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      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        March 2017

        The language of empire

        Myths and metaphors of popular imperialism, 1880-1918

        by Robert Macdonald

        The debate about the Empire dealt in idealism and morality, and both sides employed the language of feeling, and frequently argued their case in dramatic terms. This book opposes two sides of the Empire, first, as it was presented to the public in Britain, and second, as it was experienced or imagined by its subjects abroad. British imperialism was nurtured by such upper middle-class institutions as the public schools, the wardrooms and officers' messes, and the conservative press. The attitudes of 1916 can best be recovered through a reconstruction of a poetics of popular imperialism. The case-study of Rhodesia demonstrates the almost instant application of myth and sign to a contemporary imperial crisis. Rudyard Kipling was acknowledged throughout the English-speaking world not only as a wonderful teller of stories but as the 'singer of Greater Britain', or, as 'the Laureate of Empire'. In the last two decades of the nineteenth century, the Empire gained a beachhead in the classroom, particularly in the coupling of geography and history. The Island Story underlined that stories of heroic soldiers and 'fights for the flag' were easier for teachers to present to children than lessons in morality, or abstractions about liberty and responsible government. The Education Act of 1870 had created a need for standard readers in schools; readers designed to teach boys and girls to be useful citizens. The Indian Mutiny was the supreme test of the imperial conscience, a measure of the morality of the 'master-nation'.

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        The Arts
        November 2022

        In good taste

        How Britain’s middle classes found their style

        by Ben Highmore, Christopher Breward

        In postwar Britain, journalists and politicians prophesised that the class system would not survive a consumer culture where everyone had TVs and washing machines, and where more and more people owned their own homes. They were to be proved entirely wrong. In good taste charts how class culture, rather than being destroyed by mass consumption, was remade from flat-pack furniture, Mediterranean cuisine and lifestyle magazines. Novelists, cartoonists and playwrights satirised the tastes of the emerging middle classes, and sociologists claimed that an entire population was suffering from status anxiety, but underneath it all, a world was being constructed out of duvets, quiches and mayonnaise, easy chairs from Habitat, white emulsion paint and ubiquitous well-scrubbed, second-hand pine kitchen tables. This was less a world of symbolic goods and more an intimate environment alive with new feelings and attitudes.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        September 2013

        Civvies

        Middle–class men on the English Home Front, 1914–18

        by Laura Ugolini, Bertrand Taithe, Penny Summerfield, Peter Gatrell, Max Jones, Ana Carden-Coyne

        The history of the First World War continues to attract enormous interest. However, most attention remains concentrated on combatants, creating a misleading picture of wartime Britain: one might be forgiven for assuming that by 1918, the country had become virtually denuded of civilian men and particularly of middle-class men who - or so it seems - volunteered en masse in the early months of war. In fact, the majority of middle-class (and other) men did not enlist, but we still know little about their wartime experiences. Civvies thus takes a different approach to the history of the war and focuses on those middle-class English men who did not join up, not because of moral objections to war, but for other (much more common) reasons, notably age, family responsibilities or physical unfitness. In particular, Civvies questions whether, if serviceman were the apex of manliness, were middle-class civilian men inevitably condemned to second-class, 'unmanly' status? ;

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        The Arts
        October 2019

        The never-ending Brief Encounter

        by Brian McFarlane

        This is a book for all those who have been absorbed and moved by Brief Encounter in the seventy or so years since its first appearance. It explores the central relationship of the film, where two people who fall unexpectedly in love come to realise that there is more to life than self-gratification. Mores have undoubtedly changed, for better or worse, but that essential moral choice has never lost its power. While acknowledging this, the book goes further in an effort to account for the way the film has passed into the wider culture. People born decades after its first appearance are now adept at picking up references to it, whether a black-and-white scene in a much later film or a passing joke about a bald man in a barber's shop.

