We celebrated the Hindu festival of Diwali last week at Novel English, with an exciting new course entitled ‘Wild Beasts and Exotic Lands’. Diwali is the festival of lights, where Hindus celebrate the rescue of the wife of Rama, Sita, by the monkey god, Hanuman. The course began with the arrival of the children, all dressed beautifully in traditionally colourful costumes, and the handing out of traditional Indian coloured glass bangles. There was a welcoming of tea and biscuits as the guests congregated in the cottage. The activities on the first day included a discussion of William Blake’s iconic poem,

To celebrate the coming of Advent, Novel English will be putting on a special festive course at the beginning of December: ‘Angels in Literature’. Do get in touch for more information!

Next month is the Indian festival of Diwali, a celebration of light when Hanuman rescued Sita, the wife of Rama, from the demon king Ravana. Novel English is holding a special mini-course celebrating Diwali. During the course, ‘Wild Beasts and Exotic Lands’, we will be looking at classic Indian writing, such as Ruskin Bond, and of course creating light displays with traditional candles and coloured rice decorations. Do get in touch (via e-mail or phone) for more information if you are interested!

During the October half-term, Novel English is planning on getting witchy and gruesome with a course focusing on Shakespeare’s ‘unlucky’ play, Macbeth! The course will run on the 26th-30th of October and will incorporate themes of witches, dark magic, betrayal and murder-most-foul! A deliciously spooky time will be had in time for Samhain (or Halloween).

National Poetry Day is coming up, and to celebrate Novel English is running a special poetry course this weekend! (Friday 9th-Sunday 11th). If you are interested in reading, writing and learning about poetry do get in touch via our website or phone! We’d love for you to join us!

We are now organising a range of weekend courses at Novel English to fit in with the new school year. These will include: We do hope you will get in touch via our e-mail or phone if you are interested in attending any of these special mini-courses!

Now that autumn feels as though it is on its way (and winter will be nudging its toes around the door just after that!), we have decided to make the Novel English dormitory a bit more cosy and swop the colourful camp beds with bunks! This new arrangement will be perfect for courses that are coming up in the next few months, especially the October half-term Gothic Genre course with its witchy themes and ample opportunity for ghost stories!

Courses that are set to run during the autumn/winter season 2015 at Novel English: Once Upon A Time… (The Brothers Grimm, Philip Pullman, The Nutcracker and E.T.A Hoffman)

Recently we received some exciting news from one of the students who came to have individual English tuition at an advanced level last summer. The news is so good that we had to share it on the blog: ‘This year I had short holidays because… I ENTERED THE SELECTIVE UNIVERSITY I WANTED TO ENTER!!! I’m so happy, thanks for your participation in that great success! Out of almost five thousand students who applied for Sciences Po Paris University, only four hundred could enter. I am glad to share this information with you!’ Azur. We would like to congratulate Azur on

Our Holistic English summer course began right after the Fantastical Worlds course had finished and was a fun and hectic ten days which embraced all weathers: hot, sunny, rainy, misty, foggy, drizzly and windy! The changeable weather became a good opportunity for our guests to learn a lot of English weather vocabulary! The course highlights included an afternoon on the farm, seeing three month old calves, chickens, coy fish leaping in the pond, ducks and horses, and sampling homemade traditional farmhouse fruitcake; visiting The Cornish Seal Sanctuary, with wonderful sightings of Atlantic sea-lions, common seals, grey seals, Californian sea-lions, as