Vivienne Westwood is one of the icons of our age. Fashion designer, activist, co-creator of punk, global brand and grandmother; a true living legend. Her career has successfully spanned five decades and her work has influenced millions of people across the world. For the first and only time, Vivienne Westwood has written a personal memoir, collaborating with award-winning biographer Ian Kelly, to describe the events, people and ideas that have shaped her extraordinary life. Told in all its glamour and glory, and with her unique voice, unexpected perspective and passionate honesty, this is her story. For the first and only time, she is both writing and collaborating on a unique personal memoir and authorised biography: partly her own voice, partly through contributions from her vast network of friends, family and associates. Ian Kelly (award-winning biographer of, amongst others, fashion maverick Beau Brummell and the original self-publicist, Giacomo Casanova) brings the insights of a historian and friend of Vivienne to the life and works of one of the major influences of our age in this wonderful, insightful collaboration.

This work explains elite behaviour in authoritarian systems and proposes why elites withdraw their support for the incumbent when faced with popular uprisings. Building upon foundations drawn from institutional authoritarianism and synthesised with local context from the substantial scholarship on the Middle East and North Africa, the book argues that the elite supporting autocrats come from three distinct cadres: the military, the single-party and the personalist. Each of these cadres possesses its own distinct institutional interests and preferences towards regime change. Drawing on these interests, the study constructs a theoretical framework that is assessed through testing it against three variables. Utilising an analytic narrative, the research finds that the withdrawal of elite support is the consequence of long-term processes that see distinct cadres marginalised. First, increased incumbent preference for personalist elements destabilises regimes as the military and single-party cadres reconsider their positions. Second, neoliberal economic policies, implemented via structural adjustment, accelerated this personalisation as the state's withdrawal from the economy. This, in turn, affected the ability of the military and single-party elites to access patronage. Finally, the degree of military involvement in the formal political sphere contributes to shaping the nature of the system that replaced the incumbent regime under examination. Building upon a wide range of literature the book argues that interest realisation determines whether or not elite actors support regime change in authoritarian systems. The volume will be of interest to scholars researching politics, social sciences and the Middle East.

This work explains elite behaviour in authoritarian systems and proposes why elites withdraw their support for the incumbent when faced with popular uprisings. Building upon foundations drawn from institutional authoritarianism and synthesised with local context from the substantial scholarship on the Middle East and North Africa, the book argues that the elite supporting autocrats come from three distinct cadres: the military, the single-party and the personalist. Each of these cadres possesses its own distinct institutional interests and preferences towards regime change. Drawing on these interests, the study constructs a theoretical framework that is assessed through testing it against three variables. Utilising an analytic narrative, the research finds that the withdrawal of elite support is the consequence of long-term processes that see distinct cadres marginalised. First, increased incumbent preference for personalist elements destabilises regimes as the military and single-party cadres reconsider their positions. Second, neoliberal economic policies, implemented via structural adjustment, accelerated this personalisation as the state's withdrawal from the economy. This, in turn, affected the ability of the military and single-party elites to access patronage. Finally, the degree of military involvement in the formal political sphere contributes to shaping the nature of the system that replaced the incumbent regime under examination. Building upon a wide range of literature the book argues that interest realisation determines whether or not elite actors support regime change in authoritarian systems. The volume will be of interest to scholars researching politics, social sciences and the Middle East.

