Courses in London & Online

Discover the secrets of the Old Masters and learn how they created their wonderful effects in this introductory course on painters and painting. We will consider the physical history and scientific examination of artworks in relation to aspects including forgeries, hidden paintings and conservation/ restoration.

Explore the intricacies of debt within the global political economy, examining its impacts, mechanisms, and socio-economic consequences.

This course will provide a reflection on the colonial, post-colonial and neo-colonial aspects and underpinnings of contemporary conflicts.

Explore the development of Cezanne revolutionary approach to painting, his techniques and motifs and some of the many artists whose work he influenced.

The pursuit of happiness is ongoing. In the ancient Greek world this gave rise to several ‘philosophies of life’ that remain the cornerstone of contemporary attitudes. Join this course to explore their key sources.

Why have so many British authors set stories in and around an important house? How does the structure, history and atmosphere of a great house affect plot and narrative? And where do authors derive their inspiration to build fictional houses that capture readers’ imaginations so fully? The novels on this course all focus on one finely imagined house and demonstrate the author’s own personal concerns of the time.

The oldest profession as practised among the Romans - not for the squeamish.

This course will introduce and discuss two novels by eminent author, Muriel Spark- Memento Mori (1959) and The Ballad of Peckham Rye (1960). Her writing wilfully upends notions of conformity and acts as a disrupter to accepted conventions. Instead, ‘Spark beckons us to encounter the stranger’ (Marilyn Reizbaum). Playfully disrupting passive readers and stretching comfort zones, Spark’s work provides a space to access unaccustomed outlooks that make us rethink our relationship with ourselves, others, and the world. Instead of unconsciously going with the flow, she awakens us to life’s stranger things.

Explore the astonishing range of poetic responses to a hundred years of warfare, acts of witnessing, endurance, defiance and condemnation by writers across the globe: Sassoon and Wilfred Owen in Britain, Brecht, Milosz, Celan, Akhmatova and Stepanova in Europe and Russia, Darwish and Zhadan in the Middle East and Ukraine, and many others. How do they describe the indescribable? High art or doggerel, what does it matter once the bombs start to fall?

Explore the story of how Indian painted and printed cottons became an important trade commodity for the Western domestic market, and the far-reaching impact of their design and manufacture.

String quartets developed new musical forms and ensured success for many composers, whilst allowing an intimate conversation with their audiences. We trace the quartets of the masters from Haydn and Mozart to Shostakovich and beyond.