Explore History, Culture & Writing
Explore our extraordinary range of History, Culture and Writing courses and lectures. We offer both introductory and specialist in-depth courses to suit all levels of interest and experience, from ‘How to read a film’ and World literature, to Creative non-fiction writing courses and American history and Politics courses.
Our tutors are experts in their fields and experienced educators; many have published, teach in universities or share their expertise in the media. Tutors share their knowledge and passion through presentations, readings, interactive discussion and exercises, analysis, and other activities.
Many students return to take more courses, telling us they enjoy being part of our City Lit Learning community.
Our popular courses often sell out quickly, so we invite you to browse and book your place now.
Filters
- Key texts of 20th and 21st century drama: George Bernard Shaw, Tennessee Williams, Harold Pinter and Lucy PrebbleCourse start date: Mon 18 Sep 2023
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Jenny StevensThis course will explore the concerns, styles and influences of four dramatic texts from the 20th and 21st centuries and how they reflect the social, political and cultural conditions in which they were written. It focuses primarily on G.B. Shaw’s Mrs Warren’s Profession, Tennessee Williams’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Harold Pinter’s Betrayal, and Lucy Prebble’s Enron, making multiple connections between them as the course progresses.Full fee £239.00 Senior fee £191.00 Concession £155.00 - London at war 1914-19Course start date: Tue 19 Sep 2023
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Mike BerlinThe Great War changed lives across the globe. For Londoners, material gain was coupled with emotional uncertainty and grief. What were their experiences on the Home Front, at work, at home and at leisure? And what was the legacy of these years? Explore these issues in this interactive lectue course.Full fee £229.00 Senior fee £183.00 Concession £149.00 - Contemporary British and international fiction
Course start date: Wed 20 Sep 2023Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Aamer HusseinJoin us for a fascinating exploration of contemporary novels in English, including Burntcoat, Sarah Hall's exploration of love in the days of lockdown; Diving for Pearls, Irish novelist Jamie O'Neil's sweeping saga of wealth and poverty in modern day Dubai; Kashmiri-British Mirza Waheed's Tell her Everything, an examination of conscience, guilt and fatherhood, set in London and the Middle East; and Julian Barnes's intriguing and complex recent novel, Elizabeth Finch.Full fee £229.00 Senior fee £183.00 Concession £149.00 - Stories of the islesCourse start date: Mon 25 Sep 2023
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Julian BirkettTake a journey round the British Isles to discover the best of modern writing from Ireland, Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland - and find how writers living hundreds of miles from literary London have found their own way of telling stories and imagining their worlds. Includes James Joyce to Claire Keegan, Dylan Thomas to James Kelman and Shena McKay.Full fee £229.00 Senior fee £183.00 Concession £149.00 - Great novellas from Turgenev to MarquezCourse start date: Tue 26 Sep 2023
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Julian BirkettAccording to Ian McEwan “the novella is the perfect form of prose fiction”. The novella (or long short story/short novel) was one of the most successful and intriguing literary forms of the 19th and 20th centuries. Find out how and why some of the greatest modern writers including Ivan Turgenev, Edith Wharton and James Baldwin used the form to create work that was concise, resonant, enigmatic and often ground breaking.Full fee £229.00 - Archaeology of London Course start date: Wed 3 May 2023 (and 1 other date)
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Jill HummerstoneExplore the archaeology and history of London through its cultural monuments, topography and material remains to more fully appreciate the rich archaeological evidence of the capital.
Tutor: Jill Hummerstone. Tutor :Jill Hummerstone.Full fee £259.00 - Being in the world: Heidegger's philosophyCourse start date: Mon 8 Jan 2024
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: John Goff“The being of 'being' is itself not a being”. Questioning the meaning of ‘Being’ lies at the root of Heidegger’s critique of the ‘crisis’ of Western culture that his philosophy sought to overcome.Full fee £239.00 Senior fee £191.00 Concession £155.00 - Jews in London from the 1650s to the 1950s: a closer lookCourse start date: Tue 9 Jan 2024
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: David RosenbergThis course will provide an exploration of 300 years of Jewish life, culture and history in London from the small scale resettlement in the 1650s through to the 1950s when the borough of Hackney was home to London’s largest and most diverse Jewish community.Full fee £229.00 Senior fee £183.00 Concession £149.00 - London 1919-1939Course start date: Tue 9 Jan 2024
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Mike BerlinExplore in this interactive lecture course how did the 'Roaring 20s' and the Great Depression impact on London? What was the social and economic experience of Londoners as suburbs grew and modern buildings arrived, along with political and financial uncertainty?Full fee £229.00 Senior fee £183.00 Concession £149.00 - Philosophy and cultural theoryCourse start date: Fri 12 Jan 2024
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Barrie SelwynWe will look the philosophical underpinnings of culture through the writings of key philosophers who engage critically with the self images of the post enlightenment era. In particular we well look at Ideology, language and art in the context of cultural reproduction.Full fee £239.00 - Classic drama: Antigone, Measure for Measure, The Country WifeCourse start date: Mon 15 Jan 2024
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Jenny StevensWe will read and discuss three classic plays: Sophocles’ Antigone, Shakespeare's Measure for Measure and William Wycherley’s The Country Wife. Focusing closely on structure, language and tone, we will consider how dramatists across time have explored themes such as sexual politics, family relationships and state power through their plays, as well as considering the social, cultural and historical contexts in which they were produced.Full fee £229.00 Senior fee £183.00 Concession £149.00 - Speak memory: the rise and rise of the memoirCourse start date: Mon 15 Jan 2024
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Julian BirkettThe last couple of decades have seen an explosion of a relatively new kind of writing – the memoir. Stories of abusive childhoods, extraordinary parents, and uncovered family secrets fill the shelves of bookshops. Some are mockingly dubbed misery memoirs, some even exposed as fakes. But among them are some masterpieces of modern writing – accounts of painful coming to maturity, or of the growth towards a deeper understanding of a world always taken for granted.Full fee £229.00 Senior fee £183.00 Concession £149.00 - Weird and wondrous: the strange art of Bosch, Brueghel and the Surrealists
Course start date: Tue 16 Jan 2024Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Emma Rose BarberWelcome to the weird and wonderful world of Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Breughel the elder – two northern Renaissance artists and a larger group of 20th-century artists known as the Surrealists who share many similarities with the strange and curious subjects that they conjured up to ignite discussion and even outrage.Full fee £229.00 Senior fee £183.00 Concession £149.00 - The seven ages of poetryCourse start date: Tue 16 Jan 2024
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Julian BirkettJoin us to get an overview of how English poetry has developed over the centuries by looking closely at some classic poems and seeing how ideas of the time shaped their form and their subject matter – from epics made to be sung in the mead hall to the concentrated elegance of the Renaissance sonnet to the melancholy of the Romantic ode to the free verse of modern times.Full fee £229.00 Senior fee £183.00 Concession £149.00 - Civilisations of Ancient Egypt: the Early New Kingdom - the beginnings of EmpireCourse start date: Tue 16 Jan 2024
Location on this date: Keeley Street
Tutors: Michael DuiganEgypt is at the height of its power and influence in the great ‘Middle Kingdom Period’. Pharaohs named Amememhet and Senuseret preside over a prosperous and prestigious civilization. Cultural, political and commercial relations flourish with contemporary states in Crete and the Levant. But we document a gradual decline which terminates in the seizure of power by the Hyksos.Full fee £229.00 Senior fee £183.00 Concession £149.00
Can't see a course you want?
Add this category to your waiting list to set up alerts and we will update you when new courses are released online.
Add me to waiting list