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Books > Social sciences > Education > Higher & further education > Universities / polytechnics
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The Golden Talking-Shop - The Oxford Union Debates Empire, World War, Revolution, and Women (Hardcover)
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The Golden Talking-Shop - The Oxford Union Debates Empire, World War, Revolution, and Women (Hardcover)
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In the late 1890s, Britain was basking in the high noon of empire,
albeit with the sobering experience of the Boer War just around the
corner. By 1956, the year of the Suez debacle and less than a
lifetime later, the age of empire was drawing rapidly to a close
and Britain's position as an independent great power was over. In
between, the country had experienced two devastating world wars.
India - the jewel in her imperial crown - had gained independence.
And there had been far-reaching changes on the domestic front: the
birth of the welfare state, full men's (and eventually women's)
suffrage, and the foundation of the National Health Service, to
name but a few. Throughout this momentous period, the Oxford Union,
the world's most famous debating society, continued to meet to
debate and discuss the changing world around them. Sometimes their
debates had important repercussions in the wider world - such as
the notorious 'King and Country' debate of 1933 which made
headlines around the globe and which Winston Churchill described as
that 'abject, squalid, shameless avowal.' More often than not, the
debates had merely a local impact, even if among the debaters were
many of the leaders, thinkers, and opinion formers of the future,
figures such as Harold Macmillan, Archbishop Temple, Edward Heath,
and Tony Benn. In The Golden Talking Shop, former Parliamentary
sketch writer (and Union member) Edward Pearce tells the story of
Britain - and the world - in the first half of the twentieth
century as seen from the perspective of these Union debates:
sometimes shocking, sometimes wittily amusing, and often both. The
students do most of the talking, along the way revealing the
changing preoccupations, prejudices, and assumptions of their
changing times. A distinct pre-First World War fashion for Social
Darwinism is in due course replaced by a widespread 1930s penchant
for Stalinism, with civilized opinion reliably breaking in on
occasion too. Above all, browsing these debates, taken straight
from another age, gives the reader a vivid, sometimes piquant,
sense of a Britain which is now passing from living memory - and
serves as a powerful reminder of the ways in which the past and its
attitudes really are a foreign country.
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