In September of 1809 during the opening night of Macbeth at the newly rebuilt Covent Garden theatre the audience rioted over the rise in ticket prices. Disturbances took place on the following sixty-six nights that autumn and the Old Price riots became the longest running theatre disorder in English history. This book describes the events in detail, sets them in their wider context, and uses them to examine the interpenetration of theatre and disorder. Previous understandings of the riots are substantially revised by stressing populist rather than class politics. Baer concentrates on the theatricality of audiences, the role of the stage in shaping English self-image and the relationship between contention and consensus. In so doing, theatre and theatricality are rediscovered as explanations for the cultural and political structures of the Georgian period. Based on meticulous research in theatre and governmental records, newspapers, private correspondence, and satirical prints and other ephemera, this study is an unusually interesting and original contribution to the social and political history of early 19th-century Britain.

During the Great War, voluntary medical assistance to British Forces was organised by the British Red Cross and the Order of St John. As the conflict escalated there was a shortage of medical assistance and ancillary services. The solution came with the creation of the General Service Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) which enabled those with little or no medical training to undertake more routine jobs - cooks, laundry maids, wardmaids, dispensers, drivers etc. This book is a reprint of the final, and largest, British Red Cross list giving information of over 18,000 women and men who were involved. It provides individual detail (name, rank, unit, destination) together with lists of Headquarters Staff, Commissioners and Representatives, and also a Roll of Honour

This first scholarly account of the Royal Navy in the Pacific War is a companion volume to Arthur Marder's Old Friends, New Enemies: Strategic Illusions, 1936-1941 (0-19-822604-7, OP). Picking up the story at the nadir of British naval fortunes - `everywhere weak and naked', in Churchill's phrase - it examines the Royal Navy's role in events from 1942 to the Japanese surrender in August 1945. Drawing on both British and Japanese sources and personal accounts by participants, the authors vividly retell the story of the collapse of Allied defences in the Dutch East Indies, culminating in the Battle of the Java Sea. They recount the attempts of the `fighting admiral', Sir James Somerville, to train his motley fleet of cast-offs into an efficient fighting force in spite of the reluctance of Churchill, who resisted the formation of a full-scale British Pacific Fleet until the 1945 assault on the Ryukyu Islands immediately south of Japan. Meticulously researched and fully referenced, this unique and absorbing account provides a controversial analysis of the key personalities who shaped events in these momentous years, and makes fascinating reading for anyone interested in the Pacific War. This book also appears in the Oxford General Books catalogue for Autumn 1990.

The History of the Church of Abingdon is one of the most valuable local histories produced in the twelfth century. It provides a wealth of information about, and great insight into, the legal, economic, and ecclesiastical affairs of a major monastery. Charters and narrative combine to provide a vital resource for historians. The present edition, unlike its Victorian predecessor, is based on the earliest manuscript of the text. A modern English translation is provided on facing pages, together with extensive introductory material and historical notes.
This volume covers the period from the reputed foundation of the abbey and its estates to c.1071. Volume II, already published, covers from c.1071- c.1164.

What was the role of mousike, the realm of the Muses, in Greek life? More wide-ranging in its implications than the English 'music', mousike lay at the heart of Greek culture, and was often indeed synonymous with culture. In its commonest form, it represented for the Greeks a seamless complex of music, poetic word, and physical movement, encompassing a vast array of performances - from small-scale entertainment in the private home to elaborate performances involving the entire community. Yet the history of the field, particularly in anglophone scholarship, has been hitherto narrowly conceived, and the broader cultural significance of mousike largely ignored. Focusing mainly on classical Athens these new and specially commissioned essays analyse the theory and practice of musical performance in a variety of social contexts and demonstrate the centrality of mousike to the values and ideology of the polis. The so-called 'new musical revolution' in late fifth-century Athens receives serious treatment in this volume for the first time. A major theme of the book is the musical and mousike dimension of Greek religion, rarely analysed in its own right. The ethical and philosophical aspects of Athenian mousike are another central concern, with the figure of the dancing philosopher as an emblem of music's role in intellectual life. The book as a whole provides an integrated cultural analysis of central aspects of Greek mousike, which will be of interest to classical scholars, to cultural historians, and to anyone concerned with understanding the power of music as a cultural phenomenon.

