Books published by Manchester University Press

Decorators and designers have long experimented with materials, objects and technologies to enhance sensory awareness and wellbeing. But existing histories of interior design rarely feature any discussion of the senses. This volume offers a corrective, exploring how sight, touch, smell, hearing and taste have been mobilized within various forms of interior. Grouped into three thematic clusters, exploring sensory politics, aesthetic entanglements and sensual economies, the chapters in this volume shed light on sensory expressions and experiences of interior design throughout history. They examine domestic and public interiors from the late-sixteenth century to the present day, giving back the body its central role in the understanding and use of interiors. Drawing from fields including design history, design studies and sensory studies, The senses in interior design explores fundamental questions about identities, social structures and politics that reveal the significance of the senses in all aspects of interior design and decoration.

[Not final] Intimate afterlives of empire is the first comprehensive study of post-imperial autobiography as an important genre of cultural memory. investigate the relationship between individual and cultural memory at the end of empire as voiced through the practice of autobiographical writing. Through close readings of more than a dozen autobiographies and memoirs/Through close readings of almost twenty autobiographies written after the break-up of the British Empire, it examines how individuals engage with the changing narrative landscape brought about by decolonisation/ it examines how changes to cultural narratives about the imperial past manifest themselves in personal life stories. . It argues that individuals navigate the changing narrative landscape of decolonisation by way of personal memory work, repositioning themselves in relation to a contemporary audience. The book conceives of decolonisation as a narrative shift, though not a total break, from the logics of the colonial era. /The narrative changes brought about by decolonisation has previously been studied at the level of collective or national memory. Intimate afterlives of empire is the first book to examine how individuals have responded to this changing narrative landscape. It argues that authors are at once affected by and seek to affect cultural memories of the colonial past. /It argues that authors respond dialogically to shifts in the cultural memories of empire, inserting themselves in a wider narrative. As decolonisation brought changes to the narrative landscape, individual writers ... Studying the dialogues between individual and cultural memory, the book argues that autobiographers are at once influenced by and seek to influence the cultural memory of empire and its legacies (and the authors' own position in both)/ trace the responses to the moment of decolonisation as a narrative eventEach chapter focuses on one trope and one autobiographical sub-genre so that the result is an anatomy of the genre of the end of empire autobiography as a whole.

Victorian Legs studies the science (sometimes spurious) and sexuality (often frivolous) of legs during the Victorian period. Legs occupy a particularly vexed position in Victorian culture. While legs formed the foundation (or the columns) of the civilized subject, only certain legs embodied this model. The social rules of who could show their legs remained gendered, at least for the higher classes. For the most part, men exhibited and admired, while women concealed and demurred. The stage became the generally accepted site for the display of women's legs, witnessing the merger of the athletic and the erotic. Armed with the support of dubious science, white men identified the particular physiology of their legs as evidence of their evolutionary superiority, categorizing non-European legs as degenerative, while concealing women's legs in varying layers of restrictive clothing. In addition to examining the science, sexuality, and even technology of legs during the Victorian period, this book offers close readings of popular novels by Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, and Anthony Trollope, among others. The Victorians obsessed over legs as designators of the hierarchal levels of humanity and as erotic sites with specific rules for concealment and exposure. This book shows that while legs made us human, they could also dehumanize.

An idea for a theatre ecology is the first volume in a loose trilogy of texts dedicated to rethinking theatre's relationship with the earth. Unlike existing publications in this field, the book does not seek to unpack the meaning of performances, plays and performance lectures that deal with explicitly environmentally themes (climate change, pollution, flooding, soil erosion, etc.). On the contrary, it unfolds an alternative theory of theatre ecology that reflects on the ecology that is immanent to the theatrical medium itself. The aim is to recalibrate what ecology and theatre are considered to be once they are approached as being implicated in and with each other, from the very beginning. To do that, the book unfolds its argument, patiently and rigorously, over six chapters that investigates the genealogies, methods, practices, and histories of theatre ecology. The book provides Theatre and Performance Studies with an immanent ecology that will contribute to the work of thinkers and practitioners within those disciplines as well as clarifying the specific contribution that theatre can make to the Environmental Humanities.

