Brigg lives in a small, grey room in a large, grey city. When he finds a book in the library labelled 'Do Not Read', he cannot resist taking it home. In it, he comes upon pictures of bright, vibrant objects called flowers. He cannot find flowers anywhere in the city, but stumbles instead on a packet of seeds. This sets off a chain of events which bring about unexpected results, continuing to grow and bloom even after we have turned the last page. John Light's enigmatic story is told with utter simplicity, but resonates long after we finish reading this book. His increasingly optimistic vision is hauntingly captured by Lisa Evans's beautiful and whimsical illustrations.

This comprehensive volume presents a selection of country studies on European Accounting published since 1995. It concentrates on financial accounting, but also gives research on management accounting, auditing, professionalisation, history and critical accounting. It sheds light on financial reporting as it is currently practised, as well as on the regulatory framework and the accounting environment. The articles range from descriptions of the development of accounting systems in the transitional economies of Eastern Europe to analyses of theory and practice in Western European countries with a more established research tradition. This collection has international appeal and can be appreciated with relatively limited prior knowledge of the countries or specific techniques.

Pan-European research on medieval clothing and textiles, drawing from a range of disciplines. This volume continues the series' tradition of bringing together work on clothing and textiles from across Europe. It has a strong focus on gold: subjects include sixth-century German burials containing sumptuous jewellery and bands brocaded with gold; the textual evidence for recycling such gold borders and bands in the later Anglo-Saxon period; and a semantic classification of words relating to gold in multi-lingual medieval Britain. It also rescues significant archaeological textiles from obscurity: there is a discussion of early medieval headdresses from The Netherlands, and an examination of a fifteenth-century Italian cushion, an early example of piecework. Finally, uses of dress and textiles in literature are explored in a survey of the Welsh Mabinogion and Jean Renart's Roman de la Rose. Robin Netherton is a professional editor and a researcher/lecturer on the interpretationof medieval European dress; Gale R. Owen-Crocker is Professor of Anglo-Saxon Culture at the University of Manchester. Contributors: Brigitte Haas-Gebhard, Britt Nowak-Boeck, Maren Clegg Hyer, Louise Sylvester, ChrystelBrandenburgh, Lisa Evans, Patricia Williams, Katherine Talarico.

Essays on costume, fabric and clothing in the Middle Ages and beyond. All those who work with historical dress and textiles must in some way re-fashion them. This fundamental concept is developed and addressed by the articles collected here, ranging over issues of gender, status and power. Topics include: the repurposing and transformation of material items for purposes of religion, memorialisation, restoration and display; attempts to regulate dress, both ecclesiastical and secular, the reasons for it and the refashioning which was both a result and a reaction; conventional ways in which dress was used to characterise children, and their transition into young men; how symbolism-laded dress items could indicate political/religious affiliations; waysin which allegorical, biblical and historical figures were depicted in art in dress familiar to the viewers of their own era, and the emotive and intellectual responses to these costumes the artists sought to elicit; and the use of clothing in medieval literature (often rich, exotic or unique) as narrative, structuring and rhetorical devices. Taken together, they honour the costume historian and editor Robin Netherton, who has been hugely influentialin the development of medieval and Renaissance dress and textile studies. GALE R. OWEN-CROCKER is Professor Emerita at the University of Manchester; MAREN CLEGG HYER is Professor of English at Valdosta State University. Contributors: Melanie Schuessler Bond, Elizabeth Coatsworth, Lisa Evans, Gina Frasson-Hudson, Charney Goldman, Sarah-Grace Heller, Maren Clegg Hyer, John Friedman, Thomas Izbicki, Drea Leed, Christine Meek, M.A. Nordtorp-Madson, Gale R. Owen-Crocker, Lucia Sinisi, Monica L. Wright.

I had a great great granma. She took Sojourner Truth as her name. I am her great great granddaughter. I am Mama's daughter. I am Lizzie Walker...It is 1950s America, the Deep South; a world on the verge of change but still tainted by everyday injustices and the remnants of slavery. Lizzie and her family long for progress, inspired by their ancestor Sojourner Truth, freedom fighter, and just one of the many heroes the history books forgot. With Sojourner's dreams pumping in their veins they fight their own battles, old and new. But when the fight takes a life, can they summon up her courage and keep dreaming, or will it destroy them? "Shouting, Stamping and Singing Home" is a production by Polka Theatre aimed at young people aged 12-16. It premieres in October 2006 as part of Black History Month.

