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      • Trusted Partner
        History
        April 2017

        Dancing in the English style

        Consumption, Americanisation, and national identity in Britain, 1918–50

        by Allison Abra. Series edited by Jeffrey Richards

        Dancing in the English style explores the development, experience, and cultural representation of popular dance in Britain from the end of the First World War to the early 1950s. It describes the rise of modern ballroom dancing as Britain's predominant popular style, as well as the opening of hundreds of affordable dancing schools and purpose-built dance halls. It focuses in particular on the relationship between the dance profession and dance hall industry and the consumers who formed the dancing public. Together these groups negotiated the creation of a 'national' dancing style, which constructed, circulated, and commodified ideas about national identity. At the same time, the book emphasizes the global, exploring the impact of international cultural products on national identity construction, the complexities of Americanisation, and Britain's place in a transnational system of production and consumption that forged the dances of the Jazz Age.

      • Biography & True Stories
        March 1905

        Alaska Days with John Muir

        by Samuel Hall Young

        Samuel Hall Young, a Presbyterian clergyman, met John Muir when the great naturalist's steamboat docked at Fort Wrangell, in southeastern Alaska, where Young was a missionary to the Stickeen Indians. In "Alaska Days With John Muir" he describes this 1879 meeting: "A hearty grip of the hand and we seemed to coalesce in a friendship which, to me at least, has been one of the very best things in a life full of blessings." This book, first published in 1915, describes two journeys of discovery taken in company with Muir in 1879 and 1880. Despite the pleas of his missionary colleagues that he not risk life and limb with "that wild Muir," Young accompanied Muir in the exploration of Glacier Bay. Upon Muir's return to Alaska in 1880, they traveled together and mapped the inside route to Sitka. Young describes Muir's ability to "slide" up glaciers, the broad Scotch he used when he was enjoying himself, and his natural affinity for Indian wisdom and theistic religion. From the gripping account of their near-disastrous ascent of Glenora Peak to Young's perspective on Muir's famous dog story "Stickeen," Alaska Days is an engaging record of a friendship grounded in the shared wonders of Alaska's wild landscapes.

      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        June 2016

        The World and other unpublished works by Radclyffe Hall

        by Jana Funke

        This book presents a wide range of previously unpublished works by Radclyffe Hall. These new materials significantly broaden and complicate critical views of Hall's writings. They demonstrate the stylistic and thematic range of her work and cover diverse topics, including 'outsiderism', gender, sexuality, race, class, religion, the supernatural and the First World War. Together, these texts shed a new light on unrecognised or misunderstood aspects of Hall's intellectual world. The volume also contains a substantial introduction, which situates Hall's unpublished writings in the broader context of her life and work. Overall, the book invites a critical reassessment of Hall's place in early twentieth-century literature and culture and offers rich possibilities for teaching and future research. It will be of interest to scholars and undergraduate and postgraduate students in the fields of English literature, modernism, women's writing, and gender and sexuality studies, and to general readers. ;

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        Humanities & Social Sciences
        June 2025

        Taking travel home

        The souvenir culture of British women tourists, 1750–1830

        by Emma Gleadhill

        In the late eighteenth-century, elite British women had an unprecedented opportunity to travel. Taking travel home uncovers the souvenir culture these women developed around the texts and objects they brought back with them to realise their ambitions in the arenas of connoisseurship, friendship and science. Key characters include forty-three-year-old Hester Piozzi (Thrale), who honeymooned in Italy; thirty-one-year-old Anna Miller, who accompanied her husband on a Grand Tour; Dorothy Richardson, who undertook various tours of England from the ages of twelve to fifty-two; and the sisters Katherine and Martha Wilmot, who travelled to Russia in their late twenties. The supreme tourist of the book, the political salon hostess Lady Elizabeth Holland, travelled to many countries with her husband, including Paris, where she met Napoleon, and Spain during the Peninsular War. Using a methodology informed by literary and design theory, art history, material culture studies and tourism studies, the book examines a wide range of objects, from painted fans "of the ruins of Rome for a sequin apiece" and the Pope's "bless'd beads", to lava from Vesuvius and pieces of Stonehenge. It argues that the rise of the souvenir is representative of female agency, as women used their souvenirs to form spaces in which they could create and control their own travel narratives.

