The Course is privileged to work with some of the best minds in their fields offering a vast range of subjects.
All our lectures are taught by well-known, well-qualified lecturers who use high quality teaching materials including slides, digital images, video and music.
Whether you learn online or face-to-face, our lecturers will help you develop your knowledge in the topic of your choice.
Jacqui Ansell gained her Art History degree from Essex University before specialising in History of Dress at the Courtauld Institute and establishing a career as writer and tutor for the Open University and lecturer at the National Gallery, National Portrait Gallery and Christie’s Education.
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Patrick taught for the University of Glasgow and Christies Education in London. He also lectures at the Jewish Cultural Centre, National Gallery, British Museum, Victoria & Albert Museum, Royal Opera House and University of Barcelona. He has participated in programmes on BBC Radios 3, 4 and Classic FM and has published numerous books on C18th and C19th artists.
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David is an art historian, author and Programme Director for the Master’s Degree in Art Business at Sotheby’s Institute of Art, London where he leads units on Law, Ethics and the Art Market and The Market for Western Antiquities and Old Masters. He has published numerous books and articles on a variety of subjects, including: art fairs; art business ethics; Greek & Celtic mythology; the art market for classical sculpture and frescoes; the paintings of Sandro Botticelli; authenticity issues in the paintings of Frans Hals; and introductory essays on contemporary art exhibitions. He is currently writing an introduction to the art market for professionals, collectors and students.
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Federico is one of the directors of the Centre for Renaissance and Early Modern Studies at Queen Mary, University of London. He wrote his doctoral thesis at The Courtauld Institute of Art. In 2013, he was awarded a three-year Leverhulme Fellowship for his project Visual Pedagogy in Renaissance Tuscany. His publications include Works of Mercy in Italian medieval art and several articles on illuminated manuscripts. He is currently completing a book on 15thC Florentine illuminated manuscripts and conducting research on a 14thC fresco cycle in Florence. Federico speaks 4 languages.
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Maria teaches Greek mythology, exploring its allegories and underlying philosophy, as well as ancient Greek theatre and language, with an emphasis on their influence on European culture and history. She has written scripts and plays, as well as puppet theatre productions based on Greek myths for adults and children, which have been featured on Greek television and staged in Athens’ theatres. She currently teaches at City literary institute (City Lit) in London. She holds a Master’s degree in Writing & Literature from Sheffield Hallam University and has attended numerous seminars on symbolism and drama organized by the Philosophical School, the Elania Institute, and Elliniki Agogi in Athens.
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Ian studied at the Universities of Keele, London and Glasgow. He was Director of Christie’s Decorative Arts at Glasgow University and later became Director of Studies at Christie’s Education. He ran a decorative arts summer school in New York and was Director of the Victorian Society of America London Summer School. Ian was also consultant to the Royal Crown Derby factory and in 2009 published his book ‘Royal Crown Derby Paperweights’. Now semi-retired he is a consultant and lectures for a prestigious cruise line.
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Elizabeth is an architectural historian who researches, teaches, consults, curates, and publishes in the history of British architectural modernism, and on architecture and gender. She has worked with curators at Tate Britain on the Britain and the Bauhaus display (2019) and at the V&A Architecture Gallery (Surfacing Stories, 2023). Her books include Re-forming Britain (2007), Wells Coates (2012) and Suffragette City (2022).
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Michael is an Associate Lecturer at Birkbeck College, University of London; he also lectures at New York University in London and at the Courtauld Institute of Art for its Summer School. He is a scholar of Venetian Renaissance Art and Patronage and has published articles in this field. He frequently leads art-historical tours to Italy and has a special interest in Venetian Renaissance print culture.
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Dan specialised in Italian Renaissance Villas and Gardens at Manchester University. He has led art historical expeditions throughout Europe and has lectured for many Scholars Societies of prestigious schools and universities around the UK. He has been shortlisted for the Paul Morrison Guide of the Year Award in association with Wanderlust and the Daily Telegraph.
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Graham is a writer, broadcaster, translator and teacher. He worked in Florence for 4 years at the British Institute and now teaches courses, workshops and special events in poetry. For many years he has broadcast on literature and music for BBC Radio 3.
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Karin is a performer, writer and speaker, who researches and creates a vivid picture of a character and a historical period. She is known for her lectures on celebrated writers, correspondents and diarists from the l8th to the early 20th centuries, mainly connected with the visual arts, though some – Florence Nightingale, Queen Victoria – are familiar in other contexts altogether. Karin is an Arts Society lecturer. She has performed and lectured in Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Japan and the University of Cape Town. Her background is in theatre, where she worked with Sir Ralph Richardson and Robert Morley. On radio she compiled a programme on potter Bernard Leach for BBC R3, shortlisted for a Prix Italia. Her children’s book on Queen Victoria, THE DUMPY PRINCESS, was shortlisted for a Young Quills literary award.
