Great Little Britain Literary Agency
Great Little Britain is an independent literary agent representing a group of authors and fictional works ranging from crime to domestic suspense, chick lit to children's books.
View Rights PortalGreat Little Britain is an independent literary agent representing a group of authors and fictional works ranging from crime to domestic suspense, chick lit to children's books.
View Rights PortalGreat Plains Publications Ltd. is an independent publisher based in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada and committed to bringing you the very best books from the Prairies – a region we believe has an abundance of quality writers. We also publish fiction from authors across the country in our imprints, Enfield & Wizenty and Yellow Dog.
View Rights PortalThis is a study of Britain's presence in China both at its peak, and during its inter-war dissolution in the face of assertive Chinese nationalism and declining British diplomatic support. Using archival materials from China and records in Britain and the United States, the author paints a portrait of the traders, missionaries, businessmen, diplomats and settlers who constituted "Britain-in-China", challenging our understanding of British imperialism there. Bickers argues that the British presence in China was dominated by urban settlers whose primary allegiance lay not with any grand imperial design, but with their own communities and precarious livelihoods. This brought them into conflict not only with the Chinese population, but with the British imperial government. The book also analyzes the formation and maintenance of settler identities, and then investigates how the British state and its allies brought an end to the reign of freelance, settler imperialism on the China coast. At the same time, other British sectors, missionary and business, renegotiated their own relationship with their Chinese markets and the Chinese state and distanced themselves from the settler British.
Concepts of 'race' and racism are central to British history. They have shaped, and been shaped by, British identities, economies and societies for centuries, from colonialism and enslavement to the 'hostile environment' of the 2010s. Yet state and societal racism has always been met with resistance. This edited volume collects the latest research on anti-racist action in Britain, and makes the case for a multifaceted, historically contingent 'tradition' of British anti-racism shaped by local, national and transnational contexts, networks and movements. Ranging from Pan-Africanist activism in the 1890s to mutual aid women's groups in the 1970s, from anti-racist trade union marches in Scotland to West African student groups in North East England - this book explores the continuities and interruptions in British anti-racism from the nineteenth century to the present day.
Devolution in Britain today provides a comprehensive analysis of both the historical development and the current state of devolved government. Devolution is now a key element in A-level syllabuses and on most undergraduate politics courses. This book is written in a clear and accessible style for students either encountering devolution for the first time or for those who need to explore the subject area in greater detail. All of the devolved bodies in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales are examined. This book is a thorough update of the first edition, written by Colin Pilkington and published by MUP in 2002. The book explains the concept and background of devolution, and indicates the constitutional implications of political devolution in the United Kingdom before providing a full and considered historical background to devolution, including an explanation of how the United Kingdom came to be united. It then examines the historical and political events that surrounded the preparation of devolution across Britain, before addressing each country in turn, assessing the relative success of devolution in that country. ;
(B)ordering Britain argues that Britain is the spoils of empire, its immigration law is colonial violence and irregular immigration is anti-colonial resistance. In announcing itself as postcolonial through immigration and nationality laws passed in the 60s, 70s and 80s, Britain cut itself off symbolically and physically from its colonies and the Commonwealth, taking with it what it had plundered. This imperial vanishing act cast Britain's colonial history into the shadows. The British Empire, about which Britons know little, can be remembered fondly as a moment of past glory, as a gift once given to the world. Meanwhile immigration laws are justified on the basis that they keep the undeserving hordes out. In fact, immigration laws are acts of colonial seizure and violence. They obstruct the vast majority of racialised people from accessing colonial wealth amassed in the course of colonial conquest. Regardless of what the law, media and political discourse dictate, people with personal, ancestral or geographical links to colonialism, or those existing under the weight of its legacy of race and racism, have every right to come to Britain and take back what is theirs.
