September 23 – November 25 2025

Ever since its inception two-hundred years ago, the National Gallery has been open to the public free of charge. Starting with a small collection, it has grown to just over 2,500 paintings including some of the greatest masterpieces in Western European art.  Each week, this gallery-based course will tell the story of the National Gallery through its art, taking you across its permanent collection, delving into the lives and stories of individual works and the artists that created them. Each session will look at approximately eight pictures in detail. Leslie will look forward to escorting you around an institution that is so loved by the British public it has become a home from home, a place of refuge, the Nation’s mantlepiece.