The Toronto New Wave cinema that emerged in Canada in the 1980s spawned the careers of David Cronenberg, Don McKellar, Vincenzo Natali, Patricia Rozema, Sarah Polley, and many other unsung Canadian auteurs who produced films that betray anarchistic philosophies and apocalyptic propensities. This book recognizes the anarchist-apocalyptic vergence that the movies stage and interrogate and develops a new analytical paradigm that is consonant with the Canadian film production exigencies in which the Toronto New Wave was immersed. Chapters include discussion of historical contexts and auteur interviews in concert with sophisticated film analyses to explore David Cronenberg's earliest films and the anarchist-apocalypse effect they engendered, Don McKellar's cohort of collaborators and the anarchist idea of "kissing this world goodbye," the anarchist-apocalyptic critique of cybernetic technology, Vincenzo Natali's anarchist-apocalyptic critique of industrial technologyand class-based incarceration, films and auteurs dedicated to anarchist-queering and anarchist-gendering the apocalypse, zombies and the end of time in the post-millennium neo-TNW films, and beyond. The text's eloquent dance with film studies' admixture of theory, history, and analyses is a ballet of insight and essential reading for anyone interested in the study of film and the exciting anarchist-apocalyptic contributions made to it by the Toronto New Wave and some of its progeny. The idea of a pending social apocalypse is a prescient issue in contemporary cinema theory and this study offers an original approach to issues keyed to anarchist values and apocalyptic revelation in an historically important but under-represented Canadian filmmaking group.

[Not final]This book emerged from two key questions: Did British imperialism "end" at decolonisation or did it merely adapt to changing circumstances? And why has ethnonationalism become so powerful in so many post-colonial states? It argues that British colonial officials in London and on-the-spot formed a tacit preference for Burmese ethnonationalism to combat the more revolutionary trends within Burmese politics. The relationship between imperialists and ethnonationalists may at first seem paradoxical: ethnonationalists, by definition, demand political independence. But formal rule was often the least of British imperialists' concerns, a "burden" even. The far more important end was the preservation of the foothold of British capital and geo-strategic operations in the long term. This argument has very important implications for the study of both modern imperialism and ethnonationalist politics. In expanding scholarly understanding of modern imperialism, the book bridges the gap between colonial "divide-and-rule" policies and neo-colonial "Containment" policies during the Cold War, demonstrating the continuity between these phenomena. It also provides a key case study for how imperialists - and authoritarian states in general - utilise ethnonationalist politics as a force of passive revolution: providing the aesthetics of revolution while preventing real social and economic transformation. In Burma/Myanmar itself, it identifies the origins of the military junta's present-day racial regime that scapegoats Burmese Indians and Muslims as foreign invaders. The present-day Rohingya genocide is a result of the persistence of this racial regime. Ultimately, this book uncovers the relationship between imperialism, capitalism, and ethnonationalism, a relationship that is disturbingly symbiotic and mutually-reinforcing.

Murder, summary execution, and legal scandal in late 19th-century French colonial Senegal are vividly described from the conflicting perspectives of the French colonial administration, the French legal system, local politicians, and activist métis, as well as through the eyes of a young widow pursuing justice against impossible odds. In this book, Ruth Ginio expertly analyses key aspects of French colonial expansion along the Senegal River and the politico-legal machinations and distortions the colonial administration resorted to when confronted with a strong and legitimate legal challenge. The book is a micro-history centred on Ndiereby Bah, a young woman wrongfully widowed, whose dogged pursuit of justice led to harassment, intimidation, and the cynical distortion of French law and political process by an administration determined to assert its narrative. It also offers a fascinating account of how this story has remained and percolated through Senegalese cultural memory, remaining relevant more than a hundred years after these events took place.

