There will be no shortage of forceful personalities on the Classical Pursuits trip They Came to Paris: Literature 1910–1940. The French capital nurtured and attracted strivers, artists, dreamers, writers and flâneurs of all kinds. We will meet many of them, from Hemingway and Stein to Picasso to Kiki of Montparnasse. […]
[Editor’s note: Every year Betty Ann Jordan brings colour and style to Toronto Pursuits, and 2019 will be no exception. Join her for Seeing Through Clothes, a seminar that weaves art and history into a larger exploration of what clothes say about us.] Lingering in front of a historical portrait, […]
I first met van Gogh when I was a 14-year-old bookworm devoted to exploring the richness of the local public library’s holdings. I had been making my way through the English literary canon and was already deeply committed to the written word when I found myself casually browsing through the […]
One heavy step, then another. Straps across their chests, they pull. It’s Russia, 1869. In Repin’s Barge Haulers on the Volga, you can feel the heat and the workers’ exhaustion. If you look closely, you’ll notice a steamship on the horizon; this back-breaking labour is no longer necessary. Like Dickens […]
[Editor’s note: This is the second in a series on the role food has played on Classical Pursuits trips as we remember the formidable, exuberant Anthony Bourdain. Enjoy!] By Ann Kirkland Unlike so many, I came late to the charms of Anthony Bourdain. It was when I heard he would […]
[Editor’s note: We give a warm welcome back to longtime Toronto Pursuits leader Nancy Carr. Nancy’s seminar Through the lens of the under-appreciated Victorian novelist Anthony Trollope, participants in Nancy’s seminar will ask a timeless question: How far are we willing to go to obtain power?] As I ride the […]
[Editor’s note: In this guest post, Toronto Pursuits 2017 leader David Schmitt gives us a glimpse of the five films participants will watch and discuss in his seminar Cinema and the Art of Concealment and how these films challenge us to take a second look at what we know, and […]
Bay Area book lovers are invited to join us at the Classical Pursuits open house at Laurel Bookstore in downtown Oakland, California. Drop in to chat with other travelers, grab some snacks, enter our raffle to win excellent books, and learn what Classical Pursuits has in store for our 2017 […]
At home. Mentioning Ulysses might conjure up a range of associations – important, classic, difficult, even unreadable – but “at home” isn’t likely to be one of them. Sixteen people felt anything but comfortably home on a Monday morning this past July as they awaited the start of a Toronto […]
Dickens’s last completed novel, Our Mutual Friend, is one of his most complex and ambitious works. It includes everything you’d expect from Dickens—a huge cast of characters, a convoluted plot, extremes of emotion, and a vivid depiction of life in Victorian London. (Did you know, for instance, that private “dustmen” […]