The study investigates the cultural production of the visual iconography of popular pleasure grounds from the eighteenth century pleasure garden to the contemporary theme park. Deborah Philips identifies the literary genres, including fairy tale, gothic horror, Egyptiana and the Western which are common to carnival sites and traces their historical transition across a range of media to become familiar icons of popular culture.Though the bricolage of narratives and imagery found in the contemporary leisure zone has been read by many as emblematic of postmodern culture, the author argues that the clash of genres and stories is less a consequence of postmodern pastiche than it is the result of a history and popular tradition of conventionalized iconography.

This book situates the production of The Boy Friend and the Players' Theatre in the context of a post-war London and reads The Boy Friend, and Wilson's later work, as exercises in contemporary camp. It argues for Wilson as a significant and transitional figure both for musical theatre and for modes of homosexuality in the context of the pre-Wolfenden 1950s. Sandy Wilson's The Boy Friend is one of the most successful British musicals ever written. First produced at the Players' Theatre Club in London in 1953 it transferred to the West End and Broadway, making a star out of Julie Andrews and gave Twiggy a leading role in Ken Russell's 1971 film adaptation. Despite this success, little is known about Wilson, a gay writer working in Britain in the 1950s at a time when homosexuality was illegal. Drawing on original research assembled from the Wilson archives at the Harry Ransom Center, this is the first critical study of Wilson as a key figure of 1950s British theatre. Beginning with the often overlooked context of the Players' Theatre Club through to Wilson's relationship to industry figures such as Binkie Beaumont, Noel Coward and Ivor Novello, this study explores the work in the broader history of Soho gay culture. As well as a critical perspective on The Boy Friend, later works such as Divorce Me, Darling!, The Buccaneer and Valmouth are examined as well as uncompleted musical versions of Pygmalion and Goodbye to Berlin to give a comprehensive and original perspective on one of British theatre's most celebrated yet overlooked talents.

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. The Trojan Horse traces the growth of commercial sponsorship in the public sphere since the 1960s, its growing importance for the arts since 1980 and its spread into areas such as education and health. The authors' central argument is that the image of sponsorship as corporate benevolence has served to routinize and legitimate the presence of commerce within the public sector. The central metaphor is of such sponsorship as a Trojan Horse helping to facilitate the hollowing out of the public sector by private agencies and private finance. The authors place the study in the context of the more general colonization of the state by private capital and the challenge posed to the dominance of neo-liberal economics by the recent global financial crisis. After considering the passage from patronage to sponsorship and outlining the context of the post-war public sector since 1945, it analyses sponsorship in relation to Thatcherism, enterprise culture and the restructuring of public provision during the 1980s. It goes on to examine the New Labour years, and the ways in which sponsorship has paved the way for the increased use of private-public partnerships and private finance initiatives within the public sector in the UK.

This book explores the history of women's engagement with writing experimentally. Women writers have long used different narratives and modes of writing as a way of critiquing worlds and stories that they find themselves at odds with, but at the same time, as a way to participate in such spaces. Experimentation-of style, mode, voice, genre and language-has enabled women writers to be simultaneously creative and critical, engaged in and yet apart from stories and cultures that have so often seen them as 'other'. This collection shows that women writers in English over the past 400 years have challenged those ideas not only through explicit polemic and alternative representations but through disrupting the very modes of representation and story itself.

Organised around each decade of the post war period, this book analyses novels written by and for women from 1945 to the present. Each chapter identifies a specific genre in popular fiction for women which marked that period and provides case studies focusing on writers and texts which enjoyed a wide readership. Despite their popularity, these novels remain largely outside the 'canon' of women's writing, and are often unacknowledged by feminist literary criticism. However, these texts clearly touched a nerve with a largely female readership, and so offer a means of charting the changes in ideals of femininity, and in the tensions and contradictions in gender identities in the post-war period. Their analysis offers new insights into the shifting demands, aspirations and expectations of what a woman could and should be over the last half century. Through her analysis of women's writing and reading, Philips sets out to challenge the distinction between 'popular' and 'literary' fiction, arguing that neat categories such as 'popular', 'middle brow' and 'serious fiction' need more careful definition.

