First Published in 1989, this work is based around a monthly TV column which Raymond Williams wrote for The Listener between 1968 and 1972. Those were the years of the Prague Spring, of anti-Vietnam war demonstrations, of fighting in Cambodia and Northern Ireland, of hope for McGovern in the United States and attacks on the Wilson Labour Government in Britain. In The Listener articles Williams comments on all of these events, providing a rare glimpse not only into the events of his daily life but also into the continuing development of a personal sociology of culture. The articles also discuss such television forms as detective series, science programmes and sports, travelogue, education, gardening, and children's programming. The book also includes Williams' key lecture "Drama in a Dramatised Society", which sets a framework for his analysis; a London Review of Books piece on the Falklands/Malvinas adventure as a "tele-war"; and an interview with Williams on television and teaching. Cited by The Guardian as "The foremost political thinker of his generation", Williams' writing amounts to a primer on ways of watching television and of critiquing its profound social and political impact.

In the words of Cornel West, Raymond Williams was 'the last of the great European male revolutionary socialist intellectuals'. A figure of international importance in the fields of cultural criticism and social theory, Williams was also preoccupied throughout his life with the meaning and significance of his Welsh identity. Who Speaks for Wales? was the first collection of Raymond Williams's writings on Welsh culture, literature, history and politics. Published in 2003, it appeared in the early years of Welsh political devolution and offered a historical and theoretical basis for thinking across the divisions of nationalism and socialism in Welsh thought. This edition, appearing in the centenary of Williams's birth, appears at a very different moment in which - after the Brexit referendum of 2016 - Raymond Williams's 'Welsh-European' vision seems to have been soundly rejected and is now a reminder of what might have been. This new edition includes material that was not included in the first edition, with a new afterword in which the editor argues that Williams continues to speak to our moment. Daniel G. Williams's new edition further underlines the ways in which Raymond Williams's engagement with Welsh issues makes a significant contribution to contemporary international debates on nationalism, class and ethnicity. Who Speaks for Wales? remains essential reading for everyone interested in questions of nationhood and identity in Britain and beyond.

First Published in 1989, this work is based around a monthly TV column which Raymond Williams wrote for The Listener between 1968 and 1972. Those were the years of the Prague Spring, of anti-Vietnam war demonstrations, of fighting in Cambodia and Northern Ireland, of hope for McGovern in the United States and attacks on the Wilson Labour Government in Britain. In The Listener articles Williams comments on all of these events, providing a rare glimpse not only into the events of his daily life but also into the continuing development of a personal sociology of culture. The articles also discuss such television forms as detective series, science programmes and sports, travelogue, education, gardening, and children's programming. The book also includes Williams' key lecture "Drama in a Dramatised Society", which sets a framework for his analysis; a London Review of Books piece on the Falklands/Malvinas adventure as a "tele-war"; and an interview with Williams on television and teaching. Cited by The Guardian as "The foremost political thinker of his generation", Williams' writing amounts to a primer on ways of watching television and of critiquing its profound social and political impact.

A comprehensive introduction to the work of one of the outstanding intellectuals of the twentieth century. Raymond Williams is a towering presence in cultural studies, most importantly as the founder of the apporach that has come to be known as cultural materialism. Yet Williams's method was always open-ended and fluid, and this volume collects together his most significant work from over a twenty-year peiod in which he wrestled with the concepts of materiualism and culture and their interrelationship. Aside from his more directly theoretical texts, however, case-studies of theatrical naturalism, the Bloomsbury group, advertising, science fiction, and the Welsh novel are also included as illustrations of the method at work. Finally, Williams's identity as an active socialist, rather than simply an academic, is captured by two unambiguously political pieces on the past, present and future of Marxism

This book presents Clare's poetry exactly as he wrote it, and includes selections from his `mad' poems as well as his earlier descriptions of birds, animals and village life.

Television: Technology and Cultural Form was first published in 1974, long before the dawn of multi-channel TV, or the reality and celebrity shows that now pack the schedules. Yet Williams' analysis of television's history, its institutions, programmes and practices, and its future prospects, remains remarkably prescient. Williams stresses the importance of technology in shaping the cultural form of television, while always resisting the determinism of McLuhan's dictum that 'the medium is the message'. If the medium really is the message, Williams asks, what is left for us to do or say? Williams argues that, on the contrary, we as viewers have the power to disturb, disrupt and to distract the otherwise cold logic of history and technology - not just because television is part of the fabric of our daily lives, but because new technologies continue to offer opportunities, momentarily outside the sway of transnational corporations or the grasp of media moguls, for new forms of self and political expression.

Presents Clare's poetry exactly as he wrote it, and includes selections from his mad' poems as well as his earlier descriptions of birds, animals and village life.

Raymond Williams' seminal exploration of the history of meaning of some of the most important words in the English language. First published in 1976, and expanded in 1983, KEYWORDS reveals how the meanings of 131 words - including 'art', 'class', 'family', 'media', 'sex' and 'tradition' - were formed and subsequently altered and redefined as the historical contexts in which they were used changed. Neither a defining dictionary or glossary, KEYWORDS is rather a brilliant investigation into how the meanings of some of the most important words in the English language have shifted over time, and the forces that brought about those shifts.

