WEA courses

This course looks at the troubled years after 1140, when England was ravaged by civil war and had two rival monarchs: the Empress Matilda, the daughter of King Henry I and her cousin, King Stephen. The Empress spent 17 years trying to secure her birthright. These years were called ‘The Anarchy’ by historians because of the destruction wreaked by both sides on villages and towns across southern England and the breakdown of law and order. The course explores the reasons why William Adelin’s sister, the Empress Matilda never achieved the Crown.

In 1989, the songwriter Billy Joel was told by a friend that “Things are different today. You were a kid in the fifties, and everybody knows that nothing happened in the fifties.” As a result, he wrote ‘We didn’t start the fire’ to highlight how the post-war decades shaped the world we live in today. Join us for this fascinating 6 week course where you will look at the crucial events that occurred between 1940 and 1972 in USA and reflect about their significance back then as well as how it translates into today’s society.

The course examines the origins of the bitter struggle for the Crown of England in the mid-fifteenth century. It also considers the impact of events in France on England, the collapse of England’s continental possessions, the end of the Hundred Years' War, and its impact on events at home. It looks at the rivalries within the nobility and whether the civil war that resulted was inevitable. It was a time characterized by dynastic instability and political chaos. The shifting of leadership and loyalties within the noble houses, as well as the numerous claims to the throne, created a sense of uncertainty and mistrust among the ruling elite which fuelled the violence and bloodshed that historians call the Wars of the Roses.

This course examines the century that shaped England, bookended by arguably England’s worst King, John, and one of its greatest, Edward I. The century began with England's integral of a vast continental empire that stretched from the Scottish borders to the foothills of the Pyrenees. The 13th century began for England with the reign of King John, who lost his continental empire and almost lost his throne to a baronial revolt against his rule and an invasion of England by the French. One hundred and thirty years later, John’s great-grandson did lose his Kingdom to an invasion led by his wife, Isabella, to overthrow him and replace him on the throne. The intervening years were no less dramatic: years of baronial unrest, Magna Carta, and the growing influence of foreigners around King Henry III culminating in the rebellion of Simon de Montfort and the Baron's War against the King in the 1260s. The England that we know, its governance and institutions were shaped during these 130 years of the calamitous thirteenth century.

This is a course about people and their relationship to the Motte and Bailey castle in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire. Some of them have names, and their stories are well documented; others are anonymous and left no mark on the written record on the fortress that was Berkhamsted Castle, but their legacy lives on the physical remains of the castle. It is the story of five centuries of powerful men and women: Kings, Queens, and members of the Blood Royal. There is rivalry, controversy, tragedy, brutal murder, destruction, invasion and tender affection. The constant is Berkhamsted Castle, the stone motte and bailey structure dating from a time after the Norman Conquest that has been the witness to these events that shaped our national past