Archive of 2016 | LeisureCourses.net - short courses & residential study breaks in great locations - Part 20
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One day, one novel: Middlemarch
Listed on January 29, 2016 by Madingley Hall in Featured CoursesThis day school is part of the 'One day, one novel' series for 2015-16. Each day school focuses on one novel and through a series of lecture and class discussions, helps you to study the novel in great depth, getting to know the author and the text as closely as possible.
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Beginners’ French: Meet the French
Listed on January 29, 2016 by Madingley Hall in Featured CoursesWanting to improve your communication skills? This course will give you the opportunity of practising your French no matter how rusty or hesitant. Get an insight into the life and personality of a few French celebrities and also learn how to engage with people you meet in everyday situations. The course is conducted entirely in...
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One day, one novel: Tess of the d’Urbervilles
Listed on January 29, 2016 by Madingley Hall in Featured CoursesThis day school is part of the 'One day, one novel' series for 2015-16. Each day school focuses on one novel and through a series of lecture and class discussions, helps you to study the novel in great depth, getting to know the author and the text as closely as possible.
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The promise of Enlightenment
Listed on January 29, 2016 by Madingley Hall in Featured CoursesWhat is the Enlightenment? What was its promise and has it failed? The Enlightenment ushered in a modern era of belief in progress through reason and science. This course is an opportunity to participate in the great philosophical debate over the promise of Enlightenment.
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Writing fiction for children of primary school age
Listed on January 29, 2016 by Madingley Hall in Featured CoursesFunny, adventurous, wacky, imaginative, interesting books aimed at children between 6 and 11 years old are always on publishers' wish-lists. This course aims at helping you develop characters, plot, style and ideas, never losing sight of the current market, to get your children's book written and published.
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Masters of British landscape from Gainsborough to Goldsworthy
Listed on January 29, 2016 by Madingley Hall in Featured CoursesLandscape is everywhere; an obvious subject for painters and one which has inspired many of our greatest masters, from Gainsborough, Constable and Turner to the Pre-Raphaelites and Stanley Spencer. Come and spend a weekend exploring their struggles, their triumphs, and the passion that drove them to change the ways we look at nature forever.
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Tracing the origins of the British using genetics, linguistics and chroniclers
Listed on January 29, 2016 by Madingley Hall in Featured CoursesThe origins of the British seem to have been securely laid out since Bede in AD 731, who described the coming of the Anglo-Saxons, and since Buchanan in AD 1582, who suggested that the early British were from Gaul, ultimately leading to the modern concept of an Iron Age 'Celtic' Britain. However, the traditional views...
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The Spanish Civil War
Listed on January 29, 2016 by Madingley Hall in Featured CoursesThis year sees the 80th anniversary of the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. The war was a major event in 20th-century Europe and attracted passionate interest across the world. This course introduces you to debates over the war's origins, its effects and the causes of Franco's victory as well as the passions roused in...
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Music for the cinema: the neglected art
Listed on January 29, 2016 by Madingley Hall in Featured CoursesWhat exactly does music do for films when we wouldn't expect it in the theatre? Why is it no longer the force it once was? From the closing years of the silent era to close on a hundred years of 'the talkies', we trace and analyse the role of music 'in the film cast' with...
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Quentin Tarantino: the good, the bad and the cult
Listed on January 29, 2016 by Madingley Hall in Featured CoursesControversial, provocative and endlessly quotable, the films of Quentin Tarantino are celebrated and criticised in equal measure. This day course will take a close look the director’s style, influences and central themes. What makes his work so successful but so divisive? If you’ve ever wondered what a reservoir dog is, this is the course for...
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Conservation science
Listed on January 29, 2016 by Madingley Hall in Featured CoursesThere is no doubt that natural habitats and the species they contain are under severe threat from human disturbance; from tropical rainforests to the polar ice-caps, no area of the planet has escaped. In this course, we will explore key issues in modern conservation. Rather than bemoaning losses, we will focus on what can be...
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Peace, conflict and international society
Listed on January 29, 2016 by Madingley Hall in Featured CoursesThe news seems dominated by war, violence and conflict, but these forces also lie at the heart of how and why the world operates as it does at the level of international politics. If you have ever wondered why peace is so elusive and conflict so prevalent, then this course will help you understand such...
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O rare Ben Jonson
Listed on January 29, 2016 by Madingley Hall in Featured CoursesThe appearance in 2013 of Ian Donaldson's brilliant life-and-works book on Shakespeare's friend and only serious rival Ben Jonson proves a wonderful stimulus for the study of three of his sourly evergreen comedies, The Alchemist, Volpone and Bartholemew Fair, and his tragedy Sejanus, recently and successfully revived at Stratford. There will be many laughs and...
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Stories to live and die for: the literary prize winners
Listed on January 29, 2016 by Madingley Hall in Featured CoursesFiction enables us to consider some challenging, vital and creative issues and moments in life, and to imagine how things could be otherwise. We will be reading and discussing prize-winning contemporary fiction including Eimear McBride's challenging A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing (2013), which explores the life of a young Irish girl. We will also look at...
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Astronomy days: Rocky worlds and gas giants
Listed on January 29, 2016 by Madingley Hall in Featured CoursesHow do planets form? Is there life elsewhere in the Universe? In the first of a new series of astronomy day schools, we will explore the planets and other rocky bodies of our solar system, catch up on the rapidly advancing hunt for planets around other stars, and discuss the origins of life and the...
