Ministers and their ministries are the means by which we hold government accountable for providing vital public services such as adequate health, education, and social security benefits. In this provocative book the author systematically examines the persisting and changing features of Whitehall ministries since 1945. Three case studies - the Scottish Office, the Welsh Office, and the Northern Ireland Office - provide detailed illustrations of the complexity of the issues involved. Professor Rose's analysis raises fresh questions about the priorities of politicians as individuals, and about public priorities involving tens of billions of pounds and millions of public servants. His concluding chapter argues that Mrs Thatcher's attempt to introduce techniques of business management into government is based upon a fundamental misunderstanding of the priorities of ministers and ministries.

This one-volume translation, with commentary and introduction brings together three important works. All three texts cast great, if generally neglected light on politics and ideology in early Byzantium. Agapetus wrote, c. 527-30CE, from a position sympathetic to Justinian, when he had still to consolidate his authority. He sets out what an emperor must do to acquire legitimacy, in terms of government's being the imitation of God. Read in context, his work is much more than a list of pious commonplaces. The Dialogue, written anonymously towards the end the same reign, comprises fragments from Books 4-5 of a philosophically sophisticated (lost) longer work, setting out requirements for the ideal polity, based on a similar concept of imperial rule, with extensive comment on matters of current political salience but from an implicitly hostile standpoint. Not only does the text reflect the nature of Neoplatonic political philosophy but it also penetrates with its ideas deep into the inner realities of the time, into the political problems of Constantinople during the first half of the sixth century. The third text was written by Paul the Silentiary to mark the rededication of the basilica Hagia Sophia, built thirty years earlier under the orders of Emperor Justinian I. Together the translations provide an important insight into the early Byzantine period.

David Bell was born circ. 1780 near Glasgow, Scotland and wore kilts when he was young. By 1800 he was sent to England to find a wife and met a married Sarah Jane Marshall in Derrycrew in 1800. They had 8 children, and this is their story compiled from census reports, court records and interviews and photos. This book contains detailed reference materials for future genealogists to carry on further additions to the Bell line.