New Courses 

This online course introduces a selection of fairy tales from the First Golden Age of Children’s Literature, occurring in the latter half of the 19th century until the early 20th century. We will focus upon L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900), J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan (1911), George McDonald’s The Princess and the Goblin (1872), and Charles Kingsley’s The Water-Babies: A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby (1863).

Explore the extraordinarily diverse world of writing about motherhood, looking at literary texts that have firmly rebuked any notions of motherhood as ‘merely’ domestic, and have instead made it the subject of serious literary writing, have explored major themes such as the body, trauma, gender, queerness, race and creativity, and have written diverse truths about the realities of motherhood. Writers include Toni Morrison, Adrienne Rich and Rachel Cusk, Maggie Nelson and Ayò¿bámi Adébáyò¿.

Gua Sha is a traditional Chinese medicine practice in which a tool is used to scrape people’s skin in order to reduce inflammation and chronic pain. It can also help to relieve muscular pain and tension. Come along and learn some techniques to use on family and friends.

Facial gua sha is a traditional Chinese skincare technique that involves gently gliding a smooth, flat tool (often made of jade or rose quartz) over the face in specific patterns to promote circulation, reduce puffiness, and encourage



lymphatic drainage.

Do you want to become a certified NADA ear practitioner?



The NADA Protocol is a five-point ear acupuncture treatment that effectively reduces stress and anxiety, chronic pain, symptoms of addiction, supports smoking cessation, weight management and boost overall wellbeing.

Interested in anti-ageing facials but don’t know where to begin? Why not try this general introduction? Learn about your skin type, the benefits of facial massage as well as basic facial techniques to use on yourself and your friends and family!

Interested in anti-ageing facial massage tecniques but don’t know where to begin? Why not try this general introduction? This highly effective and popular massage can delay the visible signs of ageing, without the need for invasive surgery. Perfect to use on yourself or friends and family.

Learn facial reflexology on this course and unlock the power of healing and balance through the face. This modern technique will lead you to a new dimension of well-being and holistic health.

The music history book club meets towards the end of each term to discuss novels and biographies with musical themes and references relevant to the music history programme.

This online literature course explores representations of solitude in recent fiction and memoir. Reading twentieth- and twenty-first-century texts, we’ll consider experiences of solitude across rural and urban settings, from remote islands to crowded cities. How is solitude shaped by places, culture, gender, age and technology?

This course explores how dramatists use their position as commentators to reflect the societal and political issues affecting the nation. Drawing on texts by Laura Wade, Jez Butterworth, Roy Williams and others, we’ll discuss how issues such as class, national identity, queer and black lives, and activism have been interrogated by Britain’s finest contemporary playwrights.

This course will introduce and discuss the fiction of renowned author, Angela Carter, specifically focusing upon one novel and one short story. Carter wanted her writing to ‘demythologise the fictions that regulate our lives’, to explore how society narrates us into being and holds us there. In doing so, she offers us a chance to read and, ultimately, release ourselves through her work, as we come to understand the relationship between fiction and reality. For Carter, both of these – fiction and reality – are two sides of the same coin.