From its earliest days, the cinema has enjoyed a special kinship with the railroad, a mutual attraction based on similar ways of handling speed, visual perception, and the promise of a journey. PARALLEL TRACKS is the first book to explore and explain this relationship in both historical and theoretical terms, blending film scholarship with railroad history. This highly original work reveals the profound impact that the railroad and the cinema have had on Western society and modern urban industrial culture. It will be eagerly received by those involved in film studies, American studies, feminist theory and the cultural study of modernity. It will also have appeal to general readers interested in silent films or in the history of the railroad.

Shane O'Doherty joined the IRA at 15 years of age and was later arrested. He was one of the first prisoners to work his way past the negativity of the philosophy of armed struggle, beginning to recommend publicly and privately an end to violence and a full engagement with the democratic process. From his prison cell, O'Doherty courageously wrote letters of apology to his victims. This is a graphic account of his life in the IRA and explains why ordinary people might turn to terrorism.

The gentrification of Brooklyn has been one of the most striking developments in recent urban history. Considered one of the city's most notorious industrial slums in the 1940s and 1950s, Brownstone Brooklyn by the 1980s had become a post-industrial landscape of hip bars, yoga studios, and beautifully renovated, wildly expensive townhouses. In The Invention of Brownstone Brooklyn, Suleiman Osman offers a groundbreaking history of this unexpected transformation. Challenging the conventional wisdom that New York City's renaissance started in the 1990s, Osman locates the origins of gentrification in Brooklyn in the cultural upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s. Gentrification began as a grassroots movement led by young and idealistic white college graduates searching for "authenticity" and life outside the burgeoning suburbs. Where postwar city leaders championed slum clearance and modern architecture, "brownstoners" (as they called themselves) fought for a new romantic urban ideal that celebrated historic buildings, industrial lofts and traditional ethnic neighborhoods as a refuge from an increasingly technocratic society. Osman examines the emergence of a "slow-growth" progressive coalition as brownstoners joined with poorer residents to battle city planners and local machine politicians. But as brownstoners migrated into poorer areas, race and class tensions emerged, and by the 1980s, as newspapers parodied yuppies and anti-gentrification activists marched through increasingly expensive neighborhoods, brownstoners debated whether their search for authenticity had been a success or failure. The Invention of Brownstone Brooklyn deftly mixes architectural, cultural and political history in this eye-opening perspective on the post-industrial city.

"The cuneiform script, the writing system of ancient Mesopotamia, was witness to one of the world's oldest literate cultures. For over three millennia, it was the vehicle of communication from (at its greatest extent) Iran to the Mediterranean, Anatolia to Egypt. The Oxford Handbook of Cuneiform Culture examines the Ancient Middle East through the lens of cuneiform writing. The contributors, a mix of scholars from across the disciplines, explore, define, and to some extent look beyond the boundaries of the written word, using Mesopotamia's clay tablets and stone inscriptions not just as 'texts' but also as material artefacts that offer much additional information about their creators, readers, users and owners"--

In the decade following the first Gulf War, most observers regarded it as an exemplary effort by the international community to lawfully and forcefully hold a regional aggressor in check. Interpretations have changed with the times. The Gulf War led to the stationing of US troops in Saudi Arabia, an important contributing cause of the 9/11 attacks. The war also led to a long obsession with Saddam Hussein that culminated in a second, far longer, American-led war with Iraq. In Into the Desert, Jeffrey Engel has gathered an all-star cast of contributors to reevaluate the first Gulf War: Michael Gordon of the New York Times; Sir Lawrence Freedman, former foreign policy advisor to Tony Blair; Ambassador Ryan Crocker; Middle East specialist Shibley Telhami; and Richard Haass, President of the Council on Foreign Relations. Engel and his contributors examine the war's origins, the war itself, and its long-term impact on international relations. All told, Into the Desert offers an astute reassessment of one of the most momentous events in the last quarter century.

