The 1832 Reform Act was a watershed in the history of modern Britain, profoundly affecting the composition of parliament and the course of all subsequent legislation.
This new edition of The Great Reform Act of 1832 extends and updates Eric J. Evans's classic account of the crucial political and economic issues.
The book:
* highlights the travails of Toryism at the end of the 1820s
* clarifies complex questions of policy
* shows the connections between the Reform Act of 1832 and subsequent radical activity and reform legislation
* presents revised electoral statistics
It presents an accessible and stimulating guide to the student of modern political history.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203131894

"Westeros is probably closer to medieval Britain than anything else." George R.R. Martin, creator of Game of Thrones Kings who were insane, infant or imprisoned; feuding families, disputed successions and monarchs executing their brothers; exiled nobles, war with France and enemies forced to unite against a common foe - the history of the Wars of the Roses is so filled with drama that it feels like fiction. In fact, it has inspired fiction. As Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin said: "I've drawn on many parts of history, but the Wars of the Roses is probably the one A Song Of Ice and Fire is closest to." Telling the story of the fifteenth century wars between Lancastrians and Yorkists, The Wars of the Roses follows the course of the conflict from the succession of infant King Henry VI right through to the defeat of rebellions under Henry VII. Its protagonists were twisted by their conflicting loyalties of blood, marriage and, above all, ambition. From mad Henry VI captured in battle to the mystery of the 'Princes in the Tower' and the truth behind Richard III's deformity, the book is a lively account of more than 30 tumultuous years. Illustrated with more than 200 colour and black-and-white photographs, artworks and maps, The Wars of the Roses reveals the scheming and betrayal, the skullduggery and murder behind the struggle to gain power - and then hold on to it.

A beautifully produced account of the history and importance of Hadrian's Wall, by a bestselling author and expert on Ancient Rome. Located at the far-flung and wild edge of the Roman Empire, Hadrian's Wall was constructed by Emperor Hadrian in the 120s AD. Vast in size and stretching from the east to the west coast of the northern part of Britannia, it is the largest monument left by the Roman empire - all the more striking because it lies so far from Rome. Today, it is one of the most visited heritage sites in the country. Yet the story of the Wall is far more than the development of a line of fortifications and the defence of a troublesome imperial frontier. Generation after generation of soldiers served there, with their families as well as traders and other foreign and local civilians in and around the army bases. The glimpses of this vibrant, multinational community in Adrian Goldsworthy's masterly book bring the bare stones to life. Goldsworthy also considers why and how the wall was built, and discusses the fascinating history, afterlife and archaeology of this unique ancient monument.

Written by a team of noted historians, these essays explore how ten 20th-century intellectuals and social reformers sought to adapt such familiar Victorian values as "civilisation", "domesticity", "conscience" and "improvement" to modern conditions of democracy, feminism and mass culture. Covering such figures as J.M. Keynes, E.M. Forster and Lord Reith of the BBC, these interdisciplinary studies scrutinize the children of the Victorians at a time when their private assumptions and public positions were under increasing strain in a rapidly changing world. "After the Victorians" is written in honour of the late Professor John Clive of Harvard, and uses, as he did, the method of biography to connnect the public and private lives of the generations who came after the Victorians. Peter Mandler is also author of "Aristocratic Government in the Age of Reform: Whigs and Liberals, 1830-1852", and editor of "The Uses of Charity: The Poor on Relief in the 19th Century Metropolis".

A study of Britain's imperial policy in the Middle East over oil, finance and defence. This book brings together different accounts of British policy in the early 20th century, particularly in the Ottoman Empire, to reflect a consistent pattern of preoccupation, policy-making and diplomacy.

The opening up of the British medical profession to women was largely due to Sophia Jex-Blake. As a result of her crusade, women's rights to higher education, professional careers and financial independence were more generally accepted. In this modern biography of Sophia Jex-Blake, Shirley Roberts charts the career of this important pioneer. Her dedication to the cause of women in medicine began when she met two leading women doctors in the United States - Lucy Sewall and Elizabeth Blackwell. On returning to Great Britain, she embarked on a five-year battle with the authorities of the University of Edinburgh for the right of women to take examinations for medical degrees. Later, her campaign through the law courts and in parliament won increasing public support, and was instrumental in two key developments: the passing of legislation allowing women access to medical training, and the foundation of the London School of Medicine for Women. She became Scotland's first woman doctor, and conducted her own successful medical practice in Edinburgh. However, the medical school for women which she founded in 1874, collapsed in a chaos of acrimony ten years later.