[Not final] Proxy wars systematically dismantle the foundations of the states they target, leaving a legacy of violence, fractured governance, and eroded sovereignty. This book introduces the concept of "state-wrecking" to explain how external interventions--through support for insurgent actors--undermine political legitimacy, intensify violence, disrupt territorial control, and entrench cycles of instability. Using Afghanistan as a case study, the book offers a detailed exploration of how proxy wars devastate fragile states and obstruct state-building and statehood in the target county.The book moves beyond traditional studies of proxy wars that focus on global and regional power competition. Instead, it focuses on the procedural dynamics of proxy wars and highlights the internal consequences of these conflicts for the target state. Through a combination of innovative theoretical insights and comprehensive empirical research, it examines Pakistan's role in supporting the Taliban in the war in Afghanistan, the limitations of U.S.-led counterinsurgency efforts, and the broader implications for Afghanistan's sovereignty and political cohesion. Drawing on interviews, archival evidence, and conflict analysis, the book reveals how proxy wars dismantle state institutions and deepen social and political divisions.By reframing proxy wars as tools of state fragmentation rather than mere instruments of geopolitical strategy, the book sheds light on their long-term impact. It highlights the role of external actors in entrenching violence and governance failures, complicating peacebuilding efforts.Rigorously argued and deeply insightful, this book makes a significant contribution to understanding the intersections of modern warfare, state fragility, and international security. It offers an essential framework for scholars, policymakers, and readers seeking to address the enduring challenges of fragile states and conflict-ridden regions.

[Not final] A Grand Strategy for Peace is the first extended 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 a detailed 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.

The twentieth century witnessed the end of traditional empire.The impact of nationalism brought down many empires to disintegration. Yet, there were variations. Some empires retained their domains longer by changing their cloaks. This book compares how Russia and China survived. They both maneuvered nationalism through communist revolutions. In form, the Bolsheviks transformed the Tsarist domain into a union of multiple nation-states, while the Chinese revolutionaries re-integrated the Qing territories into one nation-state with autonomous units for ethnic minorities. To understand such divergence underneath convergence, this book compares the leading elites of the two revolutions. In comparison with the USSR-founding Bolsheviks, the Chinese communists were ethnically more homogeneous but less international. Their outlook was to establish an enclosed polity rather than a union institutionally open to incorporate new member-states. Through a protracted war the Chinese communists developed skills of reconciling the traditional "China" with revolutionary values. This rendered the Bolshevik way of entirely dissolving "Russia" in "Soviet" unnecessary. Moreover, the Chinese communists were weaker at borderlands vis-a-vis their rivalries. They were thus more cautious, rejecting the Bolshevik strategy of weaponizing "national self-determination". This book highlights the crucial features of the Chinese communist revolution and shows how they affected China's transition to nation-state: geographical isolation buffering external interference, bottom-up mass mobilization in a protracted course, and the longtime position of being the weak side of confrontation. The book will be useful to scholar interested in revolution, empire, nationalism, comparative historical sociology, and the biographies of communist leaders in Russia and China.

Invoking Empire analyses local perceptions and impacts of imperial governance in Britain's settler colonies to explore the entanglement of imperialism and settler colonialism in the late nineteenth century. The book brings together nine case studies from settler and Indigenous communities across Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa to demonstrate the multiplicity of ways colonial subjects leveraged imperial authority in their everyday lives. Asking how and why colonial inhabitants attempted to co-opt imperial authority in diverse contexts ranging from an 1868 smallpox outbreak in British Columbia to the Bechuanaland Wars of 1882-85, Invoking Empire provides valuable microhistorical and comparative insights into the lived experiences of imperial political subjecthood during the transition to self-government in the settler colonies. Moreover, by critically assessing the failures of imperial citizenship to achieve tangible results, the book offers crucial insights into the complicity of British governments and publics in settler colonialism. Adopting an integrative approach that brings Indigenous and settler experiences together, Invoking Empire contributes a novel approach to imperial citizenship that captures the diverse cultural and political connotations of imperial connectivity. Additionally, the book's approach to settler colonialism as deeply entangled in imperial continuities contributes to ongoing efforts to reconceptualize national settler histories through a transnational lens. Through its deliberate attention to the complexity and indeterminacy of the late nineteenth century, Invoking Empire provides an essential window into to the messiness, the hopefulness, and the often times paradoxical nature of imperial subjecthood during a period of massive and consequential political changes.

