The publishing programme at Royal Collection Trust aims to create the highest-quality books, exhibition catalogues, guides and children's books to celebrate the royal residences and the works of art found within them. Our list includes beautifully produced printed books, apps and online catalogues and symposia. We also publish scholarly catalogues raisonnés, which demonstrate the highest standards of academic research.
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Local government in the UK is in crisis. It is now neither local in terms of the geography and populations of its principle units, nor does it truly govern in these areas. As this book reveals, over the previous 200 years local government has moved from a system in which local interests held governance over localities to one in which central government and national and multi-national agencies such as corporate businesses hold governance over local and community decision-making. These changes seriously undermine the important role that local government can play in liberal democracy in the UK. The book explains the nature of local government today and asks if there is any possibility of change.
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Cultural warfare and trust: fighting the Mafia in Palermo concentrates on a central issue in research on democratic processes: the development of generalised trust. The existence of generalised trust and confidence in a society is decisive for economic development and an effective democracy. Is it possible to fight persistent values of distrust and non-cooperation? Is it possible to support the development of generalised trust through public action and education? The book addresses these questions by examining political efforts to combat Palermo's Mafia-controlled heritage and to turn a tradition of non-cooperation and distrust into cooperation and trust. In particular, it focuses on the school program launched in Palermo during the mid-1990s, which was designed to break the Mafia's territorial and mental control. Combining theories on social capital and civic education, the author presents and analyses new quantitative and qualitative research carried out in seven public schools in Palermo. This book will be valuable to students, academics and researchers interested in social capital and trust, Italian politics, civic education, organised crime, local government and democratic practice. ;
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This book is a powerful addition to a developing literature informed by arts and humanities research carried out during the COVID-19 pandemic. Investigating the impacts of crisis governance and decision-making on people and populations, the book brings together microbial organisms and humans, children and data, decision-making and infection prevention, publics and process, global vaccine distribution and citizens' juries. Through its eight chapters, the book stimulates broadly-drawn discussions about exceptional executive powers in an emergency, the role of trust, and the importance of the principles of good governance - such as selflessness, ethics, integrity, accountability and honesty in leadership. The lessons drawn out in this book will support future decision-makers in both ordinary times and extra-ordinary emergencies.
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Local government today provides a comprehensive analysis of the structure, finance, management and democratic framework for local government in Britain. This new edition has been substantially rewritten to encompass the many changes to the structure and function of the system since 2000, including developments flowing from the 2007 Local Government Act. The study discusses how, during the Blair years, local governments came to be seen once again as centrally important institutions within Britain's political system. However, they are not seen as organisations that can function as separate agencies, undertaking all their duties 'in-house'. They are now required to work in partnership with the private, public and voluntary sectors to deliver local services and represent local interests. It is further argued that, for the first time in over a century, the barriers between civil servants and senior local government officers are being eroded as central government begins to incorporate leading local government officials into its decision-making processes. This established textbook also offers a comparative focus by showing how the British system differs from the structures for local governance in Western Europe and the United States. ;
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From a psychological perspective, there are many aspects to negotiating. Given the right knowledge of backgrounds and mechanisms, it is an art form possible to get to grips with and put into practice. In an entertaining and informative way, this book introduces the reader to the basics of communication and body language, cooperative negotiation, strategic negotiation, the different personalities of negotiators, and negotiating. Using practical exercises and valuable practical tips, this book takes the reader through the main psychological strategies and methods so he can negotiate in a flexible, goal-oriented, and successful manner. Target Group: For people who want to improve their negotiating skills.
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Using oral histories gathered from trade unionists, this book explores the national steelworkers strike of 1980 and asserts its significance as a key turning point in modern British history. The strike was nominally a response to a 2% pay offer made by British Steel Corporation (BSC), at a time when inflation was 17%, but was generated by the widespread works closures that characterised the British steel industry at this time. The outcome of the strike was a much higher pay increase but no change to the deindustrialisation strategy of BSC and the government. The book explores the strike from the perspective of those who fought it and reveals the short and longer-term consequences it had on the industry, the unions and the workers themselves.
