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      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        January 2019

        Tears of laughter

        Comedy-drama in 1990s British cinema

        by Nigel Mather

        Tears of laughter' examines the interactions of comedy and drama in three vital thematic strands of British cinema during the 1990s: comedies exploring issues of class, culture and community in British society, 'ethnic' comedy-dramas engaging with complex issues of identity and allegiance in modern Britain, and romantic comedies featuring characters searching (somewhat desperately or frantically) for a suitable and desirable long-term or short-term partner. Films to be discussed in detail include 'Brassed Off' (1996), 'The Full Monty' (1997), 'East is East' (1999), 'Four Weddings and a Funeral' (1994), 'Notting Hill' (1999) and a post-1990s romantic comedy, 'Love Actually' (2003). The study discusses these specific films and a range of other 1990s British comedy-drama films within the context of community-orientated Ealing comedy classics, contentious situation comedies treating race relations as both a laughing matter and a site of conflict ('Till Death Us Do Part' and 'Love Thy Neighbour'), and romantic comedies set and produced in Britain. It is aimed at film studies academics, students and film enthusiasts.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        February 2017

        Wales and the British overseas empire

        Interactions and influences, 1650–1830

        by H.V. Bowen

        This unique collection of essays is the first book to explore the many relationships that developed between Wales and the British overseas empire between 1650 and 1830. Written by leading specialists in the field, the essays explore economic, social, cultural, political, and religious interactions between Wales and the empire. The geographical coverage is very broad, with examinations of the contributions made by Wales to expansion in the Atlantic world, Caribbean, and South Asia. The book explores Welsh influences on the emergence of 'British' imperialism, as well as the impact that the empire had upon the development of Wales itself. The book will be of interest to academic historians, postgraduate students, and undergraduates. It will be indispensable to those interested in the history of Wales, Britain, and the empire, as well as those who wish to compare Welsh imperial experiences with those of the English, Irish, and Scots.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        March 2017

        British culture and the end of empire

        by Stuart Ward

        This book is the first major attempt to examine the cultural manifestations of the demise of imperialism as a social and political ideology in post-war Britain. Far from being a matter of indifference or resigned acceptance as is often suggested, the fall of the British Empire came as a profound shock to the British national imagination, and resonated widely in British popular culture. The sheer range of subjects discussed, from the satire boom of the 1960s to the worlds of sport and the arts, demonstrates how profoundly decolonisation was absorbed into the popular consciousness. Offers an extremely novel and provocative interpretation of post-war British cultural history, and opens up a whole new field of enquiry in the history of decolonisation.

      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        January 2019

        The British working class in postwar film

        by Philip Gillett

        An incidental pleasure of watching a film is what it tells us about the society in which it is made. Using a sociological model, The British working class in postwar film looks at how working-class people were portrayed in British feature films in the decade after the Second World War. Though some of the films examined are well known, others have been forgotten and deserve reassessment. Original statistical data is used to assess the popularity of the films with audiences. With its interdisciplinary approach and the avoidance of jargon, this book seeks to broaden the approach to film studies. Students of media and cultural studies are introduced to the skills of other disciplines, while sociologists and historians are encouraged to consider the value of film evidence in their own fields. This work should appeal to all readers interested in social history and in how cinema and society works.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        February 2017

        Country houses and the British Empire, 1700–1930

        by Stephanie Barczewski

        Country houses and the British empire, 1700-1930 assesses the economic and cultural links between country houses and the Empire between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries. Using sources from over fifty British and Irish archives, it enables readers to better understand the impact of the empire upon the British metropolis by showing both the geographical variations and its different cultural manifestations. Barczewski offers a rare scholarly analysis of the history of country houses that goes beyond an architectural or biographical study, and recognises their importance as the physical embodiments of imperial wealth and reflectors of imperial cultural influences. In so doing, she restores them to their true place of centrality in British culture over the last three centuries, and provides fresh insights into the role of the Empire in the British metropolis.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        March 2017

        Payment and philanthropy in British healthcare, 1918–48

        by George Campbell Gosling, Keir Waddington

        This book is available as an open access ebook under a CC-BY-NC-ND licence. At a time when payment is claiming a greater place than ever before within the NHS, this book provides the first in-depth investigation of the workings, scale and meaning of payment in British hospitals before the NHS. There were only three decades in British history when it was the norm for patients to pay the hospital; those between the end of the First World War and the establishment of the National Health Service in 1948. Payment played an important part in redefining rather than abandoning medical philanthropy, based on class divisions and the notion of financial contribution as a civic duty. With new insights on the scope of private medicine and the workings of the means test in the hospital, as well as the civic, consumer and charitable meanings associated with paying the hospital, Gosling offers a fresh perspective on healthcare before the NHS and welfare before the welfare state.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        February 2017