This book situates the production of The Boy Friend and the Players' Theatre in the context of a post-war London and reads The Boy Friend, and Wilson's later work, as exercises in contemporary camp. It argues for Wilson as a significant and transitional figure both for musical theatre and for modes of homosexuality in the context of the pre-Wolfenden 1950s. Sandy Wilson's The Boy Friend is one of the most successful British musicals ever written. First produced at the Players' Theatre Club in London in 1953 it transferred to the West End and Broadway, making a star out of Julie Andrews and gave Twiggy a leading role in Ken Russell's 1971 film adaptation. Despite this success, little is known about Wilson, a gay writer working in Britain in the 1950s at a time when homosexuality was illegal. Drawing on original research assembled from the Wilson archives at the Harry Ransom Center, this is the first critical study of Wilson as a key figure of 1950s British theatre. Beginning with the often overlooked context of the Players' Theatre Club through to Wilson's relationship to industry figures such as Binkie Beaumont, Noel Coward and Ivor Novello, this study explores the work in the broader history of Soho gay culture. As well as a critical perspective on The Boy Friend, later works such as Divorce Me, Darling!, The Buccaneer and Valmouth are examined as well as uncompleted musical versions of Pygmalion and Goodbye to Berlin to give a comprehensive and original perspective on one of British theatre's most celebrated yet overlooked talents.

This book explores the history of women's engagement with writing experimentally. Women writers have long used different narratives and modes of writing as a way of critiquing worlds and stories that they find themselves at odds with, but at the same time, as a way to participate in such spaces. Experimentation-of style, mode, voice, genre and language-has enabled women writers to be simultaneously creative and critical, engaged in and yet apart from stories and cultures that have so often seen them as 'other'. This collection shows that women writers in English over the past 400 years have challenged those ideas not only through explicit polemic and alternative representations but through disrupting the very modes of representation and story itself.

Writing Well is a practical handbook of creative writing exercises which forms the basis of an indirect, nonconfrontational approach specifically intended for therapeutic use within the mental health field. Although people with emotional or psychological problems can find creative writing particularly difficult and unsettling, when writing courses are sensitively designed they are known to be of therapeutic benefit to people with mental health problems. The exercises are taken from the authors' successful practice with groups of people from a range of backgrounds in a variety of settings. The book is structured to be accessible and easy to use. The warm-ups and main exercises are organised by themes, such as positive memories, imagined worlds, changes and painful feelings. Guidelines are given for developing and adapting the exercises and practical suggestions for materials are included in the appendix. This volume will be an invaluable practical resource and imaginative inspiration for creative writing tutors and mental health professionals.

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. The Trojan Horse traces the growth of commercial sponsorship in the public sphere since the 1960s, its growing importance for the arts since 1980 and its spread into areas such as education and health. The authors' central argument is that the image of sponsorship as corporate benevolence has served to routinize and legitimate the presence of commerce within the public sector. The central metaphor is of such sponsorship as a Trojan Horse helping to facilitate the hollowing out of the public sector by private agencies and private finance. The authors place the study in the context of the more general colonization of the state by private capital and the challenge posed to the dominance of neo-liberal economics by the recent global financial crisis. After considering the passage from patronage to sponsorship and outlining the context of the post-war public sector since 1945, it analyses sponsorship in relation to Thatcherism, enterprise culture and the restructuring of public provision during the 1980s. It goes on to examine the New Labour years, and the ways in which sponsorship has paved the way for the increased use of private-public partnerships and private finance initiatives within the public sector in the UK.

Now in its second edition and with new chapters covering such texts as Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love and 'yummy mummy' novels such as Allison Pearson's I Don't Know How She Does It, this is a wide-ranging survey of popular women's fiction from 1945 to the present. Examining key trends in popular writing for women in each decade, Women's Fiction offers case study readings of major British and American writers. Through these readings, the book explores how popular texts often neglected by feminist literary criticism have charted the shifting demands, aspirations and expectations of women in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Organised around each decade of the post war period, this book analyses novels written by and for women from 1945 to the present. Each chapter identifies a specific genre in popular fiction for women which marked that period and provides case studies focusing on writers and texts which enjoyed a wide readership. Despite their popularity, these novels remain largely outside the 'canon' of women's writing, and are often unacknowledged by feminist literary criticism. However, these texts clearly touched a nerve with a largely female readership, and so offer a means of charting the changes in ideals of femininity, and in the tensions and contradictions in gender identities in the post-war period. Their analysis offers new insights into the shifting demands, aspirations and expectations of what a woman could and should be over the last half century. Through her analysis of women's writing and reading, Philips sets out to challenge the distinction between 'popular' and 'literary' fiction, arguing that neat categories such as 'popular', 'middle brow' and 'serious fiction' need more careful definition.