Ali was always going to be a dancer. She was still dancing the day she gave birth. Careful Kitty, housewife and mother, sits in her silent home and waits for the daughter who doesn't return. And Milena, desperate to protect her children, carries a terrible secret. A moving and powerful play about the experiences of three very different mothers.

Dracula and Frankenstein: Two Horror Plays brings together two classic horror tales updated for the 21st century and adapted for the stage by two of Britain's leading playwrights. Bram Stoker's Dracula adapted by Bryony Lavery: This is the modern world. Its inhabitants can go anywhere, even toTransylvania. They can communicate globally in the blink of an eye. But their feet, in their modern shoes, walk upon the gravestones of a vast cosmic graveyard. Count Dracula is still alive. He could always come through walls, arrive on a moonbeam but, in the modern world, he has emails, smartphones, webcams and the worldwide web... Mary Shelley's Frankenstein adapted by Lisa Evans: Mary is imprisoned in a present-day psychiatric hospital, convicted of murdering her baby daughter. During her incarceration she becomes obsessed with Mary Shelley's famous novel. The novel comes to lifewithin her imagination, and we are left to question just who the realmonster really is, Mary or Frankenstein himself...

A wide-ranging and varied collection of essays which examine surviving garments, methods of production and clothes in society. The second decade of this acclaimed and popular series begins with a volume that will be essential reading for historians and re-enactors alike. Two papers consider cloth manufacture in the early medieval period: Ingvild Øye examines the graves of prosperous Viking Age women from Western Norway which contained both textile-making tools and the remains of cloth, considering the relationship between the two. Karen Nicholson compliments this with practical experiments in spinning. This is followed by Tina Anderlini's close examination of the details of cut and construction of a thirteenth-century chemise attributed to King Louis IX of France (St Louis), out of its shrine for the firsttime since 1970. Three papers consider fashionable clothing and morality: Sarah-Grace Heller discusses sumptuary legislation from Angevin Sicily in the 1290s which sought to restrict men's dress at a time when preparation for war was more important than showy clothes; Cordelia Warr examines the dire consequences of a woman dressing extravagantly as portrayed in a fourteenth-century Italian fresco; and Emily Rozier discusses the extremes of dress attributed by moral and satirical writers to the men known as "galaunts". Two textual studies then show the importance of textiles in daily life. Susan Powell reveals the austere but magnificent purchases made on behalf of Lady Margaret Beaufort, mother of King Henry VII, in the last ten years of her life (1498-1509); Anna Riehl Bertolet discusses in detail the passage in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream where Helena passionately recalls sewinga sampler with Hermia when they were young and still bosom friends.

A new life beckons for Lucy Snowe, who leaves behind her past and flees from England. She finds work as a school teacher in the town of Villette, but her struggle to remain independent is overshadowed by despair and desire. Lucy's fevered imagination drives her to the edge, enduring fire, storms and callous rejection before pushing her teasingly close to a happy ending. "Villette" was Charlotte Bronte's last completed novel, and her most autobiographical. It thinly disguises her own life when she ventured away from the infamous Yorkshire parsonage to study but fell passionately - and dangerously - in love. This powerful, classic masterpiece is given a distinctive twist by the Stephen Joseph Theatre and award-winning theatre company Frantic Assembly. Production opens at SJT in October 2005.

When Danielle was a child, three women loomed large in her life: her gritty, responsible mother, her wild-child Aunt, and their best friend. Now a young woman herself and facing the break-up of another relationship, Danielle takes stock of her childhood years - of an absent dad; of her fascination with a neighbourhood "bad boy" - and uncovers a story of everyday heroism and the strange tricks that memory can play. A warm and witty new play, Getting to the Foot of the Mountain opens at the Birmingham Rep in May 2002.

Keswick, 1940 – Britain is at war with Germany. Maggie’s life is under invasion too: Gran knitting for England, evacuee lodgers, helping with the war effort – and now a fund-raising concert party! Husband Rob is due home on RAF leave and best friend Peg has just learnt that she’s pregnant – but no such luck for Maggie and Rob… Nostalgia, romance, laughter and tears all feature in this comedy world première, full of live music, songs and dance from the war years.

From the gothic story by Daphne du Maurier.