        Cultures and caricatures of British imperial aviation

        Passengers, pilots, publicity

        by Gordon Pirie, Andrew Thompson, John M. MacKenzie

        The new activity of trans-continental civil flying in the 1930s is a useful vantage point for viewing the extension of British imperial attitudes and practices. Cultures and caricatures of British imperial aviation examines the experiences of those (mostly men) who flew solo or with a companion (racing or for leisure), who were airline passengers (doing colonial administration, business or research), or who flew as civilian air and ground crews. For airborne elites, flying was a modern and often enviable way of managing, using and experiencing empire. On the ground, aviation was a device for asserting old empire: adventure and modernity were accompanied by supremacism. At the time, however, British civil imperial flying was presented romantically in books, magazines and exhibitions. Eighty years on, imperial flying is still remembered, reproduced and re-enacted in caricature.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        February 2017

        Welsh missionaries and British imperialism

        The Empire of Clouds in north-east India

        by Andrew May

        In 1841, the Welsh sent their first missionary, Thomas Jones, to evangelise the tribal peoples of the Khasi Hills of north-east India. This book follows Jones from rural Wales to Cherrapunji, the wettest place on earth and now one of the most Christianised parts of India. As colonised colonisers, the Welsh were to have a profound impact on the culture and beliefs of the Khasis. The book also foregrounds broader political, scientific, racial and military ideologies that mobilised the Khasi Hills into an interconnected network of imperial control. Its themes are universal: crises of authority, the loneliness of geographical isolation, sexual scandal, greed and exploitation, personal and institutional dogma, individual and group morality. Written by a direct descendant of Thomas Jones, it makes a significant contribution in orienting the scholarship of imperialism to a much-neglected corner of India, and will appeal to students of the British imperial experience more broadly.

      • Trusted Partner
        Medicine
        May 2024

        Jewish refugees and the British nursing profession

        A gendered opportunity

        by Jane Brooks

        This book follows the lives of female Jewish refugees who fled Nazi persecution and became nurses. Nursing was nominally a profession but with its poor pay and harsh discipline, it was unpopular with British women. In the years preceding the Second World War, hospitals in Britain suffered chronic nurse staffing crises. As the country faced inevitable war, the Government and the profession's elite courted refugees as an antidote to the shortages, but many hospitals refused to employ Continental Jews. The book explores the changes in the refugees' status and lives from the war years to the foundation of the National Health Service and to the latter decades of the twentieth century. It places the refugees at the forefront of manoeuvres in nursing practice, education and research at a time of social upheaval and alterations in the position of women.

      • Trusted Partner
        Medicine
        November 2019

        Migrant architects of the NHS

        South Asian doctors and the reinvention of British general practice (1940s-1980s)

        by Julian Simpson, Keir Waddington

        Migrant architects of the NHS draws on forty-five oral history interviews and extensive archival research to offer a radical reappraisal of how the National Health Service was made. It tells the story of migrant South Asian doctors who became general practitioners in the NHS. Imperial legacies, professional discrimination and an exodus of UK-trained doctors combined to direct these doctors towards work as GPs in some of the most deprived parts of the UK. In some areas, they made up over half of the general practitioner workforce. The NHS was structurally dependent on them and they shaped British society and medicine through their agency. Aimed at students and academics with interests in the history of immigration, immigration studies, the history of medicine, South Asian studies and oral history. It will also be of interest to anyone who wants to know more about how Empire and migration have contributed to making Britain what it is today.