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Denise is an author, lecturer, photographer and journalist. She worked in Cambodia for three years and has also lived in France and America. She has written books on the Buddhist temples of Laos, Ancient Luang Prabang and Cambodian Dance Celebration of the Gods. Now based in London, she is a lecturer for NADFAS, The Art Fund, University of London (SOAS) and University of Cambridge (Madingley Hall). She writes for many art, literary and travel publications and has appeared on tv and radio. She leads art tours and lectures on cruise ships sailing throughout Asia.
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Robert is a composer, singer, writer, lecturer and blogger. He founded the classical music blog Planet Hugill and was named one of Saga Magazine’s Top 50 Bloggers over 50. He regularly reviews concerts, live opera performances and recordings and writes opera reviews for the Opera Today website and Classical Music Magazine. Robert’s opera ‘When a Man Knows’ was staged at the Bridewell Theatre in 2011. His recent lecturing has included pre-concert and participation in Divas and Scholars study days talking on Rossini’s Neapolitan operas and on Bellini’s Life and Times, the latter in collaboration with the soprano Nelly Miricioiu.
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Christine Lalumia lectures widely and writes on design, art and garden histories with a particular interest in cultural context. A consultant lecturer at Sotheby’s Institute of Art and a long-standing course leader and lecturer for the V&A, she was previously the deputy director of The Geffrye, Museum of the Home, London for 21 years.
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Nicola gained her BA in English and French at Cardiff University and was awarded her MA in the History of Art with distinction by Birkbeck, University of London. She published her dissertation – on women and textiles in the context of medieval parish life – in the journal Gender and History in 2010. She is a former producer and journalist for BBC Television News and Current Affairs and now combines teaching art history with research and writing. Her current research interests include the connections between medieval and Modernist art forms. She runs her own educational tours exploring medieval churches.
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Marie-Anne trained as an artist before gaining a D.Phil from the University of Sussex. She has lectured on art and architecture for myriad establishments including The Course, The City Lit, Tate Modern, Art in London, the Nth Degree Club, and Dulwich Picture Gallery. She has written extensively on art and was commissioned by Tate and Pearsons to create online art history courses. She writes historical fiction in her spare time, publishing her first novel: Whorticulture.
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Georgia is an award-winning jazz vocalist and lyricist whose credits include: Bonny McFerrin, Ian Shaw, Liane Caroll, Pat Metheny (lyric approval), John Williams and Grammy winning pianist/composer Alan Broadbent – her song writing partner with whom she has toured Europe and the US. She has released 7 critically acclaimed albums, headlined at Ronnie Scott’s, featured in a 2019 Proms at the Royal Albert Hall and her own long-running festivals ReVoice! and Hang. She has previously lectured on the Jazz Age at The City Lit Institute, Two Temple Place and The Ashmolean, Oxford.
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Philip Mansel is a historian of France and the Ottoman Empire. He obtained his doctorate at London University for a thesis on the court of France. He is the author of ten books, including lives of Louis XVIII and the Prince de Ligne; histories of Constantinople and nineteenth century Paris; a survey of court dress from Louis XIV to Elizabeth II, Dressed to Rule; and, most recently, a history of Smyrna, Alexandria and Beirut since the sixteenth century, Levant: Splendour and Catastrophe on the Mediterranean. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and the Royal Society of Literature and editor of The Court Historian, journal of the Society for Court Studies.
The 2012 London Library Life in Literature Award, sponsored by Mayfair bookshop Heywood Hill, has been awarded to Philip Mansel in recognition of the sustained quality of both his writing and scholarship throughout a distinguished career.
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After taking his degree in Philosophy & Theology at Oxford University, James went on to gain a Diploma in Art History and a Masters in Architectural History at the Courtauld Institute of Art. He has lectured on trips abroad for the Courtauld Institute, the National Arts Collection Fund, and for numerous schools and travel companies. He runs his own touring business for private clients.