      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        May 2024

        Adaptation and resilience in the performing arts

        The pandemic and beyond

        by Pascale Aebischer, Rachael Nicholas

        This book offers insights into some of the digital innovations, structural adaptations and analogue solutions that enabled live performance in the UK to survive through the COVID-19 pandemic. It provides evidence of values-led policies and practices that have improved the wellbeing of the creative workforce and have increased access to live performance. Through sections that address digital innovations, workforce resilience and programming live performances outdoors and in community settings, this book provides practical insights into the challenges live performance faced during the pandemic. It shows how, in order to survive, individuals and companies within the sector drew on the creativity and resourcefulness of its workforce, and on new and existing networks. In these accounts, the pandemic functioned as catalyst for technological innovations, stock-taking regarding exploitative industry structures, and a re-valuing of the role of live performance for community-building.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        June 2021

        Acts of supremacy

        by J. Bratton, Richard Cave, Brendan Gregory, Michael Pickering

        Imperialist discourse interacted with regional and class discourses. Imperialism's incorporation of Welsh, Scots and Irish identities, was both necessary to its own success and one of its most powerful functions in terms of the control of British society. Most cultures have a place for the concept of heroism, and for the heroic figure in narrative fiction; stage heroes are part of the drama's definition of self, the exploration and understanding of personal identity. Theatrical and quasi-theatrical presentations, whether in music hall, clubroom, Shakespeare Memorial Theatre or the streets and ceremonial spaces of the capital, contributed to that much-discussed national mood. This book examines the theatre as the locus for nineteenth century discourses of power and the use of stereotype in productions of the Shakespearean history canon. It discusses the development of the working class and naval hero myth of Jack Tar, the portrayal of Ireland and the Irish, and the portrayal of British India on the spectacular exhibition stage. The racial implications of the ubiquitous black-face minstrelsy are focused upon. The ideology cluster which made up the imperial mindset had the capacity to re-arrange and re-interpret history and to influence the portrayal of the tragic or comic potential of personal dilemmas. Though the British may have prided themselves on having preceded America in the abolition of slavery and thus outpacing Brother Jonathan in humanitarian philanthropy, abnegation of hierarchisation and the acceptance of equality of status between black and white ethnic groups was not part of that achievement.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        April 2025

        The Jacobites and the Grand Tour

        Educational travel and small-states' diplomacy

        by Jérémy Filet

        In the first monograph to fully examine the intersecting networks of Jacobites and travellers to the continent, Filet considers how small states used official diplomacy and deployed soft power - embodied by educational academies - to achieve foreign policy goals. This work uses little-known archival materials to explain how and why certain small states secretly supported the Jacobite cause during the crucial years surrounding the 1715 rising, while others stayed out of Jacobite affairs.At the same time, the book demonstrates how early modern small states sought to cultivate good relations with Britain by attracting travellers as part of a wider trend of ensuring connections with future diplomats or politicians in case a Stuart restoration never came.This publication therefore brings together a study of Britain, small states, Jacobitism, and educational travel, in its nexus at continental academies.

      • Trusted Partner
        January 2003

        Let's Dance

        Das Tanzbuch (mit einem Crashkurs von Birgitta Dehning und Martin Schleifstein)

        by Trautner, Tamara / Zusammen mit Dehning, Birgitta; Zusammen mit Schleifstein, Martin

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        The Arts
        January 2019

        The British working class in postwar film

        by Philip Gillett

        An incidental pleasure of watching a film is what it tells us about the society in which it is made. Using a sociological model, The British working class in postwar film looks at how working-class people were portrayed in British feature films in the decade after the Second World War. Though some of the films examined are well known, others have been forgotten and deserve reassessment. Original statistical data is used to assess the popularity of the films with audiences. With its interdisciplinary approach and the avoidance of jargon, this book seeks to broaden the approach to film studies. Students of media and cultural studies are introduced to the skills of other disciplines, while sociologists and historians are encouraged to consider the value of film evidence in their own fields. This work should appeal to all readers interested in social history and in how cinema and society works.

      • Trusted Partner
        Children's & YA

        Quiz Yourself Smart! Bees and Our Nature

        by Friederun Reichenstetter/ Helen Seeberg/ Hans-Günther Döring

        Where do bees get the wax for their honeycombs from? What does the bee dance mean? Why are bees important for us humans? General knowledge for primary school children! Who will be quiz king? The life of the little honeybee and its environment is full of surprises. Do you know your way around the native animal world? Discover their secrets, research how animals live and what distinguishes them. One quiz question – three possible answers. Plus all sorts of fascinating facts on the reverse page. For one or more players aged 6+.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        March 2024

        Ageing and new intimacies

        Gender, sexuality and temporality in an English salsa scene

        by Sarah Milton

        The 'baby boom' generation, born between the 1940s and the 1960s, is often credited with pioneering new and creative ways of relating, doing intimacy and making families. With this cohort of men and women in Britain now entering mid and later life, they are also said to be revolutionising the experience of ageing. Are the romantic practices of this 'revolutionary cohort' breaking with tradition and allowing new ways of understanding and doing ageing and relating to emerge? Based on ethnographic fieldwork in salsa classes and life history interviews, this book documents the meanings of desire and romance, and 'new' intimacies, among women in mid and later life. Challenging notions of the revolutionary 'baby boomers', it details how these practices, experiences and identities are intersected and informed by age, class, whiteness, and a pervasive concern to remain respectable.

