This book will provide a ground-breaking introduction to the history of poverty and welfare in modern Ireland in the era of the Irish poor law. As the first study to address poor relief and health care together, this book will fill an important gap in the existing literature providing a much-needed introduction to, and assessment of, the evolution of social welfare in nineteenth and early-twentieth century Ireland. The collection also addresses a number of related issues, including private philanthropy, the attitudes of landowners towards poor relief and the crisis of the poor law during the Great Famine of 1845-50. Together this interlinking set of contributions will both survey current research and suggest new areas for investigation thus it is hoped, proving a further stimulus to the growing field of Irish welfare history.

When David Lloyd George and Winston Churchill began their long friendship, one of their numerous enemies nicknamed the new friends "the Heavenly Twins" after a set of gifted, irresponsible, and inseparable twins in a late Victorian novel. In Lloyd George and Churchill: How Friendship Changed Politics, Marvin Rintala explores the lengthy and unexpected friendship between these two statesmen, from its beginning in early 1901 to its end at Lloyd George's death in 1945. Rintala examines the dynamics that shaped the friendship between two powerful men (a friendship that belied Lloyd George's statement that "there are no friends at the top") and the ways in which this friendship shaped British politics during the first half of the twentieth century.

In 'Marching to the Sound of Gunfire' scores of soldiers from almost every echelon of the British Army tell their amazing stories of life - and death - at the sharp end. In the eleven frenzied months of warfare that followed D-Day, these soldiers successfully drove the Nazi hordes back into their Fatherland, and beat them into surrender. There are stories from the 'poor bloody infantry' with their machine-gunners, mortar men, stretcher bearers and pioneers; the brave assault troops who stormed the Normandy beaches and forced bridgeheads over rivers and canals in four countries; the outgunned 'tankies' in their Shermans, Cromwells and Churchills, slogging it out against the mighty German Tigers and Panthers, and the fearsome dug-in 'eighty-eights'; the dashing recce types in their thin-skinned armored cars and carriers, sending back vital radio reports; the sappers building bridges and clearing minefields under fire; the gunners with their dedicated FOOs bringing down furious and accurate barrages; the signalers, patching up communication links; the non-combatant stretcher-bearers picking up the dead and dying from the battlefield, their Red Cross armbands no guarantee of immunity from fire; the RAMC doctors and orderlies tending the wounded in their RAP under the most terrible conditions; the immediate support services of the RASC, bringing up vital food and ammunition for the morrow; and the REME repairing armored vehicles to fight another day.

Charles Hudson VC was one of the twentieth century's outstanding fighting soldiers. His military career through two world wars and in Russia in 1919 earned him a host of medals. He was also a man of deep feeling, an accomplished poet and, in many ways, a rebel. In this compelling biography, the author skilfully interweaves his own narrative insight with his father's wartime journals and other unpublished material. The narrative includes detailed personal descriptions of the Battle of the Somme and other actions. It recounts the authoress Vera Brittain's bitter reaction to the death of her brother Edward when under Hudson's command in Italy in 1918 and tells how Hudson, out of compassion for her feelings, did not reveal the truth until he met her in 1934. It tells of the extraordinary affair in the summer of 1940, when the Secretary of State for War, Anthony Eden, asked a meeting of senior army commanders in the then beleaguered Britain whether, in the event of a successful German invasion, their soldiers would agree to be evacuated to Canada or whether they would insist on going home to support their families. The author examines Hudson's motivation in both wars and delves deeply into his complex, and highly courageous, character.