From an international boycott in the 1970s to current medical warnings against ultra-processed foods and their suspected role in the global obesity crisis, Nestlé has come under intense public scrutiny. For its critics, the Swiss giant epitomises the negative impacts of the food industry on development and the Global South. What has so far eluded historical inquiry is how, from its creation in 1866 through much of the twentieth century, Nestlé shaped, and was shaped by, the ideas and practices of international development. In Formulating development: How Nestlé shaped the aid industry, historian Lola Wilhelm takes the reader from the Alpine valleys of nineteenth century Switzerland to the hospitals of post-independence West Africa. She finds that Nestlé earned a seat at the table of international aid by partnering respected institutions, Save the Children and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation. This book tells how Nestlé's humanitarian ventures brokered the Red Cross in wartime Europe, of its clinical trials in Helvetic and Senegalese maternities, and of its agricultural modernisation schemes in Switzerland, Mexico, India, and the Ivory Coast. But these corporate manoeuvres were never to everyone's taste. Against the backdrop of war and the downfall of Europe's colonial empires, the book uncovers the long-forgotten alliances and controversies that continue to shape the aid industry. Based on extensive research from Nestlé's archives, the records of leading aid agencies, and the experiences of hospital patients and purported aid recipients, this book interrogates the legacies of this history for international development today.

A new genre for television? challenges the notion that the dramatised history documentaries aired by British public service broadcasters in the 2000s were mere hybrids or experimental outliers and instead demonstrates that they formed a televisual genre in their own right. Grounded in genre theory, Hardy charts the genre's meteoric rise, creative peak and eventual decline, all the while revealing the institutional dynamics that shaped its development. Offering a fresh and essential distinction between docudramas and drama documentaries, the book contributes to television history with exclusive interviews from key BBC and Channel 4 figures, many of whom have never been publicly interviewed before. Analysing landmark programs, this book illustrates how these New History Drama Documentaries reshaped historical storytelling on screen by way of the new analytical framework of 'sense' and 'sensuousness', and imagines a model for how national histories might be told compellingly through screen in the future.

Matters of ancestry, race and racism endure within Heathenry, a diversly constituted new religious movement drawing inspiration from the pre-Christian religions of northern Europe. Most Heathens, termed 'inclusivist' or 'universalist', welcome all with a spiritual interest in the ancient heathen past, regardless of ethnicity, sexuality or gender. But a 'folkish' Heathen minority, often identifying as Odinist, centre their thinking around ethnocentricity and heterosexist values. Racist Heathenry requires scrutiny as it has been influential in recent terrorist incidents in the UK, Norway, USA and New Zealand. Faith, folk and the far right offers the first detailed examination of extremist Heathenry and occultism in the UK and how anti-racist Heathens act to counter this discourse.Part I explores the spectrum of Heathen practice today and the historical origins of racist Heathenry in nineteenth century Germanic romanticism and twentieth century folkish nationalism. The three main extremist Heathen organisations in the UK, the Odinic Rite, the Odinist Fellowship and Woden's Folk, and their claims to the 'authentic' 'folk-religion' of the 'ancestral' English, are examined. The book extends its discussion to the neo-Nazi occult organization the Order of the Nine Angles (O9A), and the wider racist Heathen cultural scene in Black Metal and Dark Folk music. Part II analyses how anti-racist Heathens are countering racist discourse, including 'Declaration 127' which opposes Heathen hate groups, protests by inclusivist Heathens at far-right rallies, inter-faith forums and an active presence on social media platforms.Faith, folk and the far right makes an important contribution to understanding the intersecting fields of new religious movements, nationalist history and racist politics.