      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        September 2017

        The Pianoplayers

        by Anthony Burgess

        by Will Carr, Paul Wake, Andrew Biswell

        This novel is one of Anthony Burgess's most accessible and entertaining works. By turns bawdy, raucous, tender and bittersweet, and full of music and songs, this is a warm and affectionate portrait of the working-class Lancashire of the 1920s and 1930s that he knew from his own early life. The Pianoplayers is a funny, moving, autobiographical novel that brings to life the world of silent cinemas and music-halls of 1920s Manchester and Blackpool. Fully annotated and with a new introduction, this is an authoritative text for a new generation of readers. Part of the forthcoming Irwell Edition of the Works of Anthony Burgess, this book offers an opportunity to reappraise an unjustly neglected novel important to our understanding of Burgess's wider oeuvre. The 2017 Burgess centenary makes this a key moment for reflection on the life and work of a major figure in twentieth century letters.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        July 2025

        A grand strategy of peace

        Britain and the creation of the United Nations Organization, 1939-1945

        by Andrew Ehrhardt

        A grand strategy of peace is the first detailed account of Britain's role in the creation of the United Nations Organization during the Second World War. As a work of traditional diplomatic history that brings in elements of intellectual history, the book describes how British officials, diplomats, politicians, and writers - previously seen to be secondary actors to the United States in this period - thought about, planned for, and helped to establish a future international order. While in the present day, many scholars and analysts have returned to the origins of the post- 1945 international system, this book offers an exhaustive account of how the statesmen and more importantly, the officials working below the statesmen, actually conceived of and worked to establish a post-war world order.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        July 2000

        Cultures of Empire

        A reader

        by Catherine Hall, Meg Davies

        Collects together the best articles by key historians, literary critics, and anthropologists on the cultures of colonialism in the British Empire in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.. A substantial introduction by the distinguished historian, Professor Catherine Hall, discusses new approaches to the history of empire and establishes a narrative frame through which to read the essays which follow.. The volume is clearly divided into three sections: theoretical, emphasising concepts and approaches; the colonisers 'at home', focusing on how empire was lived in Britain; and 'away' - the attempt to construct new cultures through which the colonisers defined themselves and others in varied colonial sites. A useful guide to recent scholarship on the culture of imperialism. ;

      • Trusted Partner
        January 2023

        Ohne dich bin ich nicht ich

        by Smriti Halls, Steve Small, Cornelia Boese

        Ohne dich: Party bei Hörnchen und Bär, die gemeinsam alles schaffen. Neues von Eichhörnchen, genannt Hörnchen, und Bär, den zwei tierischen Freunden, die so perfekt zusammen passen wie Eiskrem mit Schlagsahneschaum. Nach langer Zeit wollen die beiden endlich mal wieder eine richtig große Party feiern und bereiten begeistert alles vor. Bär backt Apfelkuchen und presst Zitronen für die selbstgemachte Limonade aus. Doch dann lädt Hörnchen immer mehr Gäste ein, besorgt Ballons, bereitet einen Band-Auftritt vor. Vor lauter Aufregung bemerkt es nicht, dass Bär ein mulmiges Gefühl beschleicht. Ihm wird das alles zu viel. Und als die Feier startet, ist es Hörnchen, das sich im Haus voller Gäste plötzlich irgendwie allein fühlt. Doch die beiden wären ja nicht beste Freunde, wenn sie die Gefühle des anderen nicht verstehen würden. Und so schaffen es die zwei, doch noch gemeinsam mit allen ein großartiges Fest zu feiern.   Eine fabelhafte Geschichte mitten aus dem Hier und Jetzt. Nach „Ohne dich, das geht doch nicht!“ und „Ich und du und Huhn dazu“ das dritte Bilderbuch mit Hörnchen und Bär über freundschaftlichen Zusammenhalt. Erzählt einfühlsam von den gemischten Gefühlen, nach der Pandemie wieder unter vielen Freunden und Freundinnen zu sein. Witzige, empathische Reime von Smriti Halls und hinreißende, ausdrucksstarke Illustrationen von Steve Small für Kinder ab 4 Jahren. Wunderschönes Mitbringsel zur nächsten Party – nicht nur für Kinder, auch für alle Erwachsenen mit „Bauchgefühl“.

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