Adult Courses

If you enjoy visiting churches and want to know more about their architecture and art, then this is the course for you. During the week, you will explore the art and architecture that marks the divisions of time and space. You will cover the elaborate portals of the 12th century Renaissance, medieval ideas about Earth, the edge of space and the cosmos,...

Over a period of nearly six centuries, Anglo-Saxon England grew to become one of the richest, best administered and culturally dynamic kingdoms of Western Europe. This course will explore a fascinating period of English history to try to understand how it developed, its achievements and the challenges it faced. With reference to contemporary sources and archaeology, you will follow this development by...

During this period, the challenges faced by Britain in 1945 and subsequent post-war austerity gradually gave way to growing affluence. This course explores major political, economic and imperial and foreign policy issues, together with aspects of daily life, leisure, popular culture, education and belief. Topics covered include key social and industrial policies, notably the expansion of the welfare state and mixed economy, decolonisation...

Have you ever wondered what philosophy is and how to do it? This course offers you the chance to explore five subjects from a philosophical angle and fi nd out how to look at other subjects in the same way. The subjects will be art, religion, morality, history and identity. The tutor will ask you questions, such as what makes a work...

This course examines five leadership case studies and seeks to answer the age-old question of what makes a great leader? Humans have obsessed over this question for millennia and yet the debate rages on. Based in more modern history, each day of the course will examine a different leader. It then draws upon these examples to seek to answer the bigger questions....

Mention the Arts and Crafts Movement and most people automatically think of William Morris, wallpaper and fabric. However, it encompassed so much more. From architecture to metalwork, furniture to embroidery and stained glass to jewellery, this course will take a wide-ranging look at a movement that sought to establish a society in which creative freedom was the right of all. Alongside a...

This popular course returns with fresh cases for your consideration. Each day, you will be looking at a real life murder or suspected murder that occurred in England between 1900 and 1975, and you the jury will consider the evidence, reach your own verdict and then decide whether justice was well served by the historical outcome. The cases have all been selected...

Enjoy a journey through the history of food and dining, focussing on five separate periods, Roman, Tudor, Stuart, Georgian and Victorian. This course will provide an opportunity to consider the food and drink eaten by rich and poor, sources of food available and the recipes and cooking methods used. Additionally, there will be opportunities to create items of food or beverages relevant...

The huge social, cultural, intellectual, political and economic changes that swept Europe from around 1101 to 1200 are often labelled the 12th Century Renaissance. However, by most measures, the resulting society hardly represented a 'rebirth' so much as a dynamic new world, which has done as much as any period to create the civilisation we know today. Many of our countries, cities, languages,...

This course will start with the search for the North-West Passage, which has captivated the imagination of explorers, merchants and adventurers as far back as the journeys of Frobisher and Davis in Elizabeth I's reign. You will then move on to look at the discoveries of both the North and South Poles with particular reference to the Norwegians, Nansen and Amundsen, and...

Despite whatever else happens by the time you read this, or indeed during the course, it may seem from history that the Labour party is not much given to looking back with remorse or guilt. The party also seems to espouse internationalism not patriotism. It has historical roots in Marx if not Marxism, Socialism and the Trade Union movement. It has generally...

The last years of the 16th and the first half of the 17th century constitute one of the greatest creative periods in the history of European art. On this course, you will study the sculpture and architecture of Bernini and the painting of Caravaggio and discuss the impact their work had both north and south of the Alps. You will then...