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        Humanities & Social Sciences
        June 2011

        Bourgeois consumption

        Food, space and identity in London and Paris, 1850–1914

        by Rachel Rich

        Bourgeois Consumption looks at how the middle classes in late nineteenth-century London and Paris used food and dining as forms of social expression and identity. This engaging treatise about how class and gender informed people's eating habits focuses on the complex interactions between bodies, ritual and identity. Forgoing the traditional food history territory of recipes and ingredients in favor of how people ate in different circles, Bourgeois Consumption explores the role of real and imagined meals in shaping Victorian lives. The perception of the middle classes as rigid and upright, found in the extensive pages of their etiquette books, is contrasted with a more flexible and spontaneous bourgeoisie, gleaned from the pages of their own colorful memoirs, diaries and letters, leading us on a lively journey into eating spaces, mealtimes, manners, and social interactions between diners. Further, contrasting Paris with London reveals some of the ways each city shaped its inhabitants but, more surprisingly, throws up a range of similarities that suggest the middle classes were, in fact, a transnational class. Rachel Rich's work will be of interest to anyone intrigued by the history of food, consumption and leisure, as well as to a broader audience curious about how the Victorian middle classes distinguished themselves through daily life and manners. ;

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        Humanities & Social Sciences
        March 2017

        Married to the empire

        by Mary A. Procida

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        May 2017

        Inventing the cave man

        From Darwin to the Flintstones

        by Andrew Horrall, Jeffrey Richards

        Fred Flintstone lived in a sunny Stone Age American suburb, but his ancestors were respectable, middle-class Victorians. They were very amused to think that prehistory was an archaic version of their own world because it suggested that British ideals were eternal. In the 1850s, our prehistoric ancestors were portrayed in satirical cartoons, songs, sketches and plays as ape-like, reflecting the threat posed by evolutionary ideas. By the end of the century, recognisably human cave men inhabited a Stone Age version of late-imperial Britain, sending-up its ideals and institutions. Cave men appeared constantly in parades, civic pageants and costume parties. In the early 1900s American cartoonists and early Hollywood stars like Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton adopted and reimagined this very British character, cementing it in global popular culture. Cave men are an appealing way to explore and understand Victorian and Edwardian Britain.

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        Modern history to 20th century: c 1700 to c 1900
        May 2017

        Inventing the cave man

        From Darwin to the Flintstones

        by Andrew Horrall. Series edited by Jeffrey Richards

        Fred Flintstone lived in a sunny Stone Age American suburb, but his ancestors were respectable, middle-class Victorians. They were very amused to think that prehistory was an archaic version of their own world because it suggested that British ideals were eternal. In the 1850s, our prehistoric ancestors were portrayed in satirical cartoons, songs, sketches and plays as ape-like, reflecting the threat posed by evolutionary ideas. By the end of the century, recognisably human cave men inhabited a Stone Age version of late-imperial Britain, sending-up its ideals and institutions. Cave men appeared constantly in parades, civic pageants and costume parties. In the early 1900s American cartoonists and early Hollywood stars like Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton adopted and reimagined this very British character, cementing it in global popular culture. Cave men are an appealing way to explore and understand Victorian and Edwardian Britain.

      • 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.

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        Migration, immigration & emigration
        April 2014

        The British in rural France

        Lifestyle migration and the ongoing quest for a better way of life

        by Michaela Benson

        The British in rural France, available at last in paperback, is a study of how lifestyle choices intersect with migration, and how this relationship frames and shapes post-migration lives. It presents a conceptual framework for understanding post-migration lives that incorporates culturally-specific imaginings, lived experiences, individual life histories and personal circumstances. Through an ethnographic lens incorporating in-depth interviews, participant observation, life and migration histories, this monograph reveals the complex process by which migrants negotiate and make meaningful their lives following migration. By promoting their own ideologies and lifestyle choices relative to those of others, British migrants in rural France reinforce their position as members of the British middle-class, but also take authorship of their lives in a way not possible before migration. This is evident in the pursuit of a better way of life that initially motivated migration and continues to characterise post-migration lives. As the book argues, this ongoing quest is both reflective of wider ideologies about living, particularly the desire for authentic living, and subtle processes of social distinction. In these respects The British in rural France provides a unique empirical example of the relationship between the pursuit of authenticity and middle-class identification practices. The book will be of interest to lifestyle migration and migration specialists, sociologists, social anthropologists, human geographers, scholars of tourism, as well as being accessible to individuals with a broader interest in this social phenomenon.

