Literature opens up new worlds, voices and ways of seeing. From classic novels to contemporary fiction, poetry to memoir, our literature courses explore a wide range of genres, themes and authors, inviting you to read more closely and think more deeply about the stories that shape our culture.
Across the courses, you can engage with different literary movements, discover new writers, revisit well-known texts, and explore how language, form and context influence meaning. Many courses are discussion-led, creating space to share interpretations and enjoy thoughtful conversation in a welcoming setting. We also offer film studies courses, examining cinema as a powerful storytelling medium and exploring how film connects with literature, culture and society.
Whether you’re a lifelong reader or simply looking to rediscover the pleasure of reading and watching with fresh insight, these courses offer an inspiring and accessible way to engage with literature and film.
Fiction writers are often the first to identify and analyse a social phenomenon. We will examine two centuries of London history through the eyes of novelists and poets, from William Blake to Zadie Smith. In this way, London’s social and economic history will be revealed through imaginative writers’ eyes.
This course is for anyone with an interest in reading novels that test the boundaries of the genre and the limits of the printed page. No previous experience in these areas is necessary, just an appetite for the strange and new in fiction.
What makes for a great short story? Are there rules – of length, style, ending – or is the form more flexible?
This course is open to anyone interested in post-apocalyptic fiction; you do not need to have read any of the writers before or have any prior knowledge of this genre.
In this course we’ll explore three unsettling and subversive novels by Emily, Anne, and Charlotte Brontë. In Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, the sisters grappled with the pressures of class, gender, and race that shaped their society. We’ll explore how the novels’ representations of desire, violence, and oppression shocked and enthralled nineteenth-century readers. And we’ll examine modern responses to the novels by writers and filmmakers, to reflect on how these books confront us today – as fictions that are both liberating and troubling.
Akira Kurosawa’s Rashōmon is one of the most acclaimed films of all time. But did you know it is adapted from two short stories by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa?
Exploring East London history via some of the vividly realised fiction written about its various districts in the years between 1820 and 1920. We will think about how imaginative fiction and historical fact intertwine to create local legend.
Using images, maps and extracts, we will explore the world of the London anatomy schools and the ‘resurrection men’ who supplied the corpses they required as teaching material.
In this online taster course we will read some classic ghost stories from M.R. James, Rudyard Kipling and Edith Wharton.
In this course we’ll explore this unsettling and subversive novel by Emily Brontë.
Japan is rivalled only by Hollywood in developing the most influential and accomplished industry in world cinema.