Africa was a key focus of Britain's foreign policy under Tony Blair. Military intervention in Sierra Leone, increases in aid and debt relief, and grand initiatives such as the Commission for Africa established the continent as a place in which Britain could 'do good'. Britain and Africa under Blair: in pursuit of the good state critically explores Britain's fascination with Africa. It argues that, under New Labour, Africa represented an area of policy that appeared to transcend politics. Gradually, it came to embody an ideal state activity around which politicians, officials and the wider public could coalesce, leaving behind more contentious domestic and international issues. Building on the story of Britain and Africa under Blair, the book, now available in paperback, draws wider conclusions about the role of 'good' and idealism in foreign policy. In particular, it discusses how international relationships provide opportunities to create and pursue ideals, and why they are essential for the well-being of political communities. It argues that state actors project the idea of 'good' onto idealised, distant objects, in order to restore a sense of the 'good state'. The book makes a distinctive and original contribution to debates about the role of ethics in international relations, and will be of particular interest to academics, policy-makers and students of international relations, Africa and British foreign policy, as well as anyone interested in ethics in international affairs. ;
This is a study of Britain's presence in China both at its peak, and during its inter-war dissolution in the face of assertive Chinese nationalism and declining British diplomatic support. Using archival materials from China and records in Britain and the United States, the author paints a portrait of the traders, missionaries, businessmen, diplomats and settlers who constituted "Britain-in-China", challenging our understanding of British imperialism there. Bickers argues that the British presence in China was dominated by urban settlers whose primary allegiance lay not with any grand imperial design, but with their own communities and precarious livelihoods. This brought them into conflict not only with the Chinese population, but with the British imperial government. The book also analyzes the formation and maintenance of settler identities, and then investigates how the British state and its allies brought an end to the reign of freelance, settler imperialism on the China coast. At the same time, other British sectors, missionary and business, renegotiated their own relationship with their Chinese markets and the Chinese state and distanced themselves from the settler British. ;
This important book, newly available in paperback, examines a period of dramatic economic change in Britain during the Thatcher era. The Conservatives' free market policies generally improved the performance of the economy in Britain, but some parts of the country still did poorly (for example northern England). Casey argues that this was as a result of variations in social contexts - a combination of institutions, interests and economic culture. Southern England, possessing a more individualistic culture and higher levels of entrepreneurialism, has a 'market responsive' social context that can prosper under free market policies. Social context is thus a crucial intervening variable between the policies selected by decision-makers and the performance of economies, the key for enhancing prosperity is the proper match between economic policies and the context in which they are implemented. The social context of economic change in Britain provides an original theoretical framework linking economic growth and civil society and offers a unique insight into the Thatcher era. This book will be of interest to students of British politics and comparative political economy, public policy and political history. ;
This book offers an innovative account of manliness in Britain between 1760 and 1900. Using diverse textual, visual and material culture sources, it shows that masculinities were produced and disseminated through men's bodies -often working-class ones - and the emotions and material culture associated with them. The book analyses idealised men who stimulated desire and admiration, including virile boxers, soldiers, sailors and blacksmiths, brave firemen and noble industrial workers. It also investigates unmanly men, such as drunkards, wife-beaters and masturbators, who elicited disgust and aversion. Unusually, Manliness in Britain runs from the eras of feeling, revolution and reform to those of militarism, imperialism, representative democracy and mass media, periods often dealt with separately by historians of masculinities.
First documentary history of immigration into postwar Britain. Looks at all aspects of immigration into postwar Britain. Uses a wide range of official and unofficial sources. ;
Examining the ways in which the BBC constructed and disseminated British national identity during the second quarter of the twentieth century, this book is the first study that focuses in a comprehensive way on how the BBC, through its radio programs, tried to represent what it meant to be British. The BBC and national identity in Britain offers a revision of histories of regional broadcasting in Britain that interpret it as a form of cultural imperialism. The regional organization of the BBC, and the news and creative programming designed specifically for regional listeners, reinforced the cultural and historical distinctiveness of Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. The BBC anticipated, and perhaps encouraged, the development of the hybrid "dual identities" characteristic of contemporary Britain.