The twentieth century was a period when women started gaining access to science education and careers in unprecedented numbers, but why have they continued to be largely absent from the 'collective memory of science'? This volume seeks to investigate the politics of (in)visibility that helped relegate women to peripheral positions in the annals of twentieth-century science and understand how they negotiated their circumstances in regional and socio-political contexts that transcend the usual focus on the Western world. The chapters draw on a wide range of historical material and a multilingual archive in languages as diverse as Chinese, Czech, English, Greek, Hindi, Hungarian, Japanese and Romanian. They combine individual and collective portraits of women in science with discussions of institutional structures, work and associational cultures, science and domesticity, the pedagogy of science and science communication. Moving beyond simply theorizing (in)visibility, the contributors offer strategies for mainstreaming the history of women in science and rethinking our definitions of science, scientists and scientific labour to write more inclusive histories of knowledge making, pedagogy and communication.

Critical Games is about the games we play (knowingly or not), the ways we play them (for fun, but also to win, and to gain approval from others), and what happens when they get out of hand. With readings of a range of cultural texts, from the Ancient Greeks to contemporary auto-fiction, it pinpoints what is critical in games and game-playing. Games and play are often seen as unserious, even childish. But many of our occupations and interactions are structured like games, with rules and rituals that make sense only once we agree to play them, or that seem incomprehensible if we do not realise we are already playing. This book develops and interrogates theories of play and gaming, from Huizinga to Bourdieu, with a particular focus on the games played by literary critics and literary authors. Drawing on (often self-critical) autobiography, as well as readings in texts across a range of languages, Tim Beasley-Murray plays with academic conventions to highlight what is at stake in them, turning to the Game of Literature, from Kafka to Carrère, to seek models and warnings of the outcomes of taking games too seriously, or not taking them seriously enough.

This ethnographic study examines the hopes, imaginaries, and everyday lives of young male migrants from Western and Central Africa who find themselves 'stuck' in Morocco. The book deepens and humanises understandings of sub-Saharan migration, exploring migrants' conceptualisation of 'the adventure' as an epic quest to carve out a better life and future in the face of violent, transnational politics of migration. The adventure sheds light on the moral, gendered, affective, social and political aspects of migrants' own experiences and representations of their journeys and struggles. Steering away from aesthetics of despair, victimhood and criminality, the book focuses on young men's efforts to face up to bordering practices to retain control over their lives and mobility. The adventure provides a crucial light on migrants' own experiences and understandings of their entrapped mobility in Douar Hajja and Maâdid, two peripheral neighbourhoods of the Moroccan capital Rabat. The book's focus on how migrants articulate and act on their entrapped mobility offers important insights to critically engage with prominent concepts like illegality in policy debates and scholarship. Such focus is crucial to unstitch the Eurocentric focus in analyses of migration articulated around 'crisis'. The adventure is a quest for 'une vie plus supportable' (a more bearable life), a hopeful and risky journey to become the person one aspires to be, to reach a place where one's dignity and rights might be respected.

Saga emotions is an essential exploration of the representation and function of key emotional states in Old Norse-Icelandic saga literature. Ranging widely across the more historically oriented sagas, the thirteen chapters collected here each take as their starting point a particular Old Norse emotion term - such as reiði (anger), gleði (joy), or the peculiarly Old Norse víghugr (killing-mood) - offering a detailed account of the term's usage in the saga corpus. Illuminating textual case studies are also provided to demonstrate the literary function in saga narrative of each emotion term. A key aim of the book is to avoid potentially misleading and anachronistic projections of modern emotional systems and terminology onto the very different emotion repertoire of Old Norse saga writers. Thus, the book's methodological approach maps the native, often overlapping, emotion models of Norse textual culture in fine-grained detail. It charts changes over time that reflect the emergence of new historical and social conditions in medieval Iceland, in particular the far-reaching impact of Christian emotional systems. Written by leading international scholars in saga and emotion studies, Saga emotions adds a much-needed level of emotional granularity to the study of saga literature. Breaking new ground in both saga studies and studies in emotion and their history, this important essay collection pioneers a lexically oriented approach to the textual representation of emotions as complex psychological and physical phenomena and thus provides a secure foundation for future research into the sagas, literature and history of medieval Iceland.

