We hope that you’re enjoying summer - whether because of or despite the weather!

As teased in recent updates, I’m happy to be able to announce two shiny new courses in our popular Short & Sweet Saturdays strand, each of which is in direct response to Denizens’ requests.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present unto you, for your autumnal delight and delectation…

First up, we have The Art of the Northern Renaissance. This is a perfect companion to last term’s Italian Renaissance, and the natural follow-up to May’s Gothic Art and Architecture. As ever, however, no prior knowledge is assumed or required, so please don’t feel that you won’t enjoy it if you didn’t do either of last term’s courses!

Our final Short & Sweet Saturdays for this calendar year is Dürer, Holbein, and the Renaissance in Germany. This will complement Art of the Northern Renaissance, as well as last term’s relevant courses - with the same note that it works equally well if this is your first toe in the water for this kind of thing!

Each of these courses will set up us nicely for one of our January term’s courses (on which more in due course).

Speaking of January courses… I have also promised to give you all an idea of what we’re currently plotting for after autumn. Alas I haven’t been able to do that yet - partly because keeping Duffy at ground level in the wake of her operation two weeks ago is taking up a lot of our resources! We did, however, know that this would be the case, and this has long been earmarked as a summer of low-key canine recovery on the Costa del Bishopthorpe. Should you be interested in such things, you’ll find our latest Duffywatch news here.

What we hadn’t factored into the equation, though, was that our resources would be further depleted by having finally succumbed to covid. I know… how very passé to have it now…! I’m happy to report that the version we have is nowhere near as bad as others, but it has rather knocked us for six.* Alas I’m still waiting for my taste buds to come back online. Surprisingly, it’s not the lack of wine-iness which has broken me. But that I can taste neither marmite nor strawberries has caused me ridiculously profound existential angst!! Oh well. This too shall pass!

*[Those of you who are joining us for the upcoming Great Archaeological Discoveries and The Middle Country sessions will, I’m sure, be relieved to learn that I’m no longer getting temperature spikes, so I won’t be quite as florid and manic as I was last week…!]

Taste bud atrophy aside, I think we’re over the worst of it now, and we’re just left with the pole-axing fatigue, so for the foreseeable future, we’re going to cut ourselves some slack. I’ll be picking up on all the boring behind-the-scenes work as and when my brain is functional, and Robert will be making the most of the weather and our garden around delivering our summer special sessions.

I shall, therefore, post details here of our post-autumn plans as soon as possible. We’re still mulling over what they will be and how we’ll make the final decisions. Additionally, now that we’re no longer bound by the rhythms of WEA, we have more freedom to mix things up in terms of course length, frequency, and timing.

• Is there still a place in the Wright History universe for ten-week courses, for example?

• Or would shorter courses (perhaps 5 weeks…? 7…?) be less of a commitment and therefore more attractive?

• Are we spreading ourselves too thinly? We’ve been trying to ensure that we’ve got something in every popular ‘strand’ each term, e.g., art history, modern stuff, very old stuff. But would it better for you if we were to offer fewer courses per term - i.e. less choice, but fewer courses on which you need to pass?

• Should we do, say, evening equivalents of the Short & Sweet Saturdays during the week?

• Should we even be taking ‘requests’? Should we offer a Denizens’ Choice vote again? The response at the time suggested that it was welcome, but alas it’s the only autumn course for which we don’t yet have enough registrations for it to run. Is that because autumn was a long way off when we announced it, or is it because other courses ended up being more appealing?

All these questions and more are floating around our heads as we are adjusting to our summer of ground-level post-op and covid recovery! We trust that you know by now that we want to do our utmost to give you what you want! To that end, I may well put out a survey in due course, but in the meantime, any thoughts would be very gratefully received…!

For now, though, we very much hope that you approve of our newest offerings.

To see all our courses now available in calendar order, click here. Alternatively, click on the relevant course title[s] in this post to go directly to the relevant page[s].

Finally, whatever your plans, we hope that you have a wonderful summer!