G.K. Chesterton was among the most popular English writers of the early Twentieth Century. As a novelist, poet, biographer, essayist, and Christian apologist he produced a large and grandly diverse body of writing that has in the past century inspired the admiration of George Orwell, Dorothy Sayers, C.S. Lewis, George Bernard Shaw, Franz Kafka, Theodore Roosevelt, Mahatma Gandhi, Agatha Christie, Kingsley…
(Note: This is a recording of a previously live webinar. To access the recorded video afterwards, log in to your House of Humane Letters account, click "Dashboard," then "Orders," then click the corresponding order. There will be a link that says "View Recording.") The modern mind and imagination have been altered and influenced by few characters so profoundly as by…
SHAKESPEARE: The Bard for All and For All Time Join us April 12th-15th! The genius and lasting influence of William Shakespeare is undisputed. However, many of us seeking to redeem our educations sometime struggle to jump in. We need help knowing how to read and understand Shakespeare and how to articulate why we should be reading him and why we…
A Webinar by Thomas Banks and Michael Williams The 20th century was an era in which poetry gradually became less and less culturally visible. Among the last exemplars of the craft who were truly public figures of international reputation were an American who became an Englishman, and an Englishman who became an American. T.S. Eliot and W.H. Auden were each the master…
When confronted with a very old work of literature, the modern reader struggles for several reasons. The biggest obstacle is that the shared literary, cultural, and imaginative traditions of the work have long since passed from our memories, and as a result, we simply do not understand the imaginative context (i.e. the imaginative language) the work is written in. Sadly,…
King Henry the Eighth, the second monarch of the Tudor dynasty, has been credited both by admirers and enemies with having brought to an end the old England of the late middle ages and ushering in the new England of early modern times. On November 17th, Thomas Banks will talk about King Henry's life, wars, marriages, innovations in church and state, and the…
