Beginners' Latin 2

Beginners' Latin 2 runs on Monday nights at St Albans Cathedral from 11 January to 8 February 2027, in the Alban Room. It's a five-week adult course that picks up where the first one left off, so if you did the autumn 2026 session, this is the natural next step. That said, newcomers are still welcome, so you don't have to have been there from the start to join in.

The course works through Stage 5 of the Cambridge Latin Course, Book 1 (fourth edition). The material is built around Classical myths and stories set in Pompeii just before the eruption of 79 AD, and the focus is on noun cases and verb tenses. It's a good way to get a handle on how the language actually fits together rather than just learning a few phrases. Latin was the language of learning in Europe for nearly two thousand years and still forms the root of so much of the vocabulary in English, French, Italian and Spanish, so there's a fair bit of familiar ground to rediscover.

Dr Clare Harvey leads the sessions. She's an experienced teacher of Latin and Classical Civilisation who has run Latin courses at the Cathedral before, so you're in safe hands. The course is part of the Cathedral's adult learning programme, SACT/SACT+, and clergy and readers in the St Albans Diocese get complimentary access, with a discretionary discount or bursary available for others. The Cathedral itself is the shrine to Britain's first saint and the oldest site of continuous Christian worship in Britain.

Classes run from 7.30 to 9.00pm every Monday, 11 January to 8 February, in the Alban Room. The cost is £75 for the five weeks.