The nineteenth-century's steam railway epitomised modernity's relentlessly onrushing advance. In Railways and culture in Britain Ian Carter delves into the cultural impact of train technology, and how this was represented in British society. Why, for example, did Britain possess no great railway novel? The book's first half tests that assertion by comparing fiction and images by some canonical British figures (Turner, Dickens, Arnold Bennett) with selected French and Russian competitors: Tolstoy, Zola, Monet, Manet. The second half proposes that if high cultural work on the British steam railway is thin, then this does not mean that all British culture ignored this revolutionary artefact. Detailed discussions of comic fiction, crime fiction and cartoons reveal a popular fascination with railways tumbling from vast (and hitherto unexplored) stores of critically overlooked genres. A final chapter contemplates cultural correlations of the steam railway's eclipse. If this was the epitome of modernity, then does the triumph of diesel and electric trains, of cars and planes, signal a decisive shift to postmodernity? ;
The Chagos islanders were forcibly uprooted from the Chagos Archipelago in the Indian Ocean between 1965 and 1973. This is the first book to compare the experiences of displaced Chagos islanders in Mauritius with the experiences of those Chagossians who have moved to the UK since 2002. It thus provides a unique ethnographic comparative study of forced displacement and onward migration within the living memory of one community. Based on in-depth ethnographic fieldwork in Mauritius and Crawley (West Sussex), the six chapters explore Chagossians' challenging lives in Mauritius, the mobilisation of the community, reformulations of the homeland, the politics of culture in exile, onward migration to Crawley, and attempts to make a home in successive locations. Jeffery illuminates how displaced people romanticise their homeland through an exploration of changing representations of the Chagos Archipelago in song lyrics. Offering further ethnographic insights into the politics of culture, she shows how Chagossians in exile engage with contrasting conceptions of culture ranging from expectations of continuity and authenticity to enactments of change, loss and revival. The book will appeal particularly to social scientists specialising in the fields of migration studies, the anthropology of displacement, political and legal anthropology, African studies, Indian Ocean studies, and the anthropology of Britain, as well as to readers interested in the Chagossian case study. ;
This book examines the political works of Andrew Michael Ramsay (1683-1743) within the context of early eighteenth-century British and French political thought. In the first monograph on Ramsay in English for over sixty years, the author uses Ramsay to engage in a broader evaluation of the political theory in the two countries and the exchange between them. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, Britain and France were on divergent political paths. Yet in the first three decades of that century, the growing impetus of mixed government in Britain influenced the political theory of its long-standing enemy. Shaped by experiences and ideologies of the seventeenth century, thinkers in both states exhibited a desire to produce great change by integrating past wisdom with modern knowledge.
Environmental policy has become an increasingly important area of European Union (EU) policy-making and the source of political conflict between Britain and Germany. This book explains why national conflicts have arisen and how they are resolved at EU level by focusing on the Europeanisation of air and water pollution control in particular. Wurzel argues that Anglo-German divergences are best explained in terms of ecological vulnerability, economic cost and capacity, political salience and environmental regulatory styles. Focusing on two very important and media-exploitable issues - car emissions and bathing water regulation - this book challenges the conventional wisdom that Britain has shown a clear preference for environmental quality objectives while Germany championed uniform emission limits. Acceptance of the concept of ecological modernisation plays a vital role in the adoption of more progressive environmental standards. ;
A unflinching audit of the damage done by fourteen years of Conservative government. What went wrong with Britain? presents a comprehensive account of the devastating legacy left by the Conservative government. Shining a light into every dark corner, the book exposes the full extent of the damage inflicted on the country's economy, social fabric and political integrity. When the Conservatives were voted out of government in July 2024, they left behind a miserable record of rising poverty, inequality and division. This book reveals the forces that have driven the country to the point of crisis, from austerity and economic mismanagement to sheer political dysfunction. Each chapter offers new insights into the far-reaching consequences of government policies that prioritised ideology, personal ambition and party politics over the public good. Examining the rise of populism, the politics of Brexit, the UK's response to the pandemic and the steady erosion of public trust, this shocking account of the legacy of Conservative government from 2010 to 2024 is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand exactly what went wrong with Britain.
Queenship in Britain 1660-1837 looks at the lives of successive Queens, Princesses of Wales and royal daughters, and considers how they used their powers of patronage and operated within the confines of royal family politics. With contributions from an international group of scholars this book brings together new approaches in gender history and court studies to present a re-evaluation of this previously neglected area in the study of the British monarchy. An explanation of these new approaches is contained in a substantial introduction. While the essays perform detailed discussions on a variety of more specific subjects, from how the foreign and Catholic wives of the restored Stuarts coped with a libertine court and a Protestant nation, to the travails of Princesses of Wales, the marriage options of royal daughters, and the question of whether Queen Adelaide (wife of William IV) was a harmless philanthropist re-establishing royal respectability or a real political influence behind the throne. ;