How do poets, writers and cultural critics contend with and represent the garden or their own gardening as they are changed by austerity? Gardening under austerity encompasses a diversity of places, spaces, practices, and actors: suburban allotments and zoological gardens, Victory diggers and urban foragers, human gardeners and the unruly more-than-human world. Theorizing the politics, poetics and practices of austerity gardening in twentieth and twenty-first century Anglophone cultural texts, The Poetics and Politics of Gardening in Hard Times explores the variegated impact of austerity in conjunction with the representation of the garden in the national context of England in the mid-century, and how garden imagery is embedded within and illuminates the political, economic, and social contexts of literary production.

Once known for successful pop records and a wardrobe of polyester jump suits, this is a reassessment of a band now cemented in their position as one of the all time great pop acts. ABBA were once reviled by most critics, but now bands like Bjorn Again and Erasure keep the phenomenon thriving. This is their background story. Written with the co-operation of the members of the band, Andrew Oldham's biography features the early years when as engaged couples as they then styled themselves, they failed to make it as Sweden's entrant for Eurovision with a song called "Waterloo". It caused a national outcry. It is a history of worldwide hit records, infighting, partner swapping, and financial disaster - they do not get one kroner in royalties for many of their songs - and bitterness. But it is also a story of triumph.