Splendid Books Limited
Indie publisher Splendid Books focuses largely on entertainment, autobiographical and historical titles. Their varied list includes memoirs of a Bond fan and a British TV location guide.
View Rights PortalIndie publisher Splendid Books focuses largely on entertainment, autobiographical and historical titles. Their varied list includes memoirs of a Bond fan and a British TV location guide.
View Rights PortalWe publish 4 seperate imprints: Ockham Publishing - Pop-Science and Pop-Philosophy Vulpine Press - Stylish and Innovative Fiction and Non-Fiction Level Up Publishing - Ground-Breaking LitRPG and GameLit Hypatia Press - Irreligious and Secular Books
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.
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. ;
'Staging the UK' examines some of the most important performance in Britain from the mid-1980s into the new millennium. In a timely new critical approach, it considers contemporary British theatre in relation to national and supranational identities, critical concepts like globalisation and diaspora, and contemporary contexts such as the election of New Labour, devolution and European unification. It makes a significant contribution to the study of contemporary theatre by elucidating the relationships between performance, cultural identities and cultural power, and will be an invaluable textbook for courses on British theatre and culture. 'Staging the UK' takes a de-centred materialist approach. It looks at theatre in a range of institutions, practices and forms such as play texts, musicals, festivals, installation art, site-specific and physical theatre. It examines events such as the Edinburgh festivals, and significant companies, including the Scottish National Theatre, Brith Gof, Tinderbox Theatre Company, Complicite, Tamasha Theatre Company, DV8 Physical Theatre, Artangel, and Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber's Really Useful Group. This book makes a significant contribution to the study of contemporary theatre by elucidating the relationships between performance, cultural identities and cultural power, and will be an invaluable textbook for courses on British theatre and culture. ;
This is the first book to survey in comparative form the transmission of imperial ideas to the public in six European countries in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The chapters, focusing on France, Britain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and Italy, provide parallel studies of the manner in which colonial ambitions and events in the respective European empires were given wider popular visibility. The international group of contributors, who are all scholars working at the cutting edge of these fields, place their work in the context of governmental policies, the economic bases of imperial expansion, major events such as wars of conquest, the emergence of myths of heroic action in exotic contexts, religious and missionary impulses, as well as the new media which facilitated such popular dissemination. Among these media were the press, international exhibitions, popular literature, educational institutions and methods, ceremonies, church sermons and lectures, monuments, paintings and much else.
(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.
Understanding US/UK government and politics is written specifically for A2 students and covers the comparative dimension of advanced level study. It closely follows the syllabuses of the main examination boards, is car and accessible in style, and offers invaluable insights into the similarities and differences between British and American politics. The book examines the setting against which government and politics operates in the two countries, explores the concept of political culture and examines the underlying ideas and values of British and American people, before considering the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government in detail. Political parties, the media and elections, pressure groups and voting are all extensively covered, with some concluding thoughts on the current condition of democracy in Britain and the United States. This new edition has been updated to take account of all the changes that have taken place in British and American politics since the first edition was published, including the escalation of the War on Terror, the specific terrorist threats carried out in the UK, and the underwhelming re-election of George W Bush and Tony Blair.
This book explains devolution today in terms of the evolution of past structures of government in the component parts of the United Kingdom. It highlights the importance of the English dimension and the role that England's territorial politics played in constitutional debates. Similarities and differences between how the components of the UK were governed are described. It argues that the UK should be understood now, even more than pre-devolution, as a state of distinct unions, each with its own deeply rooted past and trajectory. Using previously unpublished primary material, as well as a wealth of secondary work, the book offers a comprehensive account of the territorial constitution of the UK from the early twentieth century through to the operation of the new devolved system of government. ;
Jack Tar to Union Jack examines the intersection between empire, navy, and manhood in British society from 1870 to 1918. Through analysis of sources that include courts-martial cases, sailors' own writings, and the HMS Pinafore, Conley charts new depictions of naval manhood during the Age of Empire, a period which witnessed the radical transformation of the navy, the intensification of imperial competition, the democratisation of British society, and the advent of mass culture. Jack Tar to Union Jack argues that popular representations of naval men increasingly reflected and informed imperial masculine ideals in Victorian and Edwardian Britain. Conley shows how the British Bluejacket as both patriotic defender and dutiful husband and father stood in sharp contrast to the stereotypic image of the brave but bawdy tar of the Georgian navy. This book will be essential reading for students of British imperial history, naval and military history, and gender studies.
Substantially revised and updated, this fourth edition of The UK financial system presents a comprehensive explanation of the workings of the institutions and markets which make up the UK financial system, and discusses the issues affecting them. It presents key theoretical developments such as asymmetric information, the efficient markets hypothesis, behavioural economics and the term structure of interest rates, thus providing an analytical framework to aid understanding of the institutional structure. Several case studies are provided throughout the book looking at the failure of various financial firms and the lessons that can be learned from these. Examples include Equitable Life, Barings Bank, the Bank of International Credit and Commerce (BCCI) and Long Term Capital Management. ;
The 2001 Foot and Mouth Disease epidemic in the UK, during which millions of animals were culled over a nine-month period, had a devastating and long-lasting impact on individuals and communities. In 2002 the European Parliament noted that policymakers need to have a better understanding of the social and psychological impact of such events on adults and children, on farmers and non-farmers. Although many studies about FMD have been published since 2001, this is the first to offer a detailed examination of the various ways in which the outbreak affected the fabric of rural life and rural culture across classes and across generations. Drawing on the experiences of farmers, the media, artists, writers, children and churches, this collection provides a space for academic inquiry, political and poetic reflection and artistic expression. ;
What does it mean to say that modern politics is personalised? To what extent is it more personalised than in the past, what is distinctive about contemporary forms of personalisation and are these changes enduring? This book addresses these questions. It re-thinks the concept of personalisation and develops an analytical framework for its study, in the process challenging current theorisation and bridging the political science and media studies approaches to the subject. Moreover, it presents new, rich and rigorous empirical data about how personalisation has developed over time in the UK, from 1945 to 2009. Its conceptual depth and empirical range makes the book a must-read for anyone researching the phenomenon of personalisation internationally, and a benchmark for future studies. It is also highly accessible to undergraduate and graduate students in political communication, British politics and media studies. ;
The book offers interdisciplinary analyses of the impact of Brexit on the rights of EU27 citizens in the UK, Britons in the UK and the EU, and third-country nationals. It combines a historical examination of citizenship and migration between the UK, Europe and the Commonwealth with the analysis of policies and of the experiences of the different groups impacted by Brexit. The book discusses Brexit within the larger history and dynamics of UK and EU citizenship and migration. The individual chapters look at how Brexit is transforming the citizenship rights of different groups, including issues of loss of citizenship and experiences of naturalisation. They further examine the fears of the groups impacted, and larger issues of belonging, marginalisation, political orientations and mobilisations that cross legal status, nationality, ethnicity, race and class.
The relationship between the state and the voluntary sector has changed significantly since 1948 when Beveridge's major report, Voluntary Action, was first published. Sixty years later, a group of historians analyse and reassess the impact of Beveridge's ideas about voluntary action for social advance in this timely volume. Using examples from the UK, Australasia and Canada, this book clearly articulates the importance and significance of Beveridge's ideas on voluntary action within an international context. With the emphasis of governments on the importance of the voluntary or 'third sector' and the development of policies and practices to enhance social capital, build civil society and engage communities, this book will be invaluable for those interested in how the third sector has evolved over time. It will be of interest to historians, social policy researchers, political theorists, economists and educationalists. ;
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. ;
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. ;