This is a profoundly original and entertaining history of France, from the first century bc to the present day, based on countless new discoveries and thirty years of exploring France on foot, by bicycle and in the library. Beginning with the Roman army's first recorded encounter with the Gauls and ending with the gilet jaunes protests in the era of Emmanuel Macron, each chapter is an adventure in its own right. Along the way, readers will find the usual faces, events and themes of French history - Louis XIV, the French Revolution, the French Resistance, the Tour de France - but all presented in a shining new light. Graham Robb's France: An Adventure History does not offer a standard dry list of facts and dates, but a panorama of France, teeming with characters, full of stories, journeys and coincidences, giving readers a thrilling sense of discovery and enlightenment. It is a vivid, living history of one of the world's most fascinating nations by a ceaselessly entertaining writer in complete command of subject and style.

When she was ten years old, Serena Kutchinsky’s father Paul was consumed by a wild dream. Heir to the legendary jewellery company House of Kutchinsky, he longed to create a jewelled egg more beautiful than any of Fabergé’s masterpieces. It would be the largest and most spectacular in the world.

Standing two feet tall, made of solid gold, dripping with rare pink diamonds and housing a tiny enamelled library, the egg was astonishing. But when he failed to sell it, everything started to unravel. The House of Kutchinsky collapsed, Paul’s marriage fell apart, and within ten years he was dead. The egg was seized by its creditors and disappeared without trace.

For thirty years its location remained a mystery, until it began to obsess Serena, too. Why did her father risk everything for this outlandish creation, and where in the world was it – valued by now at £30 million? Intent on finding answers, she traces a story that begins in London’s East End, with the arrival of her great-great grandparents as Polish-Jewish immigrants, and takes her to the other end of the world. It’s a journey that transforms her understanding of her father, her childhood and herself.

Escaping Hell is the compelling and true story of a heroic young Polish officer who survived the terror of five years in the prisons of Auschwitz and Buchenwald - where violence was meaningless because human life had lost all value. During World War II, Kon Piekarski was a member of the Polish Underground Army, a clandestine resistance movement which operated even inside Auschwitz - organizing spectacular esacpes, operating a secret radio network and matching wits with the Gestapo. After Auschwitz, Piekarski became a prisoner of war at Buchenwald and spent time working in a factory where Russian prisoners of war were used for labour. In the face of constant danger, he and his comrades took every possible opportunity to sabotage the German war industry. He was finally transferred to a small camp near the French border, and escaped three months before the end of the war.

The House of Stone delves into the tragic history of Zimbabwe through the lens of over 250 literary works. It examines the profound losses and despair experienced under Robert Mugabe's regime and the subsequent developments during the Second Republic under Emmerson Mnangagwa.

Through a rich tapestry of voices from Zimbabwean authors, journalists, and thinkers, Clarke explores themes of genocide, economic decline, and social decay, while also revealing untold stories and speculating on the country's future.

This important literary contribution invites readers to reflect on the complex narratives surrounding Zimbabwe's history and its implications for the future.

