Courses in London & Online

Short stories offer a brief window into a variety of other lives, places, and situations. This literary form has remained popular in Japan over several centuries, with topics as diverse as natural disasters, the beauty of everyday life, hellish curses and the consequences of fame. We’ll explore the history of this medium through a selection of short stories by some of Japan’s most popular short story authors.

This course will introduce and discuss a selection of short stories by Katherine Mansfield. Mansfield’s approach to art is to embrace hidden depths, to seek untamed and unhindered aspects lurking in the shadows, writing with a wild surmise in an attempt to find new literary vistas. Similarly, describing herself as ‘an alien’, we will consider her self-asserted feeling of strangeness as an outsider, and how this might manifest itself in her fictional work.   

As the 1960s beckoned, a new mood swept through Britain and then around the world. With anger growing at an out-of-touch establishment, the era was reflected on screen by Woodfall Films, founded in 1958 on the back of the phenomenally successful Royal Court Theatre production of “Look Back Anger”. Writer John Osborn, director Tony Richardson and producer Harry Saltzman formed Woodfall Films Co., making an incendiary brand of social realist films. In A Taste of Honey or Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (both by Tony Richardson in 1961/62) and This Sporting Life (1963 Lindsay Anderson), working-class life was suddenly in the spotlight with an unheard of honesty. The same risk-taking spirit led the company to find a new generation of actors such as Albert Finney, Rita Tushingham, Richard Harris and Tom Courtenay. Films like Tom Jones (1963 Tony Richardson) then expanded Woodfall in an irreverent and colourful direction that led to ‘swinging London’ films —further securing Woodfall’s extraordinary chapter in the history of British film. From 1958 to 1984 Woodfall produced twenty award-winning, often genre-defining films. They are all here.

Explore the horror film through a range of key films, concepts and critical accounts of the genre. We will consider its history and development, from its beginnings to the present day, the ways in which different production contexts, such as American, European and East Asian horror cinemas, have given rise to variations in the genre, and the approach to theme and style in the films themselves.

This course is FREE if you are employed and on a low wage or you are claiming benefits. For more information Click here

This course will introduce and discuss the fiction of distinguished British author, Pat Barker, delving into her first two novels as a means of considering her premise that ‘looking straight at the world is part of your duty as a writer’. Hailing from the Northeast of England, Barker unflinchingly depicts situations and characters that pull no punches as she looks the world straight in the eye. In doing so, she offers readers who wish to accompany her, at times, a mirror reflecting what polite society’s gaze often evades.