Explore literature through the ages.

We've hand-picked a variety of English literature courses for you to choose from. Whether you are interested in twenty-first-century literature and culture, the tales of Babylon, or historical topics such as race and gender, we have a broad selection of literature that’s sure to suit a wide variety of tastes and interests.  

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You might be a newcomer to the world of literature and the great works of authors past and present, or perhaps you consider yourself somewhat of an expert. Whichever group you fall into, our friendly classes are the perfect environment to develop your skills and knowledge. Building on a curiosity or passion is what we do best! 

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Whether you prefer online learning from the comfort of your own home, or you want to attend an in-person class in your local community, we have a huge amount of flexibility to suit how you learn best. This means that you can pick the environment that’s right for you, giving you that piece of mind that you can learn in a place that you feel comfortable with. 

The support you’ll receive 

Our dedicated tutors will guide you through the different genres and time periods in English literature, helping you to develop your critical reading and analysis skills - perfect if you're a beginner.   

Our learning experience is one of the things that sets us apart, with many of our learners going on to achieve incredible things. You’ll learn at a pace that’s comfortable for you, with a friendly supportive tutor on hand to answer any questions you might have.  

Start your journey today and learn all about the works of Agatha Christie, Shakespeare and many, many more.  

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Literature: Good As You - LGBTQ+ Literature in the Twentieth Century

This 8 week course will discuss LGBT+ literature in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Our principal texts will be: • Orlando - Virginia Woolf. • The Twyborn Affair - Patrick White. • The End of Eddy - Edouard Louis. • The poetry of WH Auden & Thom Gunn. The course will focus on how LGBTQ+ literature has sought to define its subject matter in the face of prejudice in the last hundred years, and how it has sought to be recognised as literature per se. The course will concentrate on issues of identity, sexuality and gender and the search for equality and enfranchisement.
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Course Information

Dates:
Wed 10/01/2024 -
Wed 06/03/2024
Times:
7:00pm - 9:00pm
Duration:
8 sessions
Tutor:
Stephen Smith
Course code:
Q00012033
How you'll learn:
Online
Availability:
10+ places remaining
Status:
Available
Fee range
Free to £74.00

Literature: Northern Irish Poets

In this online, 10-week course, you will read, explore and enjoy some key works by a selection of significant contemporary poets from Northern Ireland. You will discuss and evaluate 5 poets, spending a week with each, with scope to include a variety of individual poems by others and create some links between these. Alongside close reading of poems, you will learn to discuss literary criticism on each poet, British/English poetry and poetics generally, as well as exploring the backgrounds of each writer, their lives and their unique approach to the art of poetry; through this we will also look to understand how a particular sense of identity and place has been created through the work. This unaccredited course with a supportive tutor will bring you into the worlds of Yorkshire poetry and you may take your new-found analytical skills back to your community in a volunteering role. No experience is needed, just bring yourself and your enthusiasm!
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Course Information

Dates:
Wed 10/01/2024 -
Wed 20/03/2024
Times:
2:45pm - 4:45pm
Duration:
10 sessions
Tutor:
Simon Haworth
Course code:
Q00012638
How you'll learn:
Online
Availability:
10+ places remaining
Status:
Available
Fee range
Free to £74.00

Literature:  A Troubled Goodbye - Colonial Literature in English

This course will examine writing in English, written predominantly by British or Commonwealth authors, which explores the nature and consequences of British Imperial history. We will range from the deserts of the Middle-East to the Kenyan uprisings and Australia The texts to be discussed are as follows: The English Patient - Michael Ondaatje. The Last September - Elizabeth Bowen. Wild Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys. A Grain of Wheat - James Ngugi. That Deadman Dance by Kim Scott. This course will cover the shifting nature of identity in Colonial and Post-Colonial nations, and examine who identities have been reforged or created anew.
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Course Information

Dates:
Wed 10/01/2024 -
Wed 20/03/2024
Times:
2:00pm - 4:00pm
Duration:
10 sessions
Location:
Rose House (London)
70 Barnes High Street
London
SW13 9LD
Tutor:
Stephen Smith
Course code:
Q00012147
How you'll learn:
In venue
Availability:
7 places remaining
Status:
Available
Fee range
Free to £84.00

Literature: Summer's End: British Literature of the Belle Epoque 1888-1915

This course will introduce a selection of literature written in English in the late Victorian and Edwardian eras. The texts we will discuss are: The Turn of the Screw - Henry James (1898). The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame (1908) Sons and Lovers - DH Lawrence (1913) Selected Poems of Thomas Hardy 1912-13. The Good Soldier - Ford Madox Ford (1915) We will investigate the growing tensions in society uncovered by these works on both an individual and societal level, focusing particularly on the rise of psychological thought and its impact on the novel, and the emerging class tensions developing during our period. The course will also explore the treatment of love in light of the changing times, and the persistence of the lyrical memory.
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Course Information

Dates:
Wed 10/01/2024 -
Wed 20/03/2024
Times:
10:30am - 12:30pm
Duration:
10 sessions
Location:
Duke Street Church
Quadrant Road
Richmond
TW9 1DH
Tutor:
Stephen Smith
Course code:
Q00012594
How you'll learn:
In venue
Availability:
10+ places remaining
Status:
Available
Fee range
Free to £100.00

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12 months
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Foreign Languages: Modern Greek Conversation for Improvers

Would you like to boost your existing Greek language skills and gain a deeper insight into the Greek culture? This online course aims to expand the Greek you have already learnt and increase your confidence in using the language to communicate with the locals when in Greece or Cyprus. It will also give you a further insight into the Greek lifestyle and culture. The course is taught by a well-qualified and experienced native speaker with many years’ teaching experience. Learning a foreign language for holiday or leisure is a great way to keep your brain active, explore a different culture, meet people with a common interest, increase your confidence and enhance your wellbeing. Take advantage of this unique opportunity today.
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Course Information