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        Humanities & Social Sciences
        April 2023

        The fall and rise of the English upper class

        Houses, kinship and capital since 1945

        by Daniel R. Smith

        The fall and rise of the English upper class explores the role traditionalist worldviews, articulated by members of the historic upper-class, have played in British society in the shadow of her imperial and economic decline in the twentieth century. Situating these traditionalist visions alongside Britain's post-Brexit fantasies of global economic resurgence and a socio-cultural return to a green and pleasant land, Smith examines Britain's Establishment institutions, the estates of her landed gentry and aristocracy, through to an appetite for nostalgic products represented with pastoral or pre-modern symbolism. It is demonstrated that these institutions and pursuits play a central role in situating social, cultural and political belonging. Crucially these institutions and pursuits rely upon a form of membership which is grounded in a kinship idiom centred upon inheritance and descent: who inherits the houses of privilege, inherits England.

      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        August 2007

        Huerto cerrado

        by Catherine Davies, David Wood

        Alfredo Bryce Echenique is one of the most widely-read and most widely translated Latin American authors of recent decades, yet this is the first critical edition that makes his work available to students of Hispanic literatures in the English-speaking world. Combining humour and informal language to explore adolescence in middle-class Peru, this edition provides ready points of engagement for young (and not-so-young) adults. The stories and main themes are explained and analysed through a critical introduction, comprehensive notes and vocabulary prepared by one of the leading international scholars of the author's work. Huerto cerrado offers an ideal point of entry to many of the key issues of contemporary Latin American literature, such as the concern with youth and popular culture, issues relating to sexuality, and challenges to dominant social and political structures. This edition offers insights not only into contemporary Peru and the relationship between that country's society and its literature, but also the work of one of the continent's outstanding literary voices. ;

      • Trusted Partner
        September 2021

        Imagine Being a Jew for One Hour

        Stories against anti-Semitism

        by Kurt Oesterle

        Hatred of Jews is long-standing, widespread and powerful. After Auschwitz, the lesson used to be: “Never again!” However, anti-Semitic resentment, like an epidemic, still grips the bourgeois middle-class in our society. In his book “A Jew for One Hour”, Kurt Oesterle convincingly demonstrates how hatred of Jews functions in aesthetic and emotional terms with no empathy whatsoever. He also shows that for the past 200 years of German literature a line of tradition can be acknowledged “in defence of Jewishness”. Kurt Oesterle accounts for this in his book of stories with an impressive depth of knowledge, with a generous heart and mind and incredible commitment. A truly significant book.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        June 2021

        Insanity, identity and empire

        Immigrants and institutional confinement in Australia and New Zealand, 1873–1910

        by Catharine Coleborne

        Insanity, identity and empire examines the formation of colonial social identities inside the institutions for the insane in Australia and New Zealand. Taking a large sample of patient records, it pays particular attention to gender, ethnicity and class as categories of analysis, reminding us of the varied journeys of immigrants to the colonies and of how and where they stopped, for different reasons, inside the social institutions of the period. It is about their stories of mobility, how these were told and produced inside institutions for the insane, and how, in the telling, colonial identities were asserted and formed. Having engaged with the structural imperatives of empire and with the varied imperial meanings of gender, sexuality and medicine, historians have considered the movements of travellers, migrants, military bodies and medical personnel, and 'transnational lives'. This book examines an empire-wide discourse of 'madness' as part of this inquiry.

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