This book, first published in 1978, examines the independent political action by the thousands of working people in the town of Merthyr Tydfil, Wales. After a mass rally on the hills above the town, thousands of workers under a reg flag broke into insurrection - a detachment of Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders marched into the town to restore order. The rebels repulsed the soldiers and held the town, with at least two dozen workers killed. Within weeks of the Rising, trade unions began to appear in South Wales, and this book argues that these events were central to the emergence of a Welsh working class.

This book, first published in 1946, analyses the state of the world at the close of the Second World War. Global power was passing from Britain to the United States and the Soviet Union, with the US being involved in every part of the world, Russia dominant in eastern Europe and the world looked a very uncertain place. This survey of the main three powers examines their changing conditions and foreign policies.

This book, first published in 1942, examines the economic necessities, defensive and offensive, basic and strategic, involved in waging war. Written with total global war raging, it analyses the unprecedented demands placed on the economic system of a nation, and looks at the great shifts of productive effort and limits on consumption that were needed.

This book, first published in 1974, examines the diverse nature of popular protest in Britain. Movements varied immensely from one another in their objectives, their social composition, their tactics and the geographical milieu.

In a comparative study drawing on material from the United States and Britain, this book, first published in 1992, examines how various types of industrial, political, urban and sectarian disorder occur. In the early 1990s public disorder returned to the top of the political agenda, and yet was consistently met with confusion and misunderstanding. Public discussion was superficial and emotive, contributing little helpful enlightenment and creating no prospect of sensible policy change. This book presents the 'flashpoints' model, to explain that public disorder is most likely to occur where a group perceives that its rights are being violated or denied. The model is demonstrated in a selection of vivid case studies which are both international and historical in scope, covering British and American inner-city riots, sports spectator violence, and the Troubles in Northern Ireland. In particular it traces the growth of police powers and assesses how effective democratic control over police behaviour actually is. It also considers the assertion that media coverage can have an inflammatory effect on public disorder.

England's Second Reformation reassesses the religious upheavals of mid-seventeenth-century England, situating them within the broader history of the Church of England and its earlier Reformations. Rather than seeing the Civil War years as a destructive aberration, Anthony Milton demonstrates how they were integral to (and indeed the climax of) the Church of England's early history. All religious groups - parliamentarian and royalist alike - envisaged changes to the pre-war church, and all were forced to adapt their religious ideas and practices in response to the tumultuous events. Similarly, all saw themselves and their preferred reforms as standing in continuity with the Church's earlier history. By viewing this as a revolutionary 'second Reformation', which necessarily involved everyone and forced them to reconsider what the established church was and how its past should be understood, Milton presents a compelling case for rethinking England's religious history.

THE #2 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 'A gripping story of human frailty, love, loss, sadness, and tragedy' Daily Mail She is the most public and least understood woman in Britain. Diana called her a Rottweiler. But spend two minutes with Camilla and you understand why Charles fell for her. The relationship between King Charles III and Camilla, Queen Consort, is one of the most remarkable love stories of the age. It has endured against all the odds, and in the process nearly destroyed the British monarchy. It is a rich and remarkable story that has never been properly told - indeed, it is one of the most extraordinary, star-crossed love stories of the past fifty years. Junor argues that although Camilla played a central role in the darkest days of the modern monarchy, Charles and Diana's acrimonious and scandalous split, she also played a central role in restoring the royal family's reputation, especially that of King Charles. A woman with no ambition to be a princess, a duchess, or a queen, Camilla simply wanted to be with, and support, the man who has always been the love of her life. Junor contends that their marriage has reinvigorated Charles, allowing him to finally become comfortable as the heir to the British throne. In this compelling biography, Britain's top royal author paints an intimate portrait of the Queen Consort, revealing for the first time why the King went against his mother and risked everything, even the stability of the monarchy, to have Camilla by his side. The Duchess was in the Sunday Times Bestseller Chart from the 26th to 33rd week of 2017.

