Courses in London & Online

Question what you know, explore what shapes society, and see the world beyond the textbook.

Learn Arabic either an in-person course in Covent Garden or live online sessions. Experience learning Arabic by enrolling on a taster.

This beginner course introduces Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), focusing on basic speaking and listening skills, essential vocabulary, and grammar for everyday communication. More details are available at the end of this webpage.

In the 1930s, audiences were introduced to a new type of comedy style blending Hollywood social commentary with a battle-of-the-sexes. What was new? Eccentric romance, rapid-fire dialogue, gender relations as near combat, and farcical slapstick-a cycle of films known as screwball comedies, a distinct time capsule of the decade and one of the most transcendent genres of the classical Hollywood period. More modern films like the homage of What’s Up Doc? (1972 Peter Bogdanovich) or Silver Linings Playbook (2012 David O. Russell) attempted the speed & spirit of films like Bringing Up Baby (1938 Howard Hawks) or The Lady Eve (1941 Preston Sturges) but screwball’s effervescence is difficult to recapture. In O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) the Coen Brothers attempted a sequel to Preston Sturges’ great Hollywood satire, Sullivan’s Travels (1941), but screwball is tied to a time and a place. The time was the Great Depression, when audiences needed escapism. The place was Hollywood and an industry making full use of talking pictures, finding writers from the New York stage (or Dorothy Parker’s Round Table) who would seize the opportunity to get smart talk into the films. But over and above all that I think the real reason for screwball was Hollywood’s need to fast-talk its way around the new Production Code censorship of 1934. No coincidence then that in that same year Frank Capra made It Happened One Night (1934) and Howard Hawks directed Twentieth Century (1934). Both shared an unorthodox portrayal of romance and cynicism. A new genre was off and running.

The West End was a heady mix of glamorous shopping emporia, political refugees from Europe, street-based and brothel-based prostitution, and the general public just enjoying a day or evening ‘Up West’. Join Dr. Sarah Wise to learn more on this 2 hour guided walk of Soho.