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Nigel McGilchrist attended Oxford University, where he won a scholarship, prizes and medals in English and Art History. He has lived and worked in Italy, Greece and Turkey for 30 years. He worked for the Italian Government’s Ministero dei Beni Culturali as a consultant in fresco conservation, when the Vatican embarked on its controversial cleaning of the Sistine Chapel. He worked with Federico Zeri, J. Paul Getty’s closest art advisor and Italy’s most knowledgeable living art historian in the 1980s. He was Director of the Anglo-Italian Institute in Rome for 6 years, taught at the University of Rome, the University of Massachusetts, and was for 7 years the Dean of European Studies for Rhodes College & the University of the South at Sewanee, Tennessee. He still lectures widely in art and archaeology. He is on the Board of Editors of the Blue Guides and has contributed to new editions on Italy. Over the last 7 years he has walked all 60 inhabited Aegean Greek Islands to prepare a new survey-guide of the art, archaeology, history and ecology of the area. It is available as a series of 20 small volumes McGilchrist’s Greek Islands, while an abridged, single-volume appears as the Blue Guide to Greece: the Aegean Islands. He is a Syrian expert and has travelled widely in the region.
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Peter trained at the Royal College of Music and is a singer, pianist, lecturer-recitalist who tours all over the world. He lectures for the Arts Society, Art Fund, National Trust and for various radio programmes including radios 3 and 4 as well as the Universities of Kent and Surrey.
He has directed a wide range of choirs, vocal ensembles and instrumental groups and given masterclasses for the British Federation of Music Festivals. He has also released many recordings both vocal and instrumental.
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Alison Meek gained her degree in Fine Art (1983) at St. Martin’s and Hornsey. She has been a practising artist since then exhibiting in a range of media, both abstract and figurative and has run her own Fine Art business. She subsequently studied the Foundations of Western Art at Sotheby’s Institute, researching the art of Japonisme. Alison has taught widely in Adult and Further Education in London, Hong Kong and Sydney and has published work on supporting students with learning disabilities. This has been used in teacher training modules at London South Bank University. She lectures widely and gives talks at the National Gallery and V&A amongst others.
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Nicole studied at the Universities of Sussex, York and Paris before becoming Senior Lecturer at Queen’s University, Belfast, where she established the Department of Art History and worked extensively with adult students on part-time degrees and Open Learning programmes. Nicole is currently a freelance lecturer for The Arts Society, the National Museum of Northern Ireland, Queen’s University and the National Trust. Her publications focus on adult education and the arts. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.
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Harry is an architectural historian with degrees from Oxford and the Courtauld Institute. He specialises in British Architectural history and has written many books on the subject. He also writes about architecture for Country Life, and contributes to the Times Literary Supplement, Literary Review, Sunday Telegraph, New Statesman, Spectator and Daily Mail.
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After working in the design industry for over ten years, Francesca studied horticulture and garden design at Berkshire Agriculture College before running her own garden design business. Francesca has an MA in Garden History and is currently in her fourth year of a PhD at Queen Mary’s University of London. She is a life member of Buckinghamshire Gardens Trust and London Parks and Gardens Trust as well as Archivist and guest speaker for Perennial (formerly known as the Gardeners Royal Benevolent Institution). She is also a published author.
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Jeremy is an architectural historian, author, and broadcaster. He has an MPhil in historical studies (The Renaissance) from the Warburg Institute in London; he has been Architectural Adviser to the Victorian Society, an assistant regional curator for the National Trust, responsible for houses such as Ickworth and Anglesey Abbey, before joining the staff of Country Life in 1995. In 1998 he became Architectural Editor. He has written The English Manor House, The Country Houses of Sir John Vanbrugh, English Country House Interiors; he was the co-writer and presenter of BBC 2 series The Curious House Guest, and has lectured widely in the UK and US. He has been a trustee of the Pevsner Trust, and is a trustee of the Country House Foundation and the Stowe Mansion Preservation Trust.
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Stephen studied at Cardiff and Birmingham Universities where he received an MA in Fine Art. In 1999 he was appointed the Arts Council of England Helen Chadwick Fellow, which enabled him to work on his sculpture in Rome and Oxford. He exhibits both in Britain and abroad while also teaching at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, Tate Britain, Hayward Gallery and Whitechapel Art Gallery.
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Charles O’Brien is the consultant Series Editor for the Pevsner Architectural Guides. He graduated with a degree in History of Art from University College London after which he worked for the Historic Buildings Department of the National Trust. He worked for the Pevsner series full-time from 1997 to 2022 and wrote and contributed to several of the revised editions of Nikolaus Pevsner’s original guides, including the book for East London (2005). He has been a sessional lecturer at Birkbeck College, a Commissioner for Historic England and chair of their London Advisory Committee.
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Suzanne Perrin is an independent researcher and historian specialising in Japanese History, Art & Culture. She studied Nihonga traditional Japanese painting at Nagoya University of Arts and gives lectures on a wide range of Japanese subjects to universities and museums as well as to the Arts Society in the UK, AADFAS in Australia, DARTS in South Africa, and the University of Cape Town Summer School.