On a hillside near Ballachulish in the Scottish Highlands in May 1752 a rider is assassinated by a gunman. The murdered man is Colin Campbell, a government agent travelling to nearby Duror where he's evicting farm tenants to make way for his relatives. Campbell's killer evades capture, but Britain's rulers insist this challenge to their authority must result in a hanging. The sacrificial victim is James Stewart, who is organising resistance to Campbell's takeover of lands long held by his clan, the Appin Stewarts. James is a veteran of the Highland uprising crushed in April 1746 at Culloden. In Duror he sees homes torched by troops using terror tactics against rebel Highlanders. The same brutal response to dissent means that James's corpse will for years hang from a towering gibbet and leave a community utterly ravaged. Introducing this new and updated edition of his account of what came to be called the Appin Murder, historian James Hunter tells how his own Duror upbringing introduced him to the tragic story of James Stewart.

'I can't tell you how refreshing it is in these polarised times to read a book on politics that doesn't have an axe to grind . . . an essential read.' - The Sunday Times 'Subtle, sophisticated . . . compellingly told . . . This is a gentle and intelligent book, refreshingly unpolemical and reflective.' - Observer Book of the Week Jason Cowley, editor-in-chief of the New Statesman, examines contemporary England through a handful of the key news stories from recent times to reveal what they tell us about the state of the nation and to answer the question Who Are We Now? Spanning the years since the election of Tony Blair's New Labour government to the aftermath of the Covid pandemic, the book investigates how England has changed and how those changes have affected us. Cowley weaves together the seemingly disparate stories of the Chinese cockle-pickers who drowned in Morecambe Bay, the East End Imam who was tested during a summer of terror, the pensioner who campaigned against the closure of her GP's surgery and Gareth Southgate's transformation of English football culture. And in doing so, Cowley shows the common threads that unite them, whether it is attitudes to class, nation, identity, belonging, immigration, or religion. He also examines the so-called Brexit murder in Harlow, the haunting repatriation of the fallen in the Iraq and Afghan wars through Wootton Bassett, the Lancashire woman who took on Gordon Brown, and the flight of the Bethnal Green girls to Islamic State, fleshing out the headlines with the very human stories behind them. Through these vivid and often moving stories, Cowley offers a clear and compassionate analysis of how and why England became so divided and the United Kingdom so fragmented, and how we got to this cultural and political crossroads. Most importantly, he also shows us the many ways in which there is genuine hope for the future.

In the year that marks the 50th anniversary of Labour's 1945 landslide victory and the development of a new invigorated Labour Party under Tony Blair, this collection of essays looks at how the policies of the 1945 government and the following Labour administrations affected cultural life in Britain. The contributors cover a wide range of issues: British cinema of the period, working-class consumer culture, the founding of the NHS, Labour's attempts to house and educate the heroes, literary and artistic culture, post-war feminist activism and the response of the right to their crushing defeat.

First edition of supplications concerning England and Wales from the Apostolic Penitentiary - an essential resource for any historian of the pre-Reformation Church. The Apostolic Penitentiary was and remains the highest office in the Catholic Church concerned with sin and matters of conscience. The papacy reserved to itself absolution from certain grave sins, and successive popes empowered the cardinal penitentiary in charge of the office to absolve sinners in these reserved cases, which included violence against or by the clergy and abandonment of the religious life. The cardinal was also authorised to grant other favours that were a papal monopoly, including dispensations, notably for marriages between close relatives normally forbidden by church law, and special licences, for example allowing confession to a personal chaplain rather than one's parish priest. Petitioners from across Western Europe requested such favours in their thousands and their supplications shed important new light on religious, social and even political history, covering themes as varied as marriage, sexual deviance, violence, the religious life, popular piety, illegitimacy, and pilgrimage. This valuable evidence, recorded in the registers of the Apostolic Penitentiary held in the Vatican Archives, has only beenavailable to researchers since 1983. This edition makes accessible for the first time over 4,000 supplications concerning England and Wales in the office's fifty earliest surviving registers; they are presented with notes and introduction and other apparatus. Peter D. Clarke is Reader in Medieval History at the University of Southampton; Patrick N.R. Zutshi is Keeper of Manuscripts and University Archives, Cambridge University Library, and a Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.

