Ulster's marching bands form perhaps the most vibrant participatory folk music tradition in contemporary Europe, and are one of the most significant and visible elements of working-class loyalist culture in the divided society of Northern Ireland. Their significance springs largely from the central place they have assumed in the lives of their members. This book presents an ethnography of three County Antrim flute bands from the very different genres of 'part-music', 'melody' and 'blood and thunder'. The author explores the emotional rewards of communal music-making and the way that identities are formed through the acquisition of tastes, competences and skills within specific communal contexts, paying particular attention to the impact of class position. These issues are examined in the context of the competitions, concerts and street parades that are central to the social lives of thousands of band members and supporters in Northern Ireland.

In 1982, Argentina rashly gambled that a full-scale invasion of the Falklands Islands - ownership of which had been disputed with Great Britain for over a century - would put an end to years of political wrangling. However Britain's response was to immediately dispatch a task force to recover the islands by force if necessary. The 'conflict' which followed (a formal declaration of war was never given) lasted ten weeks from Argentine invasion to British liberation, the white heat of battle using 20th century technology contrasting with bitter hand-to-hand bayonet fighting in inhospitable conditions. This title features eyewitness accounts by the participants of both sides and islanders that leave us in no doubt as to the ferocity of the combat on land, sea and in the air. Its comparison photography in colour of all the battlefields, the crash sites of the aircraft shot down, the relics and the remains, together with portraits of those who lost their lives and the battlefield memorials, serve as a graphic testimony to their endeavours, 25 years after the battle. "A Roll of Honour" lists the casualties of both sides and, for the first time, the graves of all the British fallen - both on the islands and the United Kingdom - have been visited and photographed as a lasting record of all those who made the supreme sacrifice I what is most probably Britain's last colonial war.