Dates:
Wed 10/01/2024 -
Wed 20/03/2024
Times:
7:15pm - 9:15pm
Duration:
10 sessions
Location:
Online
Tutor:
Eleni Vezyri
Course code:
Q00012720
How you'll learn:
In venue
Availability:
10+ places remaining
Status:
Available
Fee range
Free to £74.00

Literature: London lives: four novels by Linda Grant

As a multi-cultural, ever-changing city, London gains much of its energy and creative novelty from the successive waves of immigrants and incomers who have made it their home. In this course we will be reading and discussing four novels by Linda Grant that consider their experiences: The Clothes on Their Backs, We Had It So Good, The Dark Circle and A Stranger City. In her writing, Grant examines the particular experience of those who make a choice to live in the capital city: from Jewish refugees, through Commonwealth and EU migrants, to those who relocate from the suburbs or other cities. An ‘incomer’ herself, her writing observes the experience of lives where identities shift and are remade to fit the shifting cityscape. Through friendly and accessible discussions of the novels, we will learn more about these stories and their characters, set against the social and political backgrounds of the respective periods. While you will get the most from the course by reading the books in their entirety, short extracts for discussion will be downloadable from Canvas, where links to further reading will also be provided for those who wish to extend their learning.
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Course Information

Dates:
Thu 11/01/2024 -
Thu 28/03/2024
Times:
11:00am - 1:00pm
Duration:
11 sessions
Tutor:
Kim Shahabudin
Course code:
Q00009197
How you'll learn:
Online
Availability:
7 places remaining
Status:
Available
Fee range
Free to £88.00

Literature: British Literature from the 1960s and 1970s

This course will cover both literary and popular fiction, predominantly from the 1970s. We will discuss the following texts: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy - John Le Carre. (One of the classic spy novels of the era.) The Jewel in the Crown - Paul Scott. (This text is the first of Scott’s examinations of the British in India) The King's Grey Mare - Rosemary Hawley Jarman. (Jarman is a fine historical novelist and required writing for this genre.) Berg - Ann Quin. (Quin was an experimental novelist, who tragically died young.) Strange Meeting - Susan Hill. (A fine novel, which re-examines the Great War.)
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Course Information

Dates:
Thu 11/01/2024 -
Thu 21/03/2024
Times:
2:15pm - 4:15pm
Duration:
10 sessions
Location:
Friends Meeting House (Sutton)
10 Cedar Road
Sutton
SM2 5DA
Tutor:
Stephen Smith
Course code:
Q00012118
How you'll learn:
In venue
Availability:
10+ places remaining
Status:
Available
Fee range
Free to £84.00

Foreign Languages: Modern Greek for Beginners (Term 3)

Have you learnt a little bit of Greek in the past? Would you like to expand your vocabulary and build up the confidence to use it? This beginners’ term 3 course will provide you with some basic everyday language you need to get by on a visit to Greece or Cyprus, as well as an insight into the Greek lifestyle and culture. The course is taught by a well-qualified and experienced native speaker with many years’ teaching experience. Learning a foreign language for holiday or leisure is a great way to keep your brain active, explore a different culture, meet people with a common interest, increase your confidence and enhance your wellbeing. Take advantage of this unique opportunity today.
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Course Information

Dates:
Thu 11/01/2024 -
Thu 21/03/2024
Times:
7:00pm - 9:00pm
Duration:
10 sessions
Location:
Online
Tutor:
Eleni Vezyri
Course code:
Q00012723
How you'll learn:
In venue
Availability:
10+ places remaining
Status:
Available
Fee range
Free to £74.00

Literature: Dickens and the struggles of life

For Charles Dickens, writing and worrying went hand in hand. His books were knitted together out of his own anxieties and struggles. And yet, despite the weight of all these worries, his novels are never depressing. To read Dickens is to glimpse the possibilities of new life. We all probably intend to read Dickens ‘one day.’ We all know his characters from various films and TV adaptations, so perhaps the time has finally come to get stuck into a major work. On this eight-week course we will read ‘Little Dorrit.’ We will also study some of Dickens's essays, short stories, and letters. You may already be a Dickens enthusiast, or a complete newcomer to his work. Either way, I hope that you will join us to explore a writer whose books still have the power to move and enlighten us today.
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Course Information

Dates:
Thu 11/01/2024 -
Thu 14/03/2024
Times:
10:00am - 12:00pm
Duration:
8 sessions
Location:
Krowji (Redruth)
West Park
Redruth
TR15 3AJ
Tutor:
Mark Crees
Course code:
Q00013086
How you'll learn:
In venue
Availability:
10+ places remaining
Status:
Available
Fee range
Free to £67.20

Literature: British Short Stories from 1950 to the Present

This 5 week course will introduce and assess the short stories of five British authors. These authors and the short stories we will discuss together are: Remember This - Graham Swift. The Universal Story - Ali Smith. Moonlit Landscape with Bridge - Zadie Smith. The Rock of Crack as Big as the Ritz - Will Self. Later, His Ghost - Sarah Hall. In these works, we will analyse themes and styles, specific to each text, but equally we will develop an understanding of those themes demonstrated in common. Moreover, you will discuss the forms and potentialities of the short story genre, and seek to identify innovations in the authors’ different approaches. The course will also seek to reflect how these stories reflect the changing face of Britain post 1950.
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Course Information

Dates:
Fri 12/01/2024 -
Fri 09/02/2024
Times:
10:00am - 12:00pm
Duration:
5 sessions
Tutor:
Stephen Smith
Course code:
Q00012030
How you'll learn:
Online
Availability:
1 place remaining
Status:
Waiting list
Fee range
Free to £37.00