The Worshipful Company of Blacksmiths is one of the ancient livery company of the City of London. With origins dating back to 1299, the company regulated many aspects of smithing within the City and its immediate environs, including who was allowed to practise the trade, their hours of work and the quality of their goods and workmanship. Other towns and cities had medieval guilds and companies with similar aims, but the economic might of the City of London - which encompassed a great deal of manufacturing as well as trade - was such that the City livery companies were always by far the most numerous and usually the most important in the country. Unlike the twelve Great City Livery Companies, such as the Mercers, Fishmongers or Clothworkers, the Blacksmiths' Company never accumulated large financial assets, but it did have its own ancient livery hall and modest property holdings. And unlike other companies, such as the Tallow Chandlers or the Loriners, whose trades have all but disappeared, the Blacksmiths do still retain a relevance in today's world. Ranked 40th in the order of precedence, it was a solid, middle-ranking livery company of some consequence. Eventually the very growth and dynamism of London led to a relative decline in the company's economic importance. It became impossible and probably undesirable to regulate trade in the old manner - no new livery companies were established between the early eighteenth century and 1926 - and the functions and role of livery companies changed from trade regulation to that of social, cultural, networking and charitable organisations. The Worshipful Company of Blacksmiths echoed these changes, yet, unlike many, it has retained strong links with the trade that created it. To this day, the company supports the blacksmithing community across the country, awarding prizes for high-quality work and sponsoring young practitioners. Professor David Hey has had unique access to the company's records as well as the extensive knowledge of present-day liverymen to distil a fascinating 700-year story of continuity and change. Illustrated with almost 60 colour photographs and maps, this book acts as an important record of the Blacksmiths' Company, as well as being an interesting case study of one of the great survivors of London's medieval past, the City livery company.

Up until the end of World War II, academe in central Europe showed little interest in American culture. However, this rapidly changed as American culture became an increasingly inescapable part of everyday life in the postwar period. Drawing on a series of transatlantic encounters in the years following 1945, George Blaustein chronicles how issues like race, gender, and empire, as they relate to the United States, became areas of intense interest among members of the European academy. A major part of Blaustein's book revolves around the exchange of ideas that took place at the Salzburg Seminar in American Studies, founded in 1947. Through the period of occupation, the seminar hosted a who's-who of American and European intellectual life: figures like F. O. Matthiessen, Margaret Mead, Alfred Kazin, Saul Bellow, Ralph Ellison, Alain Locke, and John Hope Franklin. In four concise chapters, Nightmare Envy and Other Stories explores how the ruin of postwar Europe led writers and intellectuals on both sides of the Atlantic to understand America in new ways. Nightmare Envy and Other Stories will interest scholars in the fields of American Studies, postwar intellectual history, and cultural diplomacy.

How does one play bridge in a gas mask? Or enjoy motoring without consuming petrol? Or deal with a nationwide shortage of pea-sticks? For this compact little book Heath Robinson joined forces with writer Cecil Hunt to show civilians 'how to make the best of things' during the air raids, rationing, allotment tending and blackouts of the Second World War. The result is a warm celebration of the British population's ability to 'make do and mend'.

The momentum of the British industrial revolution arose mostly in regions poorly endowed by nature, badly located and considered backward and poor by contemporaries. Sidney Pollard examines the initially surprising contribution made by the population of these and other `marginal areas' (mountains, forests and marshes) to the economic development of Europe since the Middle Ages. He provides case studies of periods in which marginal areas took the lead in economic development, such as the Dutch economy in its Golden Age, and in the British industrial revolution. The traditional perception of the populations inhabiting these regions was that they were poor, backward, and intellectually inferior; but Sidney Pollard shows how they also had certain peculiar qualities which predisposed them to initiate progress. Healthy living, freedom, a martial spirit, and the hardiness to survive in harsh conditions enabled them to contribute a unique pioneering ability to pivotal economic periods; illustrating some of the effects of geography upon the development of societies.

"I will always be somebody." This assertion, a startling one from a nineteenth-century woman, drove the life of Dr. Mary Edwards Walker, the only American woman ever to receive the Medal of Honor. President Andrew Johnson issued the award in 1865 in recognition of the incomparable medical service Walker rendered during the Civil War. Yet few people today know anything about the woman so well-known--even notorious--in her own lifetime. Theresa Kaminski shares a different way of looking at the Civil War, through the eyes of a woman confident she could make a contribution equal to that of any man. She takes readers into the political cauldron of the nation's capital in wartime, where Walker was a familiar if notorious figure. Mary Walker's relentless pursuit of gender and racial equality is key to understanding her commitment to a Union victory in the Civil War. Her role in the women's suffrage movement became controversial and the US Army stripped Walker of her medal, only to have the medal reinstated posthumously in 1977.

