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        Humanities & Social Sciences
        February 2025

        An unorthodox history

        British Jews since 1945

        by Gavin Schaffer

        A bold, new history of British Jewish life since the Second World War. Historian Gavin Schaffer wrestles Jewish history away from the question of what others have thought about Jews, focusing instead on the experiences of Jewish people themselves. Exploring the complexities of inclusion and exclusion, he shines a light on groups that have been marginalised within Jewish history and culture, such as queer Jews, Jews married to non-Jews, Israel-critical Jews and even Messianic Jews, while offering a fresh look at Jewish activism, Jewish religiosity and Zionism. Weaving these stories together, Schaffer argues that there are good reasons to consider Jewish Britons as a unitary whole, even as debates rage about who is entitled to call themselves a Jew. Challenging the idea that British Jewish life is in terminal decline. An unorthodox history demonstrates that Jewish Britain is thriving and that Jewishness is deeply embedded in the country's history and culture.

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        The Arts
        July 2025

        Ida Lupino

        Multifaceted performer and cinematic pioneer

        by Gillian Kelly

        This book contributes to a welcome new wave focusing on the importance of female filmmakers, providing a reappraisal of Ida Lupino, a cinematic figure of significant importance. Given her ability to move between popular and independent cinemas and her status as both a Hollywood star and director/writer/producer of socially relevant films overlooked by the mainstream, Lupino is a particularly interesting case study. Employing a range of critical approaches, including feminist theory, auteur theory and critical theory, this book investigates key themes and motifs that developed across Lupino's unusual and unique career as one of the most significant female players in film history. Investigating her oeuvre as actress, director, writer and producer, it discusses Lupino as a complex and important filmmaker whose career, on both sides of the camera, requires substantially more critical attention than it has been awarded thus far.

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        Teaching, Language & Reference
        February 2020

        A writer's guide to Ancient Rome

        by Carey Fleiner, Jerome de Groot

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        The Arts
        June 2021

        Genre and performance: film and television

        by Christine Cornea

        Looking at contemporary film and television, this book explores how popular genres frame our understanding of on-screen performance. Previous studies of screen performance have tended to fix upon star actors, directors, or programme makers, or they have concentrated upon particular training and acting styles. Moving outside of these confines, this book provides a truly interdisciplinary account of performance in film and television and examines a much neglected area in our understanding of how popular genres and performance intersect on screen. Each chapter concentrates upon a particular genre or draws upon generic case studies in examining the significance of screen performance. Individual chapters examine contemporary film noir, horror, the biopic, drama-documentary, the western, science fiction, comedy performance in 'spoof news' programmes and the television 'sit com' and popular Bollywood films.

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        Business, Economics & Law
        October 2023

        The Island Book of Records Volume I

        1959-68

        by Neil Storey

        The Island Book of Records brings the early years of this iconic record label to life. A fifteen-year labour of love, the volumes will fully document the analogue era of Island. Offering a comprehensive archive of album cover design and photography, together with the voices of the musicians, designers, photographers, producers, studio engineers and record company personnel that worked on each project, the volumes show in unique depth the workings of the label, covering every LP. Featuring material from recent interviews and from media interviews of the time, and each including a comprehensive discography of 45s, the books are lavishly illustrated with gig adverts (very many at venues which no longer exist), concert tickets, flyers, international LP variants, labels, LP and 45 adverts and other ephemera. These LP-sized editions are a collector's dream, offering a truly unparalleled resource for those interested in music history and a perfect gift for any music lover.

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        2019

        Good Evening, Good Night

        The cultural history of sleep

        by Karoline Walter

        What we associate with sleep is shaped by the culture we live in. Whereas the God of the Bible never sleeps, the sinful human falls asleep every night and is thus marked as an inferior being. In the Age of Enlightenment, (too much) sleep was considered a waste of strength, which could otherwise be used to change the world. These days, sleep seems to be subject to the same tenets of usefulness as everything else and is seen to assist with the optimization of one’s self. However, culture and technology also influence how we sleep: for example, the constant availability of light, the modern conditions of work and all sorts of distractions have meant that we no longer follow our natural rhythm – a first sleep before midnight and a second sleep after a longer period of wakefulness, during which we may be active. In “Good Evening, Good Night”, Karoline Walter uses numerous examples from history, literature and research to illustrate how sleep and sleeping have changed across cultures and eras – an entertaining read, certainly nothing to put you to sleep.