The Landscape of Industry is an integrated study which establishes a method for the analysis of complex industrial landscapes. Based on a study of the Ironbridge Gorge, the authors consider a range of material evidence, combining archaeological appraisal of the landscape with analysis of its characteristic settlement patterns and built forms. The authors consider the shifting relationship between landscape and industry. Industrialisation is itself shaped and constrained by the landscape in which it occurs, and the authors consider the interaction of environment and industry as the accumulation of an inheritance which in each generation influences the course and content of future development. The Landscape of Industry sets the agenda both for further study and for the integrated management of landscape resources.

First published in 1963, Pethick-Lawrence is a detailed biography of the life and career of Frederick William Pethick-Lawrence. Written by Vera Brittain, a close friend of Pethick-Lawrence during the last twenty-five years of his life, the book is a thorough and affectionate record of his personality and achievements. It makes extensive use of Pethick-Lawrence's well-organised personal papers to provide a detailed account of his activities, both public and private, and traces his life from birth, through his schooling, his meeting with Emmeline and involvement with the suffrage movement, his political career and role as Secretary of State for India, his marriage to Helen, and his death in 1961. Pethick-Lawrence is a personal view into the life of Frederick William Pethick-Lawrence, and twentieth-century society and politics.

From Revolution to Revolution (1973) examines England, Scotland and Wales from the revolution of 1688 when William became King, to the American Revolution of 1776. In this period lies the roots of modern Britain, as it went from being underdeveloped countries on the fringe of European civilization to a predominating influence in the world. This book examines the union of the island, development of an organized public opinion and national consciousness, as well as Parliament and its factions, the landed and business classes. Views on religion, art, architecture and the changing face of the countryside are also examined, as is the tension between London and the rest of the island. The important issues of colonial expansions in Ireland, America, India and Africa are also analysed.

The Court and the Country (1969) offers a fresh view and synthesis of the English revolution of 1640. It describes the origin and development of the revolution, and gives an account of the various factors - political, social and religious - that produced the revolution and conditioned its course. It explains the revolution primarily as a result of the breakdown of the unity of the governing class around the monarchy into the contending sides of the Court and the Country. A principal theme is the formation within the governing class of an opposition movement to the Crown. The role of Puritanism and of the towns is examined, and the resistance to Charles I is considered in relation to other European revolutions of the period.

A Nation of Change and Novelty (1990) ranges broadly over the political and literary terrain of the seventeenth century, examining the importance of the English Revolution as a decisive event in English and European history. It emphasises the historical significance of the English Revolution, exploring not only its causes but also its long term consequences, basing both in a broad social context and viewing it as a necessary condition of England's having nurtured the first Industrial Revolution.

Reflections on the Puritan Revolution (1986) examines the damage done by the Puritans during the English Civil War, and the enormous artistic losses England suffered from their activities. The Puritans smashed stained glass, monuments, sculpture, brasses in cathedrals and churches; they destroyed organs, dispersed the choirs and the music. They sold the King's art collections, pictures, statues, plate, gems and jewels abroad, and broke up the Coronation regalia. They closed down the theatres and ended Caroline poetry. The greatest composer and most promising scientist of the age were among the many lives lost; and this all besides the ruin of palaces, castles and mansions.

Cromwell and Communism (1930) examines the English revolution against the absolute monarchy of Charles I. It looks at the economic and social conditions prevailing at the time, the first beginnings of dissent and the religious and political aims of the Parliamentarian side in the revolution and subsequent civil war. The various sects are examined, including the Levellers and their democratic, atheistic and communistic ideals.

Allegiance in Church and State (1928) examines the evolution of ideas and ideals, their relation to political and economic events, and their influence on friends and foes in seventeenth-century England - which witnessed the beginning of both the constitutional and the intellectual transition from the old order to the new. It takes a careful look at the religious and particularly political ideas of the Nonjurors, a sect that argued for the moral foundations of a State and the sacredness of moral obligations in public life.

