English literature students study an exciting spread of modules ranging from literary classics by canonical writers like Jane Austen, Charles Dickens and John Milton to the contemporary and the popular including work by Ian Fleming, Pat Barker and Carol Ann Duffy; in the first year students study 2 core foundation modules: Reading prose narrative; a study of the ways in which novelists construct narratives and different techniques they employ; and ways of reading; which looks at new critical and theoretical approaches to literary texts and films; students may also choose to take other literature modules focusing on drama and poetry; the course offers a very wide choice of modules, focusing on the political, social and cultural history of the period since 1500; from the outset students are taught how to analyse historical text and to engage with the wide variety of interpretations historians offer us of the past; these are the historian�s central skills and the modules undertaken in the second and third years are designed to develop these further.