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        Humanities & Social Sciences
        January 2013

        Tyrants of Sicily by Hugo Falcandus

        by Graham Loud, Thomas Wiedemann

        This book is our principal source for the history of the Kingdom of Sicily in the troubled years between the death of its founder, King Roger, in February 1154 and the spring of 1169. It covers the reign of Roger's son, King William I, known to later centuries as 'the Bad', and the minority of the latter's son, William II 'the Good'. The book illustrates the revival of classical learning during the twelfth-century renaissance. It presents a vivid and compelling picture of royal tyranny, rebellion and factional dispute at court. Sicily had historically been ruled by tyrants, and that the rule of the new Norman kings could be seen, for a variety of reasons, as a revival of that classical tyranny. A more balanced view of Sicilian history of the period 1153-1169 has been provided as an appendix to the translation in the section of the contemporary world chronicle ascribed to Archbishop Romuald II of Salerno, who died in April 1181. In particular the chronicle of Romuald enables us to see how the papal schism of 1159 and the simultaneous dispute between the German Emperor Frederick Barbarossa and the north Italian cities affected the destiny of the kingdom of Sicily. In contrast to the shadowy figure of Hugo Falcandus, the putative author of the principal narrative of mid-twelfth-century Sicilian history, Romuald II, Archbishop of Salerno 1153-1181, is well-documented.

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        Literature & Literary Studies
        May 2023

        Pasts at play

        Childhood encounters with history in British culture, 1750–1914

        by Rachel Bryant Davies, Barbara Gribling

        This collection brings together scholars from disciplines including Children's Literature, Classics, and History to develop fresh approaches to children's culture and the uses of the past. It charts the significance of historical episodes and characters during the long nineteenth-century (1750-1914), a critical period in children's culture. Boys and girls across social classes often experienced different pasts simultaneously, for purposes of amusement and instruction. The book highlights an active and shifting market in history for children, and reveals how children were actively involved in consuming and repackaging the past: from playing with historically themed toys and games to performing in plays and pageants. Each chapter reconstructs encounters across different media, uncovering the cultural work done by particular pasts and exposing the key role of playfulness in the British historical imagination.

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        The Arts
        May 2025

        A new genre for television?

        Creativity in historical drama documentary

        by Justin Hardy

        In A New Genre for Television?, filmmaker Justin Hardy argues the dramatised history documentaries broadcast by British public service channels in the 2000s constituted a distinct television genre. Offering a vital distinction between docudramas and drama documentaries, Hardy contributes to the field of television history through exclusive interviews with key figures from BBC and Channel 4 - many of whom have never been publicly interviewed before - and envisions a future model for the portrayal of national histories on screen.

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        Humanities & Social Sciences
        July 2023

        Now that's what I call a history of the 1980s

        by Lucy Robinson

      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        January 2019

        Alejandro Amenábar

        by Barry Jordan

        Since the release of his first feature in 1996, Alejandro Amenábar has become the 'golden boy' of Spanish filmmaking, a bankable star director whose brand virtually guarantees quality, big audiences and domestic box office success. He has directed three of the highest-grossing movies in Spanish film history and has enjoyed enormous international and critical acclaim, including an Oscar for Best Foreign Film for Mar Adentro/The Sea Inside, 2004. This book is the first full-length study in English of Amenábar's shorts and feature films. It provides detailed analysis of his engagement with popular film genres as the basis for an auteur cinema and incorporates a reappraisal of his auteurism as fundamentally decentred and shared. An essential resource for students, scholars and fans of Amenábar, the book will also appeal to a wider readership, including professionals in the film, media and culture industries as well as those who have a general interest in the best of Spanish, European and world cinema.

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