student-room"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.staffs.ac.uk\/ecw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.staffs.ac.uk\/ecw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.staffs.ac.uk\/ecw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.staffs.ac.uk\/ecw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/312"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.staffs.ac.uk\/ecw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=456"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.staffs.ac.uk\/ecw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":458,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.staffs.ac.uk\/ecw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456\/revisions\/458"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.staffs.ac.uk\/ecw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.staffs.ac.uk\/ecw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.staffs.ac.uk\/ecw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}