Leveller Manifestoes (1944) is a collection of primary manifestoes issued by the Levellers, the group which played an active and influential role in the English revolution of 1642-49. This book collects together rare pamphlets and tracts that are seldom available, and certainly not in one place for ease of research.

The 2020 toppling of slave-trader Edward Colston's statue by Black Lives Matter protesters in Bristol was a dramatic reminder of Britain's role in trans-Atlantic slavery, too often overlooked. Yet the legacy of that predatory economy reaches far beyond bronze memorials; it continues to shape the entire visual fabric of the country. Architect Victoria Perry explores the relationship between the wealth of slave-owning elites and the architecture and landscapes of Georgian Britain. She reveals how profits from Caribbean sugar plantations fed the opulence of stately homes and landscape gardens. Trade in slaves and slave-grown products also boosted the prosperity of ports like Bristol, Liverpool and Glasgow, shifting cultural influence towards the Atlantic west. New artistic centres like Bath emerged, while investment in poor, remote areas of Wales, Cumbria and Scotland led to their 're-imagining' as tourist destinations: Snowdonia, the Lakes and the Highlands. The patronage of absentee planters popularised British ideas of 'natural scenery'--viewing mountains, rivers and rocks as landscape art--and then exported the concept of 'sublime and picturesque' landscapes across the Atlantic. A Bittersweet Heritage unearths the slavery-tainted history of Britain's manors, ports, roads and countryside, and powerfully explains what this legacy means today.

"Family Ties" contributes to the academic and popular debate on the family by providing a vivid and accessible exploration of the dynamics of life in English families of all ranks from the mid-sixteenth century to the end of World War I. Organized both chronologically and thematically, and accompanied by sections on methods, approaches, and sources, it explores such fundamental historical issues as cause and effect; continuity and change; and the nature and reliability of evidence. It also examines several important sub-themes, including the history of childhood and of marriage across a broad social and chronological span.
Mary Abbott draws on a rich vein of personal testimony by including extensive contemporary quotations supported by a variety of unusual and, in many cases, previously unpublished illustrations, and a wide range of sources including images, artefacts, and buildings. "Family Ties" provides fascinating insight into methods of historical investigation and encourages the reader to challenge traditional documentary sources.

In this ground-breaking study of the medieval parliament, Roland Tanner gives the Scottish Parliament a human face by examining the actions and motives of those who attended. In the past, the Scottish Parliament was seen as a weak and ineffective institution - damned because of its failure to be more like its English counterpart. But Roland Tanner shows that the old picture of weakness is far from accurate. In its very different way, the Scottish Parliament was every bit as powerful as the English institution. The 'Three Estates' (the clergy, nobility and burgh representatives who attended Parliament) were able to wield a surprising degree of control over the Crown during the fifteenth century. For instance, they threatened to lock James I's taxation in a box to which he, the king, would have no access, made James II swear not to alter acts of Parliament, and prevented him from using his own lands and wealth as patronage for his supporters, and forbade James III to leave the country. Roland Tanner has avoided a dry constitutional approach. Instead he has sought to bring Parliament to life through the people who attended, the reasons why they attended, and the complex interactions which occurred when all the most wealthy, powerful and ambitious people in the kingdom gathered in one place.

Stained glass is arguably the most appealing of the achievements of the medieval craftsman, synthesizing monumental painting with the best of medieval architecture, but it is also the least-understood of the medieval arts. Drawing upon recent research in English medieval art-historical studies, "English Medieval Stained Glass" is a comprehensive survey of the art and business of producing stained glass windows, intended to both stimulate further research and to heighten awareness of the need to preserve this fragile art form. It considers stained glass in relation to architecture and other arts and, by examining contemporary documents, it throws valuable light on workshop organization, prices, patronage and iconography. Stained glass attracted outstanding craftsmen who were in the forefront of the main artistic innovations in English medieval art. Their significance is highlighted in this study which also makes use of the plentiful documentary material which throws light on workshop organization and practice, the role of patrons and the important contribution made by stained glass to our knowledge of medieval religions, beliefs and cults.

