Courses in London & Online

We will be looking at novels from recent years that explore various dimensions of culture and society, reading and discussing a brief and careful selection of novels in English from several countries, diverse in style and genre. Titles include Piranesi, Susanna Clarke's mysterious and 'weird' tale of secrets and lost texts, William Boyd's Trio, which follows the life of an actress, a film producer, and a writer obsessed with the suicide of Virginia Woolf, Small Things Like These by Clare Keegan, in which a coal merchant becomes involved with the fate of a pregnant teenager trapped in a Magdalene Laundry, and Michelle de Kretser's Theory and Practice follows the academic trajectory of a Sri Lankan feminist researching the novels of Woolf.

Share thoughts and ideas about what you are reading, with books chosen by the group. Please come to the first session on Friday 29 September with suggestions (contemporary fiction in paperback) and having read 'Story of the Forest' by Linda Grant. Meetings take place on 19/9, 24/10, 28/11, 30/1, 27/2, 27/3, 1/5, 29/5, 26/6.

Share thoughts and ideas about what you are reading, with books chosen by the group. Please come to the first session with suggestions (contemporary literary fiction in paperback) and having read 'The Wren, The Wren' by Anne Enright. We meet on the following dates: 22/9, 20/10, 24/11, 12/1, 16/2, 16/3, 11/5, 8/6, 6/7.

From the theory of evolution to quantum physics and artificial intelligence, modern science has upended our understanding of the world and our place in it. How have writers of fiction responded to these radical changes?



We consider a range of fiction, including Frankenstein by Mary shelley, Angles and Insects by AS Byatt, Copenhagen by Michael Frayn and Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro.

“It was the best of times…it was the worst of times.”



How did the Victorians see the world? They lived through one of the most dramatic periods in our history – and their literature reflects that. Victorian Visions looks at a wide variety of themes in Victorian culture: from the city to the home, from dreams to nightmares, from faith to doubt, from moralism to decadence, from ideology to empire.

On this in-college literature course we will explore what some of the most significant British authors of the period did and thought on their travels, real and imagined, in the decade leading up to World War II. Authors include Graham Greene, Christopher Isherwood, Jean Rhys and George Orwell.