Adult Courses

Using the poetry of William Butler Yeats and Seamus Heaney as a springboard for discussion, you will explore your own life through a mix of poetry and prose. William Butler Yeats has written of a magical land full of myth and legend while at the same time exploring his identity, his country and his relationships. Seamus Heaney digs into the past...

Plath (1932- 1963) was an American poet, novelist and short story writer. Famously married to the poet Ted Hughes, sadly she was clinically depressed for most of her adult life, committing suicide in 1963. She is credited with advancing the genre of confessional poetry and is best known for two of her published collections; The Colossus and Other Poems and Ariel, as...

This is a course in writing comedy for complete beginners. You will develop skills in joke structure and writing, stand-up comedy, sketches, situation comedy and comedy drama. Practical examples of each form will be analysed using screenings and scripts. You will develop a rough draft of your own sitcom or sketch show idea to be presented in class. The tutor has performed...

Everyone has a story inside them and this course intends to bring it out. In a series of practical exercises, you will learn the basic tenets of theme, plotting, characterisation, dialogue, genre and narrative and will apply them to your own work. There will be seminars on rewriting, editing, manuscript presentation and publishing your work. There will be class exercises, with the...

On this course, play reading may lead to role playing, maybe hesitantly, maybe with panache! Your backdrop is Shakespeare's universal portrayals of love and doubt, joy and foolishness, friendship and gulling, jealousy, rivalry, hatred, cruelty and murderous envy. Extracts are provided from Much Ado About Nothing, A Midsummer Night's Dream, A Winter's Tale and Romeo and Juliet. Offstage and uninvited, Hamlet may wait...

This course takes you on an exploration of three of the greatest works of 20th century American literature; The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams and Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote. The Great Gatsby creates a portrait of the Jazz Age of the roaring twenties that has been described as a cautionary tale...

How do you imagine a future world to be? Explore your creativity through visualising what sort of a society we could have. Would we be able to colonise another planet? Will scientific advancement help us to protect or destroy our planet? Should religious beliefs influence our governments? Reading extracts from The Handmaid's Tale, Thomas Moore's Utopia and Lord of the Flies, you...

Whether you are a complete beginner or have been writing poems all your life, this course aims to help you enjoy creating your own poetry. As well as writing poetry, you will be reading and analysing many well-known and more obscure examples of great poems, both in order to recognise form and take inspiration from the masters. You will try different...

A language that does not change is usually classified as dead. English, now a global language, is full of life. In this course you will take a look at the significant changes that have taken place in its history. Why was the language once easy to spell? Is 'will' replacing 'shall' as a marker of the future tense? Are rural dialects...

During the week, you will write short pieces in many different genres and you should be prepared to share your work with the rest of the group as that is how you receive the best feedback and learn skills from hearing others' work. You do not need any preparation or to bring anything to the class except a commitment to write...

Shakespeare's themes are universal and timeless. His powerful exploration of pathological jealousy has led to the term 'Othello Syndrome' being used in modern psychiatry and you see examples of such every day in the newspapers. Come and explore in a relaxed and supportive atmosphere, how one man's insidious poison goes to work on everyone around him. You will read the play and...

The Battle of Waterloo in 1815 was widely regarded as the grand finale of the Napoleonic wars and a moment of great significance. Within days, thousands of people flocked to the battlefield to pick up military mementos and to contemplate a new world order.Among them was Walter Scott who had already arranged for publication of an epic poem on the event...