The ruin of St Peter's College has sat on a wooded hilltop above the village of Cardross for more than three decades. Over that time, with altars crumbling, graffiti snaking across its walls and nature reclaiming its concrete, it has gained a mythical, cult-like status among architects, preservationists and artists. St Peter's only fulfilled its original role as a seminary for 14 years, from 1966 to 1979. As its uncompromising design gave way to prolonged construction and problematic upkeep, the Catholic Church reassessed the role of seminaries, resolving to embed trainee priests not in seclusion, but in communities. Although briefly repurposed as a drug rehabilitation centre, the building was soon abandoned to decay and vandalism. Ever since, people have argued and puzzled over the future and importance of St Peter's. It has been called both Scotland's best and worst twentieth century building. In 1992, it was listed category A. One of its architects suggested the idea of `everything being stripped away except the concrete itself - a purely romantic conception of the building as beautiful ruin'. And now in 2016, St Peter's is renewed as a cultural space through the work of the arts organisation NVA. In this landmark book, Diane Watters looks at the history of a structure that emerged out of an innovative phase of post-war Catholic church building. She traces the story of an architectural failure which morphed into a tragic modernist myth: unappreciated architects betrayed by an unloving client, and abandoned by an uncaring society. This is a historian's account of the real story of St Peter's College: an exploration of how one of Scotland's most singular buildings became one its most troubled - and most celebrated.

'Beautiful and poignant' The Art Newspaper 'Absorbing... a magnificent book' Mail on Sunday The first illustrated book on mudlarking that tells the captivating stories of forgotten people through objects recovered from the river Thames. Combining insights from 200 eclectic objects discovered on the Thames foreshore, meticulous historical research and contextual illustrations, Mudlark'd uncovers the hidden histories of forgotten people from all over the world. Beginning in each case with a particular find, Malcolm Russell tells the stories of the people who owned, made or used such objects, revealing the habits, customs and crafts not only of those living in London but also of those passing through, from continental Europe, the Americas, Africa, Asia and Australia. In the 18th and 19th centuries London was the busiest port in the world, exchanging goods, ideas, people and power with every continent. The Thames long acted as London's water source, shipyard, thoroughfare and rubbish dump. Its banks have been densely packed with taverns, brothels, markets and workplaces, and scavengers - known as mudlarks - have scoured them since at least the 18th century. Consequently, the Thames today offers a repository of intriguing objects that evoke ways of life long forgotten. A delicate bone hair pin uncovers the story of Roman ornatrices - enslaved hairdressers. A counterfeit coin reveals the heritage of millions of Australians. Glass beads expose the brutal dynamics of the transatlantic slave trade. Clay tobacco pipes uncover the lives of Edwardian women parachutists and Victorian magicians. A scrap of Tudor cloth illuminates the stories of Dutch and French religious refugees. The book also includes a primer, giving step-by-step advice on how to mudlark on tidal rivers and how to identify commonly made finds.

First published in 1982, Northampton is a modern study of Henry Howard, Earl of Northampton, privy councillor to James I. Dr. Peck convincingly challenges the traditional eminence grise who stirred factional strife at court, undermined relations between king and parliament, and stopped at nothing, including murder, to secure his family's advancement. Drawing extensively on Northampton's papers, Dr. Peck offers a more balanced assessment of this important Jacobean courtier who shaped policy and pursued administrative reform as avidly as he sought his own patronage and profit. Unlike traditional biographies, this study is organized topically in order to examine larger issues of policy making and administration in the Jacobean period. This book will be of interest to specialists in Stuart studies, to historians of England, to social scientists concerned with development of early bureaucracy, and all those with a more general interest in Tudor Stuart history.