"If people turn to look at you in the street, you are not well dressed, but either too stiff, too tight, or too fashionable." -- Beau Brummell Long before tabloids and television, Beau Brummell was the first person famous for being famous, the male socialite of his time, the first metrosexual -- 200 years before the word was conceived. His name has become synonymous with wit, profligacy, fine tailoring, and fashion. A style pundit, Brummell was singly responsible for changing forever the way men dress -- inventing, in effect, the suit. Brummell cut a dramatic swath through British society, from his early years as a favorite of the Prince of Wales and an arbiter of taste in the Age of Elegance, to his precipitous fall into poverty, incarceration, and madness. Brummell created the blueprint for celebrity crash and burn, falling dramatically out of favor and spending his last years in a hellish asylum. For nearly two decades, Brummell ruled over the tastes and pursuits of the well heeled and influential, and for almost as long, lived in penury and exile. With vivid prose, critically acclaimed biographer Ian Kelly unlocks the glittering, turbulent world of late-eighteenth/early-nineteenth-century London -- the first truly modern metropolis: venal, fashion-and-celebrity obsessed, self-centered and self-doubting -- through the life of one of its greatest heroes and most tragic victims. Brummell personified London's West End, where a new style of masculinity and modern men's fashion were first defined. Brummell was the leading Casanova and elusive bachelor of his time, appealing to both men and women of his society. The man Lord Byron once claimed was more important than Napoleon, Brummell was the ultimate cosmopolitan man. "Toyboy" to Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, and leader of playboys including the eventual king of England, Brummell inspired Pushkin to write Eugene Onegin, and Byron to write Don Juan, and he influenced others from Oscar Wilde to Coco Chanel. Through love letters, historical records, and poems, Kelly reveals the man inside the suit, unlocking the scandalous behavior of London's high society while illuminating Brummell's enigmatic life in the colorful, tumultuous West End. A rare rendering of an era filled with excess, scandal, promiscuity, opulence, and luxury, Beau Brummell is the first comprehensive view of an elegant and ultimately tragic figure whose influence continues to this day.

Beau Brummell's life is a riveting story of unparalleled fame, fashion and admiration followed by a descent into poverty and madness. The man who put Saville Row on the map, who could win friends, political arguments or the favours of women with apparent effortlessness, and who was responsible for some of the wittiest put-downs in history, Brummell created the myth of the British gent typified by wit, style, sex, and the finest tailoring in the world. In this biography Ian Kelly brings the clothes, fashions and people of Regency England vividly to life. Brummell's life is a mirror to his own age and also to our own. Part Andy Warhol, part David Beckham, part Oscar Wilde - Brummell became famous by virtue of his image at a time when the modern concept of 'celebrity' was first termed. This is the man with cause to be considered the father of the cult of personality - to be considered, indeed, as the first true 'celebrity'.

In Georgian London no one is more famous than Samuel Foote. Satirist, impressionist and dangerous comedian, friend of David Garrick and Dr Johnson, he is a bona fide celebrity in an age obsessed with fame. He even has the ear of the King. But when Foote finds himself at the centre of a media storm - and under the surgeon's knife - there's only one question on everyone's lips: does fame make you mad? Based on Ian Kelly's award-winning biography, Mr Foote's Other Leg is a riotously funny play exploring our obsession with celebrities, through the true story of the Oscar Wilde of the eighteenth century. It premiered at Hampstead Theatre in September 2015, in a production directed by Richard Eyre and featuring Simon Russell Beale as Foote. 'Written with panache and wit - as lively and entertaining a historical biography as you are ever likely to read' Sunday Times on Ian Kelly's biography of Samuel Foote

Tourism has the potential to contribute to world peace, and through appropriate management, to address current realities such as globalization, migration, conflicts, prejudices and poverty. By providing a range of international perspectives and case studies, this book discusses the interrelation between peace, conflict resolution and tourism, the role of industry and the role of the individual, and tourism as a catalyst for change and development. Exploring the ideas that there is more to peace than the absence of war and that there is more to tourism than economic interests, this book is the first of its kind and an essential resource for researchers, students and policymakers in tourism and related subjects.

Giacomo Casanova was one of the most beguiling and controversial individuals of his or any age. Braggart or perfect lover? Conman or genius? He made and lost fortunes, founded state lotteries, wrote forty-two books and 3,600 pages of memoirs recording the tastes and smells of the years before the French Revolution - as well, of course, as his affairs and sexual encounters with dozens of women and a handful of men. His energy was dazzling. Historian Ian Kelly draws on previously unpublished documents from the Venetian Inquisition, by Casanova, his friends and lovers, which give new insights into his life and world. His research spans eighteenth-century Europe. This is the story if a man, but also of the book he wrote about himself. His own memoirs have brought him two centuries of notoriety. They have also changed forever the way we think and write about ourselves - and about sex. At the same time that revolutions - scientific, industrial, political and artistic - remade the world in the eighteenth century, Casanova created an intimate and exhaustive study of what he saw as the most revolutionary article of all - himself. The world, and the way we look at ourselves in it, would never be the same again.