Raymond Williams was a pioneering scholar of cultural and society, and one of the outstanding intellectuals of the twentieth century. In this, a collection of difficult to find essays, some of which are published for the first time, Williams emerges as not only one of the great writers of materialist criticism, but also a thoroughly engaged political writer. Published to coincide with the centenary of his birth and showing the full range of his work, from his early writings on the novel and society, to later work on ecosocialism and the politics of modernism, Politics and Culture shows Williams at both his most accessible and his most penetrating.An essential book for all those interested in the politics of culture in the twentieth century, and the development of Williams's work.

A comprehensive introduction to the work of one of the outstanding intellectuals of the twentieth century. Raymond Williams is a towering presence in cultural studies, most importantly as the founder of the apporach that has come to be known as "cultural materialism." Yet Williams's method was always open-ended and fluid, and this volume collects together his most significant work from over a twenty-year peiod in which he wrestled with the concepts of materialism and culture and their interrelationship. Aside from his more directly theoretical texts, however, case-studies of theatrical naturalism, the Bloomsbury group, advertising, science fiction, and the Welsh novel are also included as illustrations of the method at work. Finally, Williams's identity as an active socialist, rather than simply an academic, is captured by two unambiguously political pieces on the past, present and future of Marxism.

Raymond Williams possessed unique authority as Britain's foremost cultural theorist and public intellectual. Informed by an unparalleled range of reference and the resources of deep personal experience, his life's work represents a patient, exemplary commitment to the building of a socialist future. This book brings together important early writings including "Culture is Ordinary," "The British Left," "Welsh Culture" and "Why Do I Demonstrate?" with major essays and talks of the last decade. It includes work on such central themes as the nature of a democratic culture, the value of community, Green socialism, the nuclear threat, and the relation between the state and the arts. Here too, collected for the first time, are the important later political essays which undertake a thorough revaluation of the principles fundamental to the idea of socialist democracy, and confirm Williams as a shrewd and imaginative political theorist. In a sober yet constructive assessment of the possibilities for socialist advance, Williams-in the face of much recent intellectual fashion-powerfully reasserts his lifelong commitment to "making hope practical, rather than despair convincing." This valuable collection confirms Raymond Williams as a thinker of rare versatility and one of the outstanding intellectuals of our century.

Acknowledged as a masterpiece of materialist criticism, this book delves into the complex ways economic reality shapes the imagination. Surveying two hundred years of history and English literature - from George Eliot to George Orwell - Williams provides insights into the social and economic forces that have shaped British culture and society. Provocative and revolutionary in its day, this work overturned conventional thinking about the development of a common British mentality.

'Television: Technology and Cultural Form is a powerful and original book which marked the beginning of a new breed of British accounts of television. Instead of focusing solely on the content of television programs, it examined the shaping effect of television's technological structures upon its characteristic forms.' - Graeme Turner, Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies, University of Queensland

'Television: Technology and Cultural Form changed the way people understand TV. For the first time, a sophisticated critic and historian looked at the all medium's aspects--as a domestic technology, an object of public policy, a fetish of capital, a series of texts, and a creator of audiences... It was the first classic of TV studies.' - Toby Miller, New York University

'This book is a classic because it inaugurated ways of thinking about a new technology - television - as part of everyday material culture which are even more pertinent to us now as we enter the digital age.' - Charlotte Brunsdon, University of Warwick

'A critical, insightful, iconoclastic and humane reading of television's first half century.' - Roger Silverstone, LSE

Considered to be the founding father of British cultural theory, Williams was concerned throughout his life to apply a materialist and socialist analysis to all forms of culture, defined generously and inclusively as "structures of feeling." In this major work, Williams applies himself to the problem of modernism. Rejecting stereotypes and simplifications, he is especially preoccupied with the ambivalent relationship between revolutionary socialist politics and the artistic avant-garde. Judiciously assessing the strengths and weaknesses of the modernist project, Williams shifts the framework of discussion from merely formal analysis of artistic techniques to one which grounds these cultural expressions in particular social formations. Animating the whole book is the question which Williams poses and brings us significantly closer to answering: namely, what does it mean to develop a cultural analysis that goes "beyond the modern" and yet avoids the trap of postmodernism's "new conformism"?

Taking inspiration from classic authors from Jane Austen to Thomas Hardy, Williams shines a light on our society's changing views of the rural and industrial landscapes in which we work and live. Our collective notion of the city and country is irresistibly powerful. The city as the seat of enlightenment, sophistication, power and greed is in profound contrast with an innocent, peaceful, backward countryside. Examining literature since the sixteenth century, Williams traces the development of our conceptions of these two traditional poles of life. His groundbreaking study casts the country and city as central symbols for the social and economic changes associated with capitalist development. WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY TRISTRAM HUNT