Should I take an umbrella?
Suppose you decide to leave your brolly at home and it rains. Were you unlucky? Did you check the forecast? We shall look at how data can help us deal with uncertainty, chance, luck and risk.
More details ...An Introduction to Artists’ Books
Making an Artist Book combines craft with art and is an art form started in France in the early 1900s. We will look at some examples, then make a Pocket Accordion with separate cover. This book can be used to … More details …
Early Dickens – Sketches by Boz
Sketches by Boz were the first published sketches by Charles Dickens. This course will look at a range of these sketches over three weeks and consider what themes are raised, discuss them in the wider context of the Dickens canon and … More details …
Origins of Us: Why we think how we do
Have you ever wondered why we think in the way we do? This course aims to trace the changes in ideas, culture and mental patterning that have marked our journey from the Stone Age to the Age of AI. We’ll … More details …
More Chekhov Short Stories
Chekhov wrote and sold short stories and vignettes of Russian life from 1880 to 1903, the year before his death from tuberculosis aged forty-four. During those twenty-three years, while he was also studying and practicing medicine, he produced at least … More details …
More Trolloping – Orley Farm
This stand-alone novel, Orley Farm, by prolific nineteenth-century novelist Anthony Trollope is a tale of family relationships, inheritance and suspected property fraud. It provides us with a window into Victorian society and the ideas that underpinned it.
More details ...Vikram Seth’s The Golden Gate
Vikram Seth is the global bestselling author of A Suitable Boy and An Equal Music. His first novel is an unrivalled triumph of both imagination and craft: an eloquent, thrilling soap opera set in 1980s San Francisco, featuring a politicised … More details …
Neo-classicism: Art in the age of revolution & Napoleon
This short course uses paintings, prints and architecture to shed light on the exciting and colourful period around the time of the French revolution. At the time of the French revolution and Napoleon there was also a revolution in the … More details …
Why do we never have time?
We constantly save time but never have any. We’re the masters of our destiny yet strangely powerless. We live an era of connection, but we’re lonely. Why? A sociological deep-dive into the world’s biggest questions. This is going to be … More details …
Discussing four stories from The Penguin Book of the British Short Story, Volume 1
Many of the Nineteenth Century writers we now consider classic novelists were regularly producing short fiction. We’ll discuss how these suit reading tastes today, as well as considering a little of the recent history of short fiction. The earliest of … More details …
Still Rocking After All These Years: The Music That Shaped a Generation
Join acclaimed music leader Ben England BEM for a rich and engaging day exploring the rise of rock music and its extraordinary cultural impact. Still Rocking After All These Years: The Music That Shaped a Generation traces the journey from the … More details …
Shakespeare: Life and Works
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. We will also consider the impact of Hollywood’s biographical revisions in Tom … More details …