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The Anglo-Saxon Fenland
Listed on January 29, 2016 by Madingley Hall in Featured CoursesThe Anglo-Saxon fenland was colourfully described by the great Clifford Darby as 'a frontier region...the resort of brigands and bandits' in whose empty wilderness saints like Æthelthryth of Ely and Guthlac of Crowland established their new monastries. The course critically examines these assumptions in the light of recent research which suggests fenland history was more...
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The English economy before the Norman Conquest: agriculturalists, artisans and aristocrats
Listed on January 29, 2016 by Madingley Hall in Featured CoursesHow did people make a living when there was no money in England, and how did goods circulate with no market? Come and explore fundamental questions like these on this weekend course, and trace how Anglo-Saxon towns, trade and coinage began and developed as the early Middle Ages progressed.
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Why are the Americans more religious than the British?
Listed on January 29, 2016 by Madingley Hall in Featured CoursesAs the race for the Presidency hots up, are you baffled by the role religion continues to play in American life? This course will set you straight. Learn about the history that has shaped American religious sensibilities, explore the data of religious practice today, and enter the American mind.
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Intermediate Russian: The 1917 Revolution – facts, fiction, arts
Listed on January 29, 2016 by Madingley Hall in Featured CoursesThis weekend is designed for those who already have a reasonable conversational grasp of Russian. You will be able to expand your knowledge of contemporary Russian language, culture and society and gain more confidence in speaking and writing. The sessions will be mostly in Russian and will include, besides language exercises, a look at current...
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Sustainable Development Goals: what difference will they make to international development?
Listed on January 29, 2016 by Madingley Hall in Featured CoursesWe are at the cusp of significant changes in both thinking and delivering 'international assistance' as a result of the new set of targets known as the Sustainable Development Goals. With reference to case studies, this course explores the consequences of the changes ahead by looking in turn at the criteria and targets set for...
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Immortality and eternity: different conceptions of the afterlife
Listed on January 29, 2016 by Madingley Hall in Featured CoursesWhat answers come from having more life? In this course, an alternative picture will be considered to the dogmatic view of eternal life as 'more life'. Through retrospective analysis of the teachings of Christ and that of 19th and 20th century philosophers, we will expose a profound and equally valid interpretation of eternal life as...
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Bede and the history of early England
Listed on January 29, 2016 by Madingley Hall in Featured CoursesBede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People tells us much of what we know, or think we know, about the history of England from its origins to the 730s. This course will revisit Bede, in the light of recent historical and archaeological research, to estimate how far he has misled generations of readers.
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Daily life and the afterlife in ancient Egypt
Listed on January 29, 2016 by Madingley Hall in Featured CoursesHave you ever wondered what life was like in ancient Egypt? Or why the Egyptians mummified their dead? From childbirth to mortality, funerals to Osiris's judgement, in this course, you will explore daily life in ancient Egypt, and beyond. By the end, you will have a better understanding of the ancient Egyptians, and a foundation...
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One day, one novel: Pride and Prejudice
Listed on January 29, 2016 by Madingley Hall in Featured CoursesThis day school is part of the 'One day, one novel' series for 2015-16. Each day school focuses on one novel and through a series of lecture and class discussions, helps you to study the novel in great depth, getting to know the author and the text as closely as possible.
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One day, one novel: Wuthering Heights
Listed on January 29, 2016 by Madingley Hall in Featured CoursesThis day school is part of the 'One day, one novel' series for 2015-16. Each day school focuses on one novel and through a series of lecture and class discussions, helps you to study the novel in great depth, getting to know the author and the text as closely as possible.
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Reading Classical Latin: Ovid and love
Listed on January 29, 2016 by Madingley Hall in Featured CoursesOvid claims that there are a hundred reasons why he is always in love and in reading Amores Book 2, we shall discover some of these reasons. But we shall also encounter a dead parrot, his girl Corinna's jealousy and her abortion, and Ovid's wish to be a signet ring. Anyone with a sound basic...
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Reading Classical Latin: Suetonius on Caesar
Listed on January 29, 2016 by Madingley Hall in Featured CoursesSuetonius's Life of Divus Iulius provides a miscellany of 'facts' from Julius Caesar's life. We discover the origin of veni vidi vici, meet his lovers, see him scorning religion, learn of his oratorical skills and follow him to his assassination on the Ides of March. Anyone with a sound basic knowledge of Latin will be...
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John’s gospel: where children can paddle and elephants can swim
Listed on January 29, 2016 by Madingley Hall in Featured CoursesJohn's gospel contains some of the most well-known phrases in the New Testament: 'the Word became flesh', 'I am the bread of life'. But there are also puzzles: why does John's Jesus die on a different day to the Jesus of the other gospels? Is the gospel anti-semitic? Is John's Jesus more divine than human?...
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New Testament Greek
Listed on January 29, 2016 by Madingley Hall in Featured CoursesThis course is aimed at students who have been studying Greek for a year or more. We shall read and discuss a selection of extended passages from the New Testament Gospels and Epistles, aiming to understand both their language and their historical background. We shall also by way of contrast look at some shorter extracts...
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Advanced French: Monsieur de La Fontaine
Listed on January 29, 2016 by Madingley Hall in Featured CoursesThis weekend course is held entirely in French. It focuses on various topics illustrated through literature and art, often related to present cultural events, and aimed at language improvement. The texts, chosen from a wide range of classic and modern writers, will be used as a basis for discussion throughout the sessions. A variety of...
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