[Not final] On 9 October 1934, a terrorist gunman assassinated King Aleksandar I of Yugoslavia before a crowd of hundreds of onlookers in Marseille. The Croatian ultranationalist Ustashe was responsible for the murder. The Ustashe hoped that the king's death would cause the collapse of Yugoslavia and the liberation of the Croat people. This book examines the circumstances, processes, and trajectories that shaped the Ustashe terrorists and their attack in Marseille. Its focus is historical, yet it maintains an eye on approaches to the study of contemporary terrorism and how recent manifestations of the phenomenon may inform understandings of past political violence, and vice versa. The book poses questions that transcend chronological boundaries: what prompts people to join terrorist organisations? How are these people 'radicalised' to commit violence? Are processes of 'radicalisation' generalisable across time? How do terrorists understand, explain, and justify their actions? What roles do women play in terrorism? Which factors, internal and external to a terrorist act, facilitate its success? Can states give terrorists a fair trial? In responding to these questions, Murder in Marseille bridges the scholarly gap between historical and contemporary terrorism, paying attention to, and often guided by, current concerns, ideas, theories, and notions about such violence while remaining firmly rooted in the history of early twentieth-century Europe.

[Not final] The Global 1923 looks at Treaty of Lausanne, one of the twentieth century's most controversial international agreements, that settled the long great war of the Eastern Mediterranean. Drawing upon extensive research on British, French, Italian, Turkish, Greek, American, Armenian, and other archival material, The Global 1923 demonstrates the importance of reconsidering the peace settlement in Lausanne within the evolving global and regional power contexts. The findings call attention to diverging peace aims within the so-called united allied front and underscore the degree to which the negotiators themselves considered the Eastern Question as the framework to shape the settlement. In doing so, the role of the alliances, the military might, the strive for winning the public opinion, and the business elites are being foregrounded. The book discusses the role of imperialism and the Eastern Question discourse at the Lausanne Peace Conference. The Global 1923 reassesses the different strategies pursued by the delegations involved in the 1923 conference. Though the Soviets were only allowed to be part in settling only one issue at the Conference, the Global 1923 highlights the Turco-Soviet relations that shaped the settlement. In similar vein, the Kurdish, Armenian and Arab grievances that sprouted out of the Great War and were neglected at Lausanne constitute some of the contested and intricate issues in the Middle Eastern politics. The American influence, even if the US delegation had only an observer status, is addressed in a broader political economical setting. Finally, the Global 1923 reveals how the entanglement and the contestation at Lausanne continues to inform our contemporary politics today.

Gathering essays from an international team of emerging and established scholars, Translating Petrarch in early modern Britain explores the many ways in which Petrarch's famous poetic works, the Canzoniere and Triumphi, were translated, adapted, reshaped and transformed by English and Scottish writers across the early modern period. For English-language poets, translating Petrarch's verse meant joining a prestigious transnational literary movement. While Wyatt and Surrey's translations famously launched the English sonnet, versions of Petrarch remained a crucial component of Britain's literary tradition throughout the period, featuring in lyric sequences, poetic miscellanies, and even songbooks. Through their literary and commercial success, these productions also contributed to shaping early modern Britain's cultures of manuscript and print. This collection examines the specific role of translation, in all its early modern variety, as a key mode of poetic, imaginative, and cultural engagement with one the most revered and imitated authors in early modern Europe. It revisits well-known works such as Tottel's Miscellany, the productions of the 'Castalian band' at the Scottish court of James IV/I, and versions of the Triumphi by Elizabeth I, Mary Sidney Herbert, and Anna Hume. It also pays attention to lesser-known pieces by anonymous, or 'minor' translators, poets considered marginal to English Petrarchism, and alternative modes of translation such as indirect translation and musical transposition. By examining the interconnected trajectories of both the Canzoniere and Triumphi in English translation, this collection sheds new light on early modern translation practices, British Petrarchism, and its place in the European literary landscape.

