Adult Courses

This course is a celebration of classical writers, from Homer and Hesiod, through to the earliest historians, dramatic playwrights and philosophical geniuses and into the Golden Age of imperial Roman poets, writers and historians. The Silver Age and beyond will take you to the Classical authors' impact on Christian and Renaissance writings. The tutor will share the exciting narrative of ancient literature...

Creating a narrative from real life experience is a challenging, therapeutic and fulfilling project. Whether you wish to curate your own life experiences or those of others into a comprehensive whole, this course will help you to select, dramatise and develop your ideas. You will look at theme, dialogue, shape, structure, editing and the route to publishing, examining examples of working ghostwriters...

Following the success of recent years' poetry taster sessions, the tutor is revisiting The Nation's Favourite Poems with a whole course dedicated to reading this popular anthology of 100 verses chosen by the British public. If you are new to poetry and wish to enjoy some well-known poems, or simply revisit the poems of your youth, then this is the course for...

The telling of colourful stories from Classical Mythology continues today across many media. However, mythology has always been so much more than just stories. With this in mind, this course asks what mythology is, how do we define it and what were its vital and varied roles in ancient times? You will learn to identify the roguish Greek and Roman gods...

Everyone has a story inside and this course intends to bring yours out. You will cover the tenets of theme, characterisation, plotting, dialogue, genre and narrative. Exercises during the course will be practical, inclusive and designed to build on your creativity, helping you to move towards producing a saleable manuscript for the current market. Drawing on the tutor's own experience as the...

This course title is completely Germanic until the last word, language. Here, Latin lingua (tongue) enters. Tongue, however, is Germanic, but polyglot is a Greek word for a multilingual person or someone who speaks many tongues. How did this all get to be so complicated, or 'much folded' in Latin? On this course, you will study the Germanic roots and Latin origins...

First published in 1623, All's Well That Ends Well is, undeservedly, one of Shakespeare's lesser-known plays. Listed as a comedy, it is a problem play. It poses complex ethical dilemmas, for example a woman's love for an unlovable man, without the traditional simple solutions. Based on a tale from Boccaccio's The Decameron, it is an unorthodox mixture of fairy tale logic, gender...

In this fast-moving world, this fun course will help you to get your voice heard, challenge your mindset and unlock your creativity. Be prepared to draw (no ability needed) and develop your writing skills. You will learn how to blog, write an opinion column for a newspaper, develop ideas and engage with others on social media. Your tutor will provide a safe...

Whether you are a complete beginner or a life-long poet, this course centres on the enjoyment of creating your own poems. 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 forms such as haikus, odes,...

It is the ambition of many a mature actor to play King Lear. What a character! The play is a wonderful psychological study of a very complex personality and has an enthralling sub-plot too. The ancient Greeks found tragedies to be cathartic. No matter how dysfunctional one's family might be, nothing compares with Lear's. Shakespeare was at the height of his powers...

This course will explore the recurrent trope of an English country house in 19th and 20th century novels. You will focus on Jane Austen's Mansfield Park, Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion, Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, E. M. Forster's Howards End and Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day. Through study of the novels, you will explore the representation of the English country...

This course was devised in response to those of you who have attended at least one of the tutor's other creative writing courses, enjoyed it and asked for more. This time, there will be new and challenging exercises and some repeats with a different slant using a range of stimuli to inspire you to write poetry, drama, short stories and autobiographical pieces....