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In Singapore and Malaysia, the inversion of Chinese Underworld traditions has meant that Underworld demons are now amongst the most commonly venerated deities in statue form, channelled through their spirit mediums, tang-ki. The Chinese Underworld and its sub-hells are populated by a bureaucracy drawn from the Buddhist, Taoist and vernacular pantheons. Under the watchful eye of Hell's 'enforcers', the lower echelons of demon soldiers impose post-mortal punishments on the souls of the recently deceased for moral transgressions committed during their prior incarnations. Chinese religion in contemporary Singapore, Malaysia and Taiwan offers an ethnography of contemporary Chinese Underworld traditions, where night-time cemetery rituals assist the souls of the dead, exorcised spirits are imprisoned in Guinness bottles, and malicious foetus ghosts are enlisted to strengthen a temple's spirit army. Understanding the religious divergences between Singapore and Malaysia (and their counterparts in Taiwan) through an analysis of socio-political and historical events, Fabian Graham challenges common assumptions about the nature and scope of Chinese vernacular religious beliefs and practices. Graham's innovative approach to alterity allows the reader to listen to first-person dialogues between the author and channelled Underworld deities. Through its alternative methodological and narrative stance, the book intervenes in debates on the interrelation between sociocultural and spiritual worlds, and promotes the destigmatisation of spirit possession and discarnate phenomena in the future study of mystical and religious traditions.
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The media leave no one indifferent. Many people are upset that once again wrong things are written in the newspaper. Others think journalists are far too powerful. And some people philosophize polemically that the mass media are damaging democracy, while elsewhere “lying press” is chanted. This book combines media analysis and criticism with media education and journalistic transparency, reflection and advice. In doing so reflect the main tasks of journalism today: providing well-founded information, stimulating and perspective-rich opinion-forming – and sophisticated entertainment.
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This volume has emerged to fulfill two main purposes: Primarily, to constitute the first collaborative work that traces the relationship between the Gothic and Women in Spain and the Americas, but also, to surpass the term 'Female Gothic,' coined by Ellen Moers, by transferring the focus towards women and their agency as writers, readers and characters. This volume functions as a manifesto per se to open new avenues into understanding how women have interacted with the Gothic between the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries in Spain and the Americas. The question, we determine, is not simply about identity, but rather about agency. We define women's agency as the total capacity of characters, authors and readers to act freely within a social framework in relation to gothic texts. In our exploration of authorship, we reject the claim that the Gothic is a simplistic literary genre, instead sustaining that the plasticity of the Gothic has enabled it to survive for centuries; by shifting from a genre to a mode, it has surpassed literary forms and invaded all kinds of media: from film to music and merchandise such as clothing and pop culture collectables, fostering an authentic goth fandom.
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This book is a study of the ambitions, activities and achievements of Methodist missionaries in northern Burma from 1887-1966 and the expulsion of the last missionaries by Ne Win. The story is told through painstaking original research in archives which contain thousands of hitherto unpublished documents and eyewitness accounts meticulously recorded by the Methodist missionaries. This accessible study constitutes a significant contribution to a very little-known area of missionary history. Leigh pulls together the themes of conflict, politics and proselytisation in to a fascinating study of great breadth. The historical nuances of the relationship between religion and governance in Burma are traced in an accessible style. This book will appeal to those teaching or studying colonial and postcolonial history, Burmese politics, and the history of missionary work.
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The first book to tell the shocking story of the AIDS crisis in Soviet Russia. Throughout the 1980s, as the world was grappling with the escalating crisis of AIDS, Soviet Russia continued to deny there was a problem. Arguing that the disease was limited to foreigners and 'immoral' groups, the government failed to take meaningful action, long past the point other countries had begun to recognise the full scale of the threat. In this ground-breaking book, Rustam Alexander tells the story of AIDS in Soviet Russia. Fixated on disinformation, censorship and the persecution of marginalised communities, the Soviet authorities wasted precious time, allowing the epidemic to strike at the very heart of the nation: its children. Yet, despite the government's failure, a number of brave journalists, doctors and nascent gay groups decided to take matters into their own hands and engage in full-fledged AIDS activism. Tracing the political and social response to AIDS in the final years of the Soviet era, Alexander sheds light on the devastating consequences of government inaction. He draws on personal stories, media reports and archival materials to provide a riveting account of the Russian people's fight against AIDS amid the tumultuous transformations of Gorbachev's perestroika.
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This volume brings together scholars from different disciplinary backgrounds to discuss how women contributed to the making, pedagogy, institutionalisation and communication of scientific knowledge in the twentieth century, and to reflect on the theoretical and methodological challenges of documenting such hidden contributions. Featuring examples from China, former Czechoslovakia, Greece, Hungary, India, Japan, Romania, the United Kingdom and the United States, the contributors discuss women's engagement with science across different institutional and non-institutional sites, ranging from the laboratory and the school to the clinic, the home and the media. The volume moves beyond the professional scientist model to enlarge our understanding of women's participation in twentieth-century science and document the complex combination of factors that rendered such contributions (in)visible to contemporaries and future generations.
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