      • Trusted Partner
        November 2021

        British Notes

        by Ai Bo

        The author has lived and worked in the UK for more than 20 years since he studied in the UK in the early 1990s. This book is an observation essay on his life in the UK over the years. The author has a wealth of experience in the UK, has done management, served the community, has been a volunteer, and has several emotional experiences with foreign girls. Through the author’s narration and contact with the author’s own personal experience, the life picture of British society is clearly laid out. The British culture, various characters, customs and customs are truly presented, providing a body for readers who have never experienced life abroad. Feeling on the spot. The author's essays are calm, objective, truthful and witty, easy to read, and have something to read.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        March 2017

        British imperialism in Cyprus, 1878–1915

        by Andrekos Varnava

      • Trusted Partner
      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        March 2017

        'The better class' of Indians

        Social rank, Imperial identity, and South Asians in Britain 1858–1914

        by A. Wainwright

        This is the first book-length study to focus primarily on the role of class in the encounter between South Asians and British institutions in the United Kingdom at the height of British imperialism. In a departure from previous scholarship on the South Asian presence in Britain, 'The better class' of Indians emphasizes the importance of class as the register through which British polite society interpreted other social distinctions such as race, gender, and religion. Drawing mainly on unpublished material from the India Office Records, the National Archives, and private collections of charitable organizations, this book examines not only the attitudes of British officials towards South Asians in their midst, but also the actual application of these attitudes in decisions pertaining to them. This fascinating book will be of particular interest to scholars and general readers of imperialism, immigration as well as British and Indian social history.

      • Trusted Partner
      • Trusted Partner
        Science & Mathematics
        July 2018

        British and Irish Butterflies

        An Island Perspective

        by Roger L H Dennis, Peter B Hardy

        Islands are special places; they can be havens for unique plants and animals and refuges for wildlife. This book investigates the biogeography of butterfly species over the British islands, particularly the factors that influence their presence on the islands and that have made each island's butterfly fauna distinctive. The book contains a full log of records of species on the islands and much supporting information. The first three chapters set the scene, illustrating the basics of island biogeography theory, their changing circumstances during the current Holocene interglacial, and studies of natural history of British butterflies that mark the islands as the most intensively studied region for wildlife in the world. The book advances by increasing resolution downscale from a European continental perspective, through patterns and changes on the British mainland, a comparison of the two dominant islands of Britain and Ireland, to a close inspection of the dynamics of species on the multitude of offshore islands. Detailed investigations include contrasts in species' richness on the islands and then of the incidences of each species. Case studies highlight the continual turnover of species on islands. Attention is then given to evolutionary changes since the time that glaciers enveloped Europe. A powerful message is conveyed for the maintenance of butterfly species on the smaller British islands now experiencing population losses at a rate unprecedented since the spread of the last ice sheets: the incontrovertible importance of maintaining populations of species on nearby mainland sources for islands as pools for future migrants. This book is enhanced with supporting material. To access the Online Supplementary Appendices below, please visit: http://www.cabi.org/openresources/95061. Supplementary Appendices Chapter 3 3.1a A copy of Dennis and Shreeve (1996) Butterflies on British and Irish Offshore Islands: Ecology and Biogeography. Gem Publishing Company, Wallingford, Oxon 3.1b The main data file for British and Irish offshore islands 3.2 Basic ecological and life history data used to build the indices for migration capacity and colonization ability Supplementary Appendices Chapter 4 4.1 Contemporary Geography Study of British Butterflies: Data 4.2 Contemporary Geography Study of British Butterflies: Analyses Supplementary Appendices Chapter 5 5.1a The European Islands Data File: Recent Sources 5.1b The European Islands Data File: Butterfly Records 5.1c The European Islands Data File: Geographical Data 5.2 Comparison of British and Irish Species Distributions Supplementary Appendices Chapter 6 6.1a Species Incidences on Offshore Islands: Logit Regression Analyses 6.1b Species Incidences on Offshore Islands: Discriminant Function Analyses 6.2 Species Richness and Incidences on Offshore Islands: Predictions Supplementary Appendix Chapter 7 7.1 Records and Data for the Isle of Man

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        January 2019

        The British political elite and Europe 1959-1984

        by Bob Nicholls

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        August 2010

        Dictionary of British Politics

        Second edition

        by Bill Jones, Bill Jones

        From Diane Abbott to Hugo Young via Keynesianism and Thatcherism, from Major to Millbank and from New Labour to Norman Tebbitt, this book is the ultimate student reference guide to British politics. The 2nd edition has been fully updated to take account of all the changes that have taken place in British politics since 2004. With over one thousand entries, the book covers the personalities, policies and institutions that have shaped British politics, with special emphasis on developments since the beginning of the twentieth century. This is the ideal instant reference book on British politics. It provides the reader with short, authoritative explanations and definitions of key terms, institutions, offices of state, political events, processes and policies as well as biographies of well known politicians, political thinkers, movements and theorists. Any student unsure of a term, an event, the details of the life of a prominent politician, or the inner workings of an institution can turn to this book for immediate assistance. ;

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