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Richard is an Architectural historian specialising in the Middle Ages and with a strong interest in the modern. After reading English at Cambridge he obtained an MA in the History of Art and a PhD on English Romanesque and the Holy Roman Empire at the Courtauld. He went on to teach at the Courtauld, as well as at University College and Queen Mary College, London where he taught both medieval and modern architectural history. He was formerly the Deputy Academic Director at Christie’s Education. He has published on English and German architecture.
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Leslie Primo is a broadcaster and lecturer graduating from Birkbeck, University College, London with an Art History MA in Renaissance Studies. He specialised in early Medieval Art and Architecture and Italian Renaissance Drawing, painting and patronage, and the work of Peter Paul Rubens. Leslie formerly worked at the National Gallery in London for 18 years as well as the National Portrait Gallery for 10 years and has recently appeared on the BBC in series one and two of Art on the BBC, speaking on the life of Michelangelo and presenting the programme on JMW Turner. His new book, published by Thames & Hudson is called, ‘The Foreigners that Invented British Art’. Leslie has been an accredited lecturer for The Arts Society since 2009, and also lectures and teaches a variety of art history courses at Imperial College, London. He has presented an extensive range of study programmes at The Course since 2012.
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Nick has written books on Canaletto, Miro and Florence. He lectures widely both in the UK and Europe. He was voted the No.1 Guide in the Daily Telegraph Review and was recently described as the ‘Renaissance Man’ by Clive Aslet in Country Life.
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Diane is a music-loving art historian with special interests in Europe around 1900, particularly Vienna, and on the synchronicities between music and art. She has published widely on these subjects. She lectured at Birkbeck, at Central Saint Martins on cultural studies, and regularly gives public talks – at the Royal Academy, The South Bank Centre, the National Gallery and the Freud Museum.
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Stephen, who has an MA in Garden History from Birkbeck, has taught the subject for more than 20 years at venues including the V&A, Strawberry Hill House and for the RHS at Vincent Square. His professional background is that of a horticulturist (between 2002 and 2011 he was Landscape Manager for the Duke of Westminster’s London estate) and he teaches historic garden conservation to RHS students at Wisley. His latest academic project is the research of formal eighteenth-century gardens for a PhD at Queen Mary University of London.
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Andrew Spira graduated from the Courtauld Institute of Art before completing a Masters degree in Museum and Gallery Management at City University, London. He worked at the Temple Gallery, London (specialists in Byzantine and Russian icons), and as a curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Subsequently, he was Programme Director at Christie’s Education.
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Robert is a classical music critic who has for over 30 years written reviews of concerts, books on music and CDs for Tempo (Cambridge University Press), International Record Review and Musical Opinion Quarterly. He contributed a chapter to the BBC Proms Guide to Great Choral Works (Faber) and has also written programme notes for the BBC. He has a BA and post-graduate certificate in education from Bristol University and is the author of The Very End of Air. Formerly the Managing Director of The Little Orchestra, a London-based professional chamber orchestra, he now specialises in contemporary music and music’s relations with the visual arts and literature.
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Geoffrey trained at Cambridge University and has devoted his lifetime to the ancient world. For twenty years he was Head of Education at the Museum of London which gave him a unique and special expertise in the understanding of the great city.
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Antonia Whitley is an art historian and lecturer specialising in the Italian Renaissance, though her interests also include paintings of World War One. She obtained her PhD from the Warburg Institute, University of London, on Sienese society in the 15th century and has published articles on related topics. She has lectured for and at the National Gallery, has taught in the War Studies department of King’s College, London and has led many tours in Italy.
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Jacob is an artist/art historian, who specialised in Italian painting of the seventeenth century. He has published widely as an art critic (The Spectator; Standpoint; The Critic etc), and internationally in art-historical journals (The Burlington Magazine; Il Bollettino d’Arte; Les Cahiers d’Histoire de l’Art; ArsMagazine etc). He has discovered lost paintings by artists including Annibale Carracci, Guido Reni, Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi, either mislabelled in museums, or in the market on behalf of gallerists and collectors. Having worked on all sides of the art world – as a practitioner and a critic, in academia and the trade, also as an educator – he has gained a unique perspective to share.
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Richard Williams received his doctorate in History of Art from the Courtauld Institute, after which he was awarded a post-doctoral fellowship by The Paul Mellon Centre (Yale University). He is currently Associate lecturer in the Department of Art History at Birkbeck College, University of London as a specialist in Northern Renaissance art. He has published extensively from co-editing a book on Art and the Reformation to writing over ten chapters in academic books. Since 1999 he has been a lecturer in the Education Department of the National Gallery, and has recently been made director of the High Renaissance to Baroque Year Course at the Victoria and Albert Museum.
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