Explore History, Culture & Writing

Explore the City of London after the Great Fire of 1666. Discover how London recovered from one of the great disasters and became a centre of commerce and the heart of a great empire. We follow in the steps of some of its best known characters like Doctor Johnson and Samuel Pepys and some lesser known including William Lilley and Thomas Chatterton. The course follows on from the HLW06 The City of London: the square mile, but new students are welcome. The first meeting place is Monument station, Fish Street Hill exit.

Explore the one of the finest and most diverse collections of medieval and Renaissance art and material culture in the world at the V&A Museum.

Love food and want to write about it? Whether you’re keen to review dishes, interview chefs or write about sustainable eating, now is your chance. This course will cover writing for established publications as well as personal blogs.



This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.

Great poetry and prose begin when the writer puts the right words in the right places. Learn how and why the rules and conventions of language matter in this new course, which combines creative writing with a review of essential points of grammar.



This course will be delivered online. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.

Explore practical and imaginative approaches to creative non fiction, including travel writing, life writing and the essay. Analyse published work, produce your own pieces, and benefit from detailed feedback.

In an area branded 'the hell of poverty', libraries, theatres, art galleries and social housing were established. Workers went on strike and activists campaigned for better lives. Discover this history by taking actual, guided walks through six tumultuous decades of change. First and last session delivered on Zoom. Other sessions are guided walks. Full details of the meeting places for each walk will be given at the 1st session. 6 guided walks with 2 Zoom sessions.



This course will be delivered online and in person. See the ‘What is the course about?’ section in course details for more information.

Come and join us at the Cultureplex Ciné-Club, where once a week, for 12 weeks (and throughout the rest of the academic year), we will watch and discuss film. Taking its cue from the famous Parisian ciné-club set up by the celebrated critic and writer, André Bazin, ‘the single thinker most responsible for bestowing on cinema the prestige both of an artform and of an object of knowledge’, and the man who foresaw the emergence of film studies as a legitimate discipline of academic study, our contemporary incarnation of the film club will offer a curated series of films for detailed study, discussion and debate. Each film will be introduced, placed in both its cinematic, cultural and historic context. In sharing our viewing in City Lit’s premier screening room, the Cultureplex, we will approximate the experience of watching film in the cinema, one that is intense and fully focussed in a way that other modes of viewing often are not. After the screening we will devote the rest of the class to a collective exploration of the film, led by the tutor, but involving everyone in a participatory discussion that will allow all to express their responses, their views, their thoughts on the film screened.

Knock on the door of artists’ houses and studios from 1900-1960 to experience exciting and visually dazzling spaces created over the course of their careers. At a time when artists were beginning to forge their own brave new visual worlds, this course considers what the homes might tell us about the artists and how they wanted their homes to be seen.