The nineteenth-century present explores the multiple ways in which history was understood, structured, and reassessed in literary, theological, and political contexts across the nineteenth century. This scope of the chapters covers a range of British authors from Walter Scott to G.K. Chesterton, demonstrating how the issues raised regarding historicity in recent methodological debates in all aspects of society, including social hierarchies, religion, science, gender, and burgeoning mass media were already concerns in the nineteenth century. The book questions the opposition between state-sanctioned narratives and counter-histories, the challenges of scientific breakthroughs, and the political and metaphysical tensions between the idea of open-ended continuity and the expectation of an ending. Employing a range of methodologies and welcoming a diversity of representations, these wide-ranging case studies demonstrate the diversity of writing (about) history in nineteenth-century literary texts and its continuities, as well as differences with twentieth and twenty-first century historiographical approaches.

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.

Few women in the history of cinema have taken on as many creative roles as Ida Lupino. Her forty eight year career spanned five decades and a variety of genres, mediums and creative roles. This book delves into who Ida Lupino was on both sides of the camera, both as a constructed screen persona and a creative individual working in the industry. Born in London in 1918 into a prestigious and long-established theatrical family, a teenage Lupino relocated to Hollywood to pursue a career in acting, signed first to Paramount Pictures and then Warner Brothers. By the 1950s she was acting for leading Hollywood studios and directing, producing and writing social realism films for her own independent film company, The Filmakers. This book examines Ida Lupino's impressive cinematic and televisual career by exploring key themes that regularly occurred throughout her work and life. Concerned specifically with gender relations, alienation and isolation and disability, the study argues both for Lupino's importance within cinematic history and the position of women within the industry more generally. The volume aims to better remember Lupino, shining light on her overlooked and under researched acting skills and star persona, as well as her established position as a serious filmmaker.

In May 2019, Narendra Modi won the world's largest election. Defying expectations, he led his Bharatiya Janata Party to a resounding victory, with the highest vote share for any party in thirty years, and was re-elected as India's Prime Minister. What accounts for the scale of Modi's win? Why, despite economic hardship and social strife, did Indians vote so overwhelmingly for him and the BJP? This book explains the economic, social and cultural processes that shaped political passions in India during the spring and summer of 2019. It takes an interdisciplinary approach, bringing together a stellar team of economists, political scientists, sociologists, historians and geographers to explain Modi's win. Together, the contributors compel us to take seriously the 'structures of feeling' in politics. Love him or hate him, Modi secured for himself a decisive re-election as India's Prime Minister. Passionate politics is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand how that happened.

[Not final] The decades following the Second World War saw new mothers' experiences of loneliness, boredom and unhappiness become increasingly widely acknowledged. The language of postnatal depression was often attached to this, but mothers themselves articulated and organised around their discontent in ways that challenged medical models. Unhappy Mothers explores the ways that mothers' discontent came to be recognised by five communities: general practitioners, health visitors, self-help groups, and feminists both inside and outside the academy. Drawing attention to the social, political, and professional contexts within which this knowledge developed, the book argues that expertise about unhappy mothering was increasingly claimed by women themselves. The solutions to the problems of early mothering that they proposed were social and political. Using an extensive array of sources that includes local and national newspapers, autobiographies, medical texts, social surveys, feminist writings, self-help literature, and sociological studies, Unhappy Mothers shines a light on those who spoke into the silence around unhappy motherhood.

Debating medieval Europe serves as an entry point for studying and teaching medieval history. Where other textbooks simply present foundational knowledge or introduce sources, this collection of essays provides the reader with the frameworks they will need in order to understand the unique historiography of this fascinating period. Digging beneath the accounts provided elsewhere, it exposes the contested foundations of apparently settled narratives, opening a space for discussion and debate, as well as providing essential context for the intimidating array of specialist scholarship. This second volume covers the central and later Middle Ages, c. 1050 - c. 1450. The chapters move from discussion of the 'great institutions' of medieval Europe - the papacy and the empire, both of which traced their inheritance from Roman antiquity - to consider central themes in the study of its different geographical regions across this long period, from France and Iberia through the British Isles and the German-speaking lands to Sicily and the Latin East.