Leeds United's Elland Road home is full of intrigue, character and formidable acoustics, yet it started life as a barren and featureless patch of land surrounded by coalfields. The Only Place For Us is the fascinating history of the stadium and its changing local environment, revealing the background stories behind Elland Road's most famous features and characters, and the astonishing events it has witnessed. Along the way there have been fires and gypsy curses mixed with cherished memories including the diamond floodlights, the West Stand facade and escapee pantomime horses. Using forensic research, insiders' insights, archive photographs and fans' memories, Jon Howe retraces a historical journey full of tragedy, nostalgia and improbable innovation, to show how Elland Road became one of Europe's most feared football grounds. Through triumph and adversity, neglect and redevelopment, Elland Road has emerged as a prominent, modern stadium that's still alive with history. This is its unique story.

The Bavarian mountain village of Oberammergau is famous for its decennial passion play. The play began as an articulation of the villagers' strong Catholic piety, but in the late 19th and early 20th centuries developed into a considerable commercial enterprise. The growth of the passion play from a curiosity of village piety into a major tourist attraction encouraged all manner of entrepreneurial behavior and brought the inhabitants of this isolated rural area into close contract with a larger world. Hundreds of thousands of tourists came to see the play, and thousands of temporary workers descended on the village during the play season, some settling permanently in Oberammergau. Adolf Hitler would attend a performance of the play in 1934, later saying that the drama "revealed the muck and mire of Jewry." But, Helena Waddy argues, it is a mistake to brand Oberammergau as a Nazi stronghold, as has commonly been done. In this book she uses Oberammergau's unique history to explain why and how genuinely some villagers chose to become Nazis, while others rejected Party membership and defended their Catholic lifestyle. She explores the reasons why both local Nazis and their opponents fought to protect the village's cherished identity against the Third Reich's many intrusive demands. On the other hand, she also shows that the play mirrored the Gospel-based anti-Semitism endemic to Western culture. As a local study of the rise of Nazism and the Nazi era, Waddy's work is an important contribution to a growing genre. As a collective biography, it is a fascinating and moving portrait of life at a time when, as Thomas Mann wrote, "every day hurled the wildest demands at the heart and brain."

The works reprinted in this two-volume collection cover the length of Robertson's career, from his student days in 1737 to his closing years in 1789, and show his intellectual and stylistic evolution. Part One contains his lesser known writings and speeches. Subjects explored range from Greek translation to architectural history to university fund-raising to geological speculation to church politics. Part Two consists of the earliest biographical commentaries on Robertson's life, written by five men who knew him personally. Together these items reveal details of Robertson's life and career with the aim of giving the reader a wider picture of Robertson's character and career.

This riveting study shows how the intersection of technology and politics has shaped South African history since the 1960s.

It is impossible to understand South Africa’s energy crisis without knowing this history. Faeeza Ballim’s deeply researched book challenges many prevailing assumptions and beliefs made regarding the crisis.

The book highlights the importance of technology to our understanding of South African history and challenges the idea that the technological state corporations were proxies for the apartheid government. While a part of the broader national modernization project under apartheid, these corporations also set the stage for worker solidarity and trade union organization in the Waterberg and elsewhere in the country.

Faeeza Ballim argues that the state corporations, their technology, and their engineers enjoyed ambivalent relationships with the governments of their time. And in the democratic era, while Eskom has been caught up in the scourge of government corruption, it has retained a degree of organizational autonomy and offered a degree of resistance to those who were attempting further corrupt practices.