Explores why minor slights to certain kinds of gentlemen led to duels in order for honour to be satisfied, and how such ideas about honour changed over time. This book, the most comprehensive study of the English pistol duel yet undertaken, examines what it meant to be a man of honour in eighteenth and nineteenth century England. A thorough survey of the incidence and distribution of duelling, both socially and geographically, identifies those sub-groups of gentlemen most likely to duel. The author considers the mores and manners of such groups and asks why it was that within specific professions, minor slightscould only be requited by a demand for satisfaction. In doing so, the author rejects those traditional histories of duelling which have failed to engage with the internal dynamics and internal logic of the phenomenon itself. Too often historians have explained the rise of opposition to duelling in terms of social and cultural change whilst at the same time treating the duel as though its ideological content had become irrevocably fixed in the early seventeenth century. Honour culture too had a social and an intellectual history and the author outlines those conflicts of ideas within the culture of honour itself that did much to hasten the demise of the English duel. A Polite Exchange of Bullets will be welcomed as a fresh approach to an important social phenomenon by all those interested in duelling and in English social and cultural history. STEPHEN BANKS is a lecturer in criminal law at Reading University Law School and co-director of The Forum of Legal and Historical Research.

A study of law, wrongdoing and justice as conceived in the minds of the ordinary people of England and Wales from the later eighteenth century to the First World War. Shortlisted for the 2015 Katharine Briggs Award This is a study of law, wrongdoing and justice as conceived in the minds of the ordinary people of England and Wales from the later eighteenth century to the First World War. Official justice was to become increasingly centralised with declining traditional courts, emerging professional policing and a new prison estate. However, popular concepts of what was, or should be, contained within the law were often at variance with its formal written content. Communities continued to hold mock courts, stage shaming processions and burn effigies of wrongdoers. The author investigates those justice rituals, the actors, the victims andthe offences that occasioned them. He also considers the role such practices played in resistive communities trying to preserve their identity and assert their independence. Finally, whilst documenting the decline of popular justice traditions this book demonstrates that they were nevertheless important in bequeathing a powerful set of symbols and practices to the nascent labour movement. This book will be of interest to scholars and students of legalhistory and criminal justice as well as social and cultural history in what could be considered a very long nineteenth century. Stephen Banks is an associate professor in criminal law, criminal justice and legal historyat the University of Reading, co-director of the Forum for Legal and Historical Research and author of A Polite Exchange of Bullets: The Duel and the English Gentleman, 1750-1850 (The Boydell Press, 2010).

Rethinking Risk Assessment tells the story of a pioneering investigation that challenges preconceptions about the frequency and nature of violence among persons with mental disorders, and suggests an innovative approach to predicting its occurrence.

Law and Society in England 1750-1950 is an indispensable text for those wishing to study English legal history and to understand the foundations of the modern British state. In this new updated edition the authors explore the complex relationship between legal and social change. They consider the ways in which those in power themselves imagined and initiated reform and the ways in which they were obliged to respond to demands for change from outside the legal and political classes. What emerges is a lively and critical account of the evolution of modern rights and expectations, and an engaging study of the formation of contemporary social, administrative and legal institutions and ideas, and the road that was travelled to create them. The book is divided into eight chapters: Institutions and Ideas; Land; Commerce and Industry; Labour Relations; The Family; Poverty and Education; Accidents; and Crime. This extensively referenced analysis of modern social and legal history will be invaluable to students and teachers of English law, political science, and social history.

Updated with a new introduction by the authors, this anniversary edition shows the sibling relationship as a distinctive emotional, passionate, painful, and solacing power that shapes who we are and who we become. The relationships among brothers and sisters are infinitely varied-a sibling can be one's worst enemy or closest companion. Though their love or hate, envy or compassion, and closeness or rivalry are formed in childhood, these bonds last throughout life, creating character and affecting behavior in numerous situations. Strangely, this profound attachment-second only to the parent-child bond-was rarely studied or understood until recently, perhaps because the feelings siblings have about each other are usually both intense and secret.Bank and Kahn chart this unknown territory, offering a theory of the ways in which siblings attach, create each other's identities, and affect the course of each other's lives. Illustrated with poignant portraits of brothers and sisters in childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, this book provides a profound understanding of these complex and enduring relationships, examining the influence of childhood intimacy, parental behavior, family turmoil, birth order, and gender.Based on more than twenty years of research and clinical evidence, "The Sibling Bond" fifteenth anniversary edition brings fresh insight to important clinical and theoretical issues, including attachment theory, the development of the self, and the emergence of sexual identity. While Bank and Kahn demonstrate the implications of their findings for both individual and family therapy, they also give readers a vivid opportunity to recognize and reflect on their own sibling relationships.