Courses in London & Online

Why laugh in a time turmoil? Explore how artists Pieter Brueghel the Elder and William Hogarth reflected on the hypocrisy of their times with scathing satire. Reflect on how studying historic comedy might shift our perspectives on the value of humour, past and present.

Passion, marriage, crime, class, and murder: these are just some of the key issues at play in the three exhilarating French novels we will discuss in this online course. Focusing on George Sand’s Indiana (1832), Balzac’s Père Goriot (1835) and Zola’s Thérèse Raquin (1868), we’ll explore French literary style and the influence of serialisation on sensation fiction and these author’s depictions of social class, romance, and realism.

From America's domestic expansion and boom in the 1950s, this online intertextual course explores the political, social and cultural context of 1950s America through a study of literature, history, music, film and art of the period. With different tutors for each specialism, the course provides a 'taster' in each subject as a gateway to further study in understanding this fascinating period in American culture and society.

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?

Explore your comedy writing and performance potential under the guidance of an Emmy-award winning comedy producer/director. Alan Nixon shares an introduction to the skills behind creating powerful comedy using classic and modern techniques.