Known today chiefly for his surrender to the American forces at Saratoga, New York, in 1777, General John Burgoyne was one of the most interesting - and extraordinary - figures of the eighteenth century. In From the Battlefield to the Stage Norman Poser provides a rounded biography, covering not only the Saratoga campaign but also elements of Burgoyne's eventful life that have never been adequately explored. At the age of twenty-eight, Burgoyne eloped with Charlotte Stanley, the daughter of the immensely wealthy and influential Earl of Derby. Though initially furious, the earl, convinced of the young officer's good character, eventually forgave the couple, and the Stanley family became a major influence in Burgoyne's life and career. He was a socialite, welcome in London's fashionable drawing rooms, a high-stakes gambler in its elite clubs, and a playwright whose social comedies were successfully performed on the London stage. As a member of Parliament for thirty years, Burgoyne supported the rule of law, fought the corruption of the East India Company, and advocated religious tolerance. From the Battlefield to the Stage paints a vivid portrait of General John Burgoyne, remembering him not only for his role in one of Britain's worst military disasters but also as a brave, talented, humane man.

This book is based on original research into intimidation and violence directed at civilians by combatants during the revolutionary period in Ireland, considering this from the perspectives of the British, the Free State and the IRA. The book combines qualitative and quantitative approaches, and focusses on County Kerry, which saw high levels of violence. It demonstrates that violence and intimidation against civilians was more common than clashes between combatants and that the upsurge in violence in 1920 was a result of the deployment of the Black and Tans and Auxiliaries, particularly in the autumn and winter of that year. Despite the limited threat posed by the IRA, the British forces engaged in unprecedented and unprovoked violence against civilians. This study stresses the increasing brutality of the subsequent violence by both sides. The book shows how the British had similar methods and views as contemporary counter-revolutionary groups in Europe. IRA violence, however, was, in part, an attempt to impose homogeneity as, beneath the Irish republican narrative of popular approval, there lay a recognition that universal backing was never in fact present. The book is important reading for students and scholars of the Irish revolution, the social history of Ireland and inter-war European violence.

An accessible and authoritative companion to the bestselling Wolf Hall trilogy by Hilary Mantel, published after the third and final book, The Mirror and the Light. Wolf Hall Companion gives an historian's view of what we know about Thomas Cromwell, one of the most powerful men of the Tudor age and the central character in Mantel's Wolf Hall trilogy. Covering the key court and political characters from the books, this companion guide also works as a concise Tudor history primer. Alongside Thomas Cromwell, the author explores characters including Anne Boleyn, Thomas Cranmer, Jane Seymour, Henry VIII, Thomas Howard, Cardinal Wolsey and Richard Fox. The important places in the court of Henry VIII are introduced and put into context, including Hampton Court, the Tower of London, Cromwell's home Austin Friars, and of course Wolf Hall. The author explores not only the real history of these people and places, but also Hilary Mantel's interpretation of them. Included in the book are also incisive features on various aspects of Tudor life, from the court scene and the structure of government, to royal hunting and hawking, Renaissance influences and Tudor executions. A beautiful and insightful book, Wolf Hall Companion will enrich the reading of the Mantel novels but also provides an incisive and concise understanding of the reign of Henry VIII, and the profound changes it brought to English life. Illustrated throughout with woodcut portraits, maps and family trees and with a beautifully produced cover - this companion guide is a must-have for any discerning Wolf Hall and Tudor fan.

*A BOOK OF THE YEAR 2021 PICK IN THE TIMES, FINANCIAL TIMES, SPECTATOR AND NEW STATESMAN* From the award-winning author of Becoming Dickens and The Story of Alice comes a major new biography of Charles Dickens, tracing the year that would transform his life and times. The year is 1851. It's a time of radical change in Britain, when industrial miracles and artistic innovations rub shoulders with political unrest, poverty and disease. It's also a turbulent time in the private life of Charles Dickens, as he copes with a double bereavement and early signs that his marriage is falling apart. But this formative year will become perhaps the greatest turning point in Dickens's career, as he embraces his calling as a chronicler of ordinary people's lives, and develops a new form of writing that will reveal just how interconnected the world is becoming. The Turning Point transports us into the foggy streets of Dickens's London, closely following the twists and turns of a year that would come to define him, and forever alter Britain's relationship with the world. Fully illustrated, and brimming with fascinating details about the larger-than-life man who wrote Bleak House, this is the closest look yet at one of the greatest literary personalities ever to have lived. 'A startling and exciting writer' A. S. BYATT, SPECTATOR

