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This volume of wide-ranging essays by sport historians and
sociologists examines the complex relations of war, peace and sport
through a series of case studies from South and North America,
Europe, North Africa, Asia and New Zealand. From formal military
training in the late nineteenth century to contemporary esports,
the relationship between military and sporting cultures has endured
across nations in times of conflict and peace. This collection
contextualizes debates around the morality and desirability of
continuing to play sport against the backdrop of war as others are
dying for their nation. It also examines the legacy and memory of
particular wars as expressed in a range of sporting practices in
the immediate aftermath of conflicts such as the World Wars and
wars of independence. At the same time, this book analyses the
history of sport and peace by considering how sport can operate as
a pacification in some contexts and a tool of reconciliation in
others. Together, and through an introductory framing essay, these
essays offer scholars of sport, conflict studies and cultural
history more broadly a multinational analysis of the
war-peace-sport nexus that has operated throughout the world since
the late nineteenth century.
This book studies travel writing produced by French authors between
the two World Wars following visits to authoritarian regimes in
Europe and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). It sheds
new light on the phenomenon of French political travel in this
period by considering the well-documented appeal of Soviet
communism for French intellectuals alongside their interest in
other radical regimes which have been much less studied: fascist
Italy, the Iberian dictatorships and Nazi Germany. Through analyses
of the travel writing produced as a result of such visits, the book
gauges the appeal of these forms of authoritarianism for inter-war
French intellectuals from a broad political spectrum. It examines
not only those whose political sympathies with the extreme right or
extreme left were already publicly known, but also non-aligned
intellectuals who were interested in political models that offered
an apparently radical alternative to the French Third Republic.
This study shows how travel writing provided a space for reflection
on the lessons France might learn from the radical political
experiments of the inter-war years. It argues that such writing can
usefully be read as a form of utopian thinking, distinguishing this
from colloquial understandings of utopia as an ideal location.
Utopianism is understood neither as a fantasy ungrounded in the
real nor as a dangerously totalitarian ideal, but, in line with
Karl Mannheim, Paul Ricoeur, and Ruth Levitas, as a form of
non-congruence with the real that it seeks to transcend. The
utopianism of French political travel writing is seen to lie not in
the attempt to portray the destination visited as utopia, but
rather in the pursuit of a dialogue with radical political
alterity.
This book studies travel writing produced by French authors between
the two World Wars following visits to authoritarian regimes in
Europe and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). It sheds
new light on the phenomenon of French political travel in this
period by considering the well-documented appeal of Soviet
communism for French intellectuals alongside their interest in
other radical regimes which have been much less studied: fascist
Italy, the Iberian dictatorships and Nazi Germany. Through analyses
of the travel writing produced as a result of such visits, the book
gauges the appeal of these forms of authoritarianism for inter-war
French intellectuals from a broad political spectrum. It examines
not only those whose political sympathies with the extreme right or
extreme left were already publicly known, but also non-aligned
intellectuals who were interested in political models that offered
an apparently radical alternative to the French Third Republic.
This study shows how travel writing provided a space for reflection
on the lessons France might learn from the radical political
experiments of the inter-war years. It argues that such writing can
usefully be read as a form of utopian thinking, distinguishing this
from colloquial understandings of utopia as an ideal location.
Utopianism is understood neither as a fantasy ungrounded in the
real nor as a dangerously totalitarian ideal, but, in line with
Karl Mannheim, Paul Ricoeur, and Ruth Levitas, as a form of
non-congruence with the real that it seeks to transcend. The
utopianism of French political travel writing is seen to lie not in
the attempt to portray the destination visited as utopia, but
rather in the pursuit of a dialogue with radical political
alterity.
In this wide-ranging study of French intellectuals who represented
the Spanish Civil War as it was happening and in its immediate
aftermath, Martin Hurcombe explores the ways in which these
individuals addressed national anxieties and shaped the French
political landscape. Bringing together reportage, essays, and
fiction by French supporters of Franco's Nationalists and of the
Spanish Republic, Hurcombe shows the multifaceted ways in which
that conflict impacted upon French political culture. He argues
that French cultural representations of the war often articulated a
utopian image of the Nationalists or of the Spanish Republic that
served as models behind which the radical right or the radical left
in France might mobilise. His book will be of interest not only to
scholars of French literature and culture but also to those
interested in how events unfolding in Spain found an echo in the
political landscapes of other countries.
The year is 2002, the place is South East England, normally a
peaceful corner of the world. Normally. In between jobs and living
alone in a quiet village on the Surrey/Sussex border,
thirty-year-old Alba White is drifting through life. At the other
end of the village, Hillstone Hall is in a precarious position. The
elderly Lord, Edward Chapman, is in a financial hole and literally
selling the family silver to keep the place afloat. Then, when
during a charity cricket match, one of his own garden volunteers is
murdered, things take a further turn for the worse until an arrest
is made. Yet, Alba, who found the dying man and whose blood stained
her beautiful white dress, is not convinced the police have
arrested the right person. Suddenly she has direction, but will she
discover the truth in time? Set around one man's life, we are taken
from 1940s war-torn France, to the airfields of Bomber Command, to
the grim interior of a prison and to the homeliness of a village
pub in 2002, in a murder-mystery which will appeal to Agatha
Christie fans and those who enjoy a more retro-feel to their crime
stories.
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