Modern history
Herbert Butterfield (1900–1979) was one of the earliest and strongest critics of what he saw as the British government’s attempts to control the past through the writing of so-called, ‘official histories’. His famous diatribe against the 'pitfalls' of government-mandated history first appeared in 1949, at a time when the British government was engaged in publishing official histories and diplomatic documents on an unprecedented scale following the Second World War. But why was Butterfield so hostile to official history, and why do his views still matter today?
Written by one of the few historians employed by the British government, this important new book details how successive governments have applied a selective approach...
Precarious Professionals uncovers the inequalities and insecurities which lay at the heart of professional life in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Britain. The book challenges conventional categories in the history of work, exploring instead the everyday labour of maintaining a professional identity on the margins of the traditional professions. Situating new historical perspectives on gender at the forefront of their research, the contributors explore how professional cultures could not only define themselves against, but often flourished outside of, the confines of patriarchal codes and structures.
Putting the lives of precarious professionals in dialogue with master narratives in modern British...
The history of childhood and welfare in Britain through the eyes of children. Children’s Experiences of Welfare in Modern Britain brings together the latest historical research on welfare provision by the state, charities and families from 1830 to 1980. Demonstrating how the young were integral to the making, interpretation, delivery and impact of welfare services, the chapters consider a wide range of investments in young people’s lives, including residential institutions, emigration schemes, hospitals and clinics, schools, social housing and familial care. Drawing upon thousands of personal testimonies, including a wealth of writing by children themselves, the book shows that we can only understand the history and impact...
The Grand Tour was a journey to continental Europe undertaken by British nobility and wealthy landed gentry during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. As a rite of passage, the Tour also played an important role in the formation of contemporary notions of elite masculinity.
Examining letters, diaries and other records left by Grand Tourists, tutors and their families, this book demonstrates how the Tour was used to educate elite young men in a wide variety of skills, virtues and masculine behaviours that extended well beyond polite society. Sarah Goldsmith argues that dangerous experiences, in particular, were far more central to the Tour as a means of constructing Britain’s next generation of leaders than has...
In October 1934 the northern Spanish region of Asturias was the scene of the most important outburst of revolution in Europe between the early 1920s and the Spanish Civil War. Thousands of left-wing militants took up arms and fought the Spanish army in the streets of Oviedo while in the rear-guard committees proclaimed a revolutionary dawn. After two weeks, however, the insurrection was crushed and the widespread repression was central to the polarization and fragmentation of Spanish politics prior to the Civil War (1936-9).
Weaving together a range of everyday disputes and arenas of conflict, from tenant activism to strikes, boycotts to political violence, Unite, Proletarian Brothers! reveals how local cleavages and...
The war of 1914–18 was the first great conflict to be fought between highly industrial societies able to manufacture and transport immense quantities of goods to the field of battle. In Civilian Specialists at War, Christopher Phillips examines the manner in which Britain’s industrial society influenced the character and conduct of industrial warfare. This book analyses the multiple connections between the military, the government and the senior executives of some of pre-war Britain’s largest companies. It illustrates the British army’s evolving response to the First World War and the role to be played by non-military expertise in the prosecution of such a conflict.
This study demonstrates that pre-existing professional...
Cinema-going was the most popular commercial leisure activity in the first half of the twentieth century, peaking in 1946 with 1.6 billion recorded admissions. Though ‘going to the pictures’ remained a popular pastime, the transition to peacetime altered citizens’ leisure habits. During the 1950s increased affluence, the growth of television ownership and the diversification of leisure led to rapid declines in attendance. Cinema attendances fell in all regions, but the speed, nature and extent of decline varied widely across the United Kingdom.
By linking national developments to detailed case studies of Belfast and Sheffield, this book adds nuance to our understanding of regional variations in film exhibition, audience habits and...
The Family Firm presents the