British Art 1700-1900: from Hogarth to Sickert
A look at major developments from the moralistic genre paintings of Hogarth through the golden age of portraits with Gainsborough and Reynolds, the rise of landscape in the Romantic period with Constable and Turner, the industrial age of Victorian painting … More details …
Reading Paintings
Explore the links between art and literature, from the Mona Lisa to The Lady of Shalott. Discover the stories behind famous paintings; meet Holbein’s Ambassadors; and find out why Auden felt the old masters were “never wrong.”
More details ...The Literary Journalism of DH Lawrence and Evelyn Waugh
Evelyn Waugh and D H Lawrence are justly famed and revered as novelists. However, Waugh’s reporting of the war in Abyssinia and Lawrence’s articles about the American Indian both deserve their place in the journalistic canon. These texts help us … More details …
Childhoods: Children in Literature
Read and discuss two novels – What Maisie Knew by Henry James and Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson – about growing up in a dysfunctional family. From the 1890s to the 1990s, what’s really changed?
More details ...Coleridge and his circle in Somerset
This course will explore the emerging Romantic sensibility and the poetry and politics of the 1790s. The focus is on Coleridge, particularly the inspiration he drew from the local landscape and from his friendship with Dorothy and William Wordsworth during … More details …
Rome from the Renaissance to Mussolini
We will look at the city of Rome as a work of art exploiting the relationship between the assertion of power, the articulation of religious faith and the changing appearance the city from late Middle Ages through to Mussolini’s failed … More details …
Sociology and society
An introduction to the world of Sociology and society in the twenty-first century and what makes us who we are.
More details ...Hitchcock Part 2 – the Hollywood Years
The day will look at the films Hitchcock made following his arrival in Hollywood in 1939, with an emphasis on his output in the 1950s and 1960s. In discussion on extracts we will focus on Hitchcock’s themes, style and working … More details …
Shakespeare – his life and work
Explore Shakespeare via his life, poems and plays. There will be a case study of Hamlet – see “To be or not to be” performed in a variety of films; compare famous paintings of Ophelia; and find out why “the … More details …
The Evolution of Ballet Music 1840-2010
Our journey will take us from the moment we first entered the world of fairies, via the political manoeuvres of the Soviet State and Balanchine’s updating of Imperial Russia, to Modern Ballet.
More details ...Exploring the Spanish Golden Age
What was it like to be a king, a dwarf or a slave in 16th and 17th century Spain? In this course we’ll use paintings to explore life at court and on the streets in Spain and the Spanish Netherlands.
More details ...The Brontës
This course will study a range of novels by the three Brontë sisters, who wrote some of the most popular novels to emerge in the 19th century and which have had an enduring appeal to the present day.
More details ...Period Instrument Performance (3)
Original instruments make their way into “modern” music. The influence of the past on the present is seen in Stravinsky, Schoenberg and composers such as Pärt and Tavener, leading to synthesis and the way forward in the 21st century.
More details ...‘A Man who used to notice such things’: the poetry of Thomas Hardy
Concentrating on Claire Tomalin’s selection (Poems of Thomas Hardy) we shall consider the themes into which Hardy’s poems are grouped and discuss individual poems in more detail.
More details ...Caravaggio and his legacy
One of the masters of the Baroque, Caravaggio redefined the visual image and changed painting forever. His legacy will be examined through the work of many different painters from the Baroque to the present day – the day’s key word … More details …