This fascinating collection brings together leading football historians and sociologists from the UK, Germany, the USA and Australia to offer fresh perspectives on the early development of football (soccer), not only illuminating our understanding of the early history of the world's most popular sport, but also the importance of sport in our broader social and cultural history. The book presents new evidence and fresh perspectives which will inform the robust debate that has been raging about the origins and early development of football. It addresses key issues at the centre of this debate, including the influence of former English public schoolboys, the development of football subcultures outside of prestige educational institutions, and the intersection and divergence of the various football codes around the world. The Early Development of Football is an important resource for anyone working in the history of football or sports in general, football studies or the sociology of sport. It is also a useful read for those interested in sport management and the development of sports organisations and rules.

'Allyson Shaw has built a monument in words to the thousands persecuted as witches in Scotland. A fascinating and necessary book.' Peter Ross 'It's summer. I stand where perhaps Ellen stood, in this ground thick with new thistle and long grass. She would have ken this coast in all weathers: in the summer when it was as gentle as a lake and in the winter, with the high winds and stinging salt spray.' A moving and personal journey, along rugged coasts and through remote villages and cities, in search of the traces of those accused of witchcraft in seventeenth-century Scotland. In Ashes and Stones we visit modern memorials and standing stones, and roam among forests and hedge mazes, folklore and political fantasies. From fairy hills to forgotten caves, we explore a spellbound landscape. Allyson Shaw untangles the myth of witchcraft and gives voice to those erased by it. Her elegant and lucid prose weaves together threads of history and feminist reclamation to create a vibrant memorial. This is the untold story of the witches' monuments of Scotland and the women's lives they mark. Ashes and Stones is a trove of folklore linking the lives of contemporary women to the horrors of the past, a record of resilience and a call to choose and remember our ancestors. 'A compelling and intimate pilgrimage across Scotland' Helen Callaghan

Parnell is the most enigmatic figure in Irish history. An Anglo-Irish landlord from a distinguished and long-established Wicklow family, he became the most unlikely leader of Irish nationalism imaginable. None the less, from the late 1870s until his fall and death in 1891, he held the whole of Ireland spellbound. He established Home Rule for Ireland--previously a taboo subject in British politics--at the centre of Westminster affairs and effectively created the modern Irish state in embryo.

His fall was as dramatic as his rise. The affair with Mrs Katharine O'Shea, the mother of his three children, destroyed him. Paul Bew reinterprets this enigmatic man as one who was fundamentally conservative, who wished to reconcile his own landlord class to a new Ireland, and who acknowledged and accelerated the political demands of nationalist Ireland.

The Drosten stone - one of Scotland's premier monuments - came to light during restoration work at St Vigeans church, near Arbroath, in the 1870s. A rare example of Pictish writing, the Drosten stone is just one in an astounding collection of exquisitely preserved Pictish sculptures discovered in and around the church. The carvings on these stones revel in Pictish inventiveness, teeming with lively naturalistic animals and innovative compositions of monsters and people, as well as both Pictish symbols and everyday objects. The sculptures' iconography also draws on a deep knowledge of Christian and classical literature, witness to a highly literate and cosmopolitan society. This definitive study of St Vigeans' Pictish stones, generously illustrated with plates of the full collection, begins in the recent past, when the sculptures began to emerge as a remarkable historic entity. It then explores the history of the sculptures, including an analysis of the carvings, the geology of the stones and attempts to extract meaning and context for this unique stone collection as part of a powerful ecclesiastical landscape.