Welcome to our quinquennial Autumn 2025 programme!
2018 Robert.
In Nature, in our first spring as a couple, and in the vicinity of wood (as well as - along with everyone - in complete ignorance as to what was on the horizon before long…)
Crikey. Our Autumn programme marks our ‘wood’ anniversary …
Yup. That’s right… in just a few months, we’ll have been offering freelance online courses for
FIVE WHOLE YEARS!
As long-time Denizens of Wright History (and, indeed, anyone who might care to explore various parts of our website) know, Robert’s been in the adult education ‘biz’ for a long time (since 1996, to be precise).
But his forays into the online world only started - as for so many - with Lockdown.
After nearly two decades of being good friends and partners in thespian crime, Robert and I had become a different type of team. And we’d started plotting a plot… i.e. might it be possible for him to offer freelance courses with a focus on a shared love of learning and community, and a shared desire to avoid less interesting things such as learning outcomes, tick-boxes, metrics, and paperwork for both Robert and his students?*
* [PS We also really wanted to move away from terms like ‘students’, and the hierarchies that that implies…!]
With characteristically impeccable timing, our plans centred on in-venue courses starting in Easter 2020 (oops!). But fortunately, as Events rather overtook most people, WEA were preternaturally willing and able to move quickly, and helped us - and many others - to embrace a new way of doing things, i.e. online.
As many of you will have heard him say, Robert’s first instinct when I mooted anything online, even before Covid, was less than enthusiastic (one might even go so far as to describe it as luddite and/or angry and/or petulant!). And when the lovely people at WEA suggested trying an online course during Lockdown, his response wasn’t entirely positive.
…Eh. OK. Full disclosure: His first response was to sulk and/or wail, “Why can’t things be as they always have been?”
And his second response was: “And where would I put my projector screen so everyone can see the images?”
[For context: at this point, as part of his attempt to mitigate the angst of Lockdown, Robert’s engagement with technology had been limited to wrangling with his late father’s cine Super Eight projector screen, recently recovered from the loft!]
And yet… in time, he came round to the idea trying new things… there were some WEA courses (as everyone was discovering how this zoom thingie might work - and on which we met some of you who have stayed with us ever since!)… then our first ever freelance online course… then more of the same… and here we are. At the risk of repetition, we’ve come a long way!
It’s rather pleasing that there are some common themes between our second ever blog post and today’s, as we approach our quinquennial milestone (not least [a] Artemisia, who will pop up fleetingly in one of this autumn’s Short & Sweets. And yes… It is, to be honest, but a matter of time before she gives us a Short & Sweet in her own right, isn’t it? & [b] a conversation in yesterday’s Flowering of the Middle Ages about cheeky stonemasons!).
But enough about Autumn 2020. It’s time to think Autumn 2025.
I’m happy to say that each of our autumnal offerings has been explicitly requested (we always like it when we’re able to do that!), so without further ado…
Ladies and gentlemen…
I’m delighted to present unto you (with a celebratory ‘fanfare’ of quinquennial fireworks)…
The subject of our first ten-weeker is also about to be celebrating an anniversary, as July 2026 will mark its Semiquincentennial (or, if you prefer, Sestercentennial, Bicenquinquagenary, Bisesquicentennial, or Quarter Millennium. So good they named it five times, apparently. I expect that their fireworks will be better than ours here too…. Anyway…). This course has been oft-requested, and we decided that the time was now right, as several of you may well be planning stateside trips next year - so voila!
Next up, another ten-weeker, which will offer a broad chronological sweep of a particular region which we know several of you find fascinating…
After the Vikings: A history of Scandinavia from the middle ages to modern times
We’re also venturing along roads less travelled by many westerners, in our seven-weeker, which will run both online and in-venue at Pickering, namely…
Next we’ve got two Short & Sweets, which we’re scheduling now as we think the gorgeous light of the respective subjects will be perfect for autumnal Saturday mornings…
We’re also pleased to offer the next instalment of our series of deep dives on Roman emperors - and this one goes out especially to those of you who especially relish the ‘baddies’, because from a Christian perspective at least, they don’t, perhaps get much ‘baddie-er’ than…
Phew! How have we done? Touch wood (see what I did there?), we’ve managed to come up with at least something for everyone!
PS This autumn will also mark the fifth anniversary of a certain lurcher’s arrival at Wrightington Towers, which was the subject of our first ever blogpost. This must, I think, mean that I should revisit the long-neglected Duffywatch section of our website over the summer. Watch this space…
In the meantime, to see all of our currently-available courses in calendar order, click here.