Courses in London & Online

Come and revel in the sheer variety and possibility of poetic form, as we consider how form might shape what a writer has to say and how they say it. This course will allow you to explore the many shapes that a poem can take.

This course will look, decade by decade, at the leading figures of the generation caught up in the turmoil of the Revolution whose lives and poetry together form a veritable seismograph of the unfolding tragedy. Their extraordinary interrelationships and the originality and power of their writing constitute one of the richest periods in the history of Russian Literature.

Edith Wharton and Henry James had a keen eye for a well-designed and tastefully decorated house and both brought us depictions of splendid interiors in their novels set in ‘the Gilded Age’. We’ll discuss the changing tastes at the turn of the century, and how both authors used interior decoration to reflect the moral turn of their characters and the age.

Whether you are new to poetry or an experienced reader of verse, this course will enable and enhance your enjoyment by exploring the techniques that poetry uses to affect our response and create meaning. Exploring rhythm and rhyme, voice, mood, imagery, language and allusions, we will focus on a diverse range of poetic examples to examine how this powerful form of literature works to create emotion and connection with the reader.

Black London is shifting and ever-evolving. This course explores how Costa award winning Caleb Nelson’s novel ‘Open Water’ and the great 1950’s classic of immigrant fiction, Sam Selvon’s ‘The Lonely Londoners’ reimagined our multicultural metropolis.

The experience of living in Berlin in the early 1930s had a transformative effect on the life and work of Christopher Isherwood. In this course, we will discuss Isherwood’s masterpiece, Goodbye to Berlin (1939), and his autobiography Christopher and His Kind (1976), which reveals the real people behind the characters of Sally Bowles and Otto Nowak, and shines a light on the queer culture of Berlin Isherwood was unable to write about in the 1930s.

What is the role of poetry ‘off the page’ in public spaces? Can a poem change the way we might re-encounter cultural history? Do statues serve as ‘informants’ from the past? We read poetry by Jackie Kay, Lemn Sissay and Dorothea Smartt commissioned for bridges, pavements, monuments, even super sewer ventilation shafts to identify the challenges, revisions and celebrations that emerge from exploring the place of poetry in public spaces.

Explore and discover extraordinary short stories from renowned women writers of the 1940s and 50s, which present an insight into a time of great change in Britain, when domestic situations were rewritten, social customs challenged and new freedoms embraced. Authors include Elizabeth Bowen, Elizabeth Jane Howard, Penelope Mortimer, Elizabeth Taylor and Daphne du Maurier.