Through a series of sharply focused studies spanning three centuries, David Rollison explores the rise of capitalist manufacturing in the English countryside and the revolution in consciousness that accompanied it. Combining the empiricism of English historiography with the rationalism of Annales, and drawing on ideas from a wide range of disciplines, he argues that the explosive implications of the rise of rural industry created new social formations and altered the communal, cultural and social contexts of peoples lives. Using localized case studies of families and individuals the book starts with significant detail and moves out to build up a subtle and innovative view of English cultural identities in the early modern period.

During the Second World War the Royal Navy's vitally important Anti-submarine Experimental Establishment was secretly moved from Portland in Dorset to the Ayrshire village of Fairlie, to escape German bombing on the south coast. For the next six years it occupied the boatyard of yacht builder William Fife on the Firth of Clyde. During this time, highly confidential world-leading research on the acoustic detection of submarines by asdic - now known as sonar - was carried out by hundreds of scientists, officers and local men and women based at Fairlie. As experiments took place into new ways of sinking German U-boats, the peace of the quiet village was shattered. Winston Churchill described the work done at Fairlie as critical to winning the Battle of the Atlantic and ultimately the war. The research remained relevant to anti-submarine warfare long after the war, and is still relevant today. Fairlie's role in the war was not disclosed until relatively recently. Highly illustrated throughout and making use of previously unpublished material, this book tells the full story of the establishment at Fairlie for the first time. It describes the impact it had on local people, and their relationship with the naval officers and scientists who came to work there.

Jacobean Public Theatre recovers for the modern reader the acting, production and performance values of the public theatre of Jacobean London. It relates this drama to the popular culutre of the day and concludes with a close study of four important plays, including King Lear, which emerge in an unexpected light as the products of popular tradition.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203169166

Over the last twenty-five years, archaeology has revolutionized knowledge of the early history of towns in Britain. In "Archaeology in British Towns," Patrick Ottoway examines the crucial work of the urban archaeologist during this exciting period and considers a variety of long-term research programs which have revealed new information about towns and the lives of their inhabitants.
Ottoway recounts the story of Britain's first town, the Roman colony of Colchester, drawing from archaeological research conducted at such great historic centers as London and York, as well as at lesser known places such as Hull, Perth, and Aberdeen, examining the course of urban development in the Roman, Anglo-Saxon and Medieval periods. As a background to the discoveries themselves, the book looks at the increasingly sophisticated archaeological techniques. The work of the urban archaeologist is described in close detail, along with a thorough examination of the complex socialand economic institutions which form towns. Some of the problems of preserving the urban past are also considered, and Ottoway illustrates these difficulties with reference to recent cases in which the interests of archaeology and property development have clashed.
"Archaeology in British Towns" is of interest to those involved in archaeology, as well as to students of early social history.

London has its social problems - this is evident from the increasingly unpleasant experience of daily life in the capital, from homelessness and unemployment to frustrating transport facilities and the general bad quality of the environment. However it is not only citizens of London who are suffering but the business community as well. London is having to face increasing competition from other European cities. There is growing appreciation and debate about these problems from companies, political parties, local government and community organisations. This book provides a solid analysis of what has gone wrong and explores policy directions that could make the city a more humane and livable place. Beginning with a discussion of the basic elements of a home, a job and a means of travelling around, it becomes clear that even in these essential aspects London is failing. A feature of the crisis is an increasingly divided city with conditions for the poorer citizens worsening all the time. The author's consider the quality of the environment. They examine issues such as the greening of the city and the need for sustainability, and the privatization and dehumanization of public spaces.

Originally published in 1936 and authored by an ardent Scottish Nationalist and convert to Roman Catholicism, this concise book begins in the Gaelic era and charts the turbulent history of Catholicism in Scotland from then to the early 20th Century through the Norman Conquest of England and the coming of Saint Margaret. The contribution of the unbroken line of Stuart Kings to the national consciousness is emphasized and an outspoken account of the origins of John Knox's Presbyterian movement given. The book also discusses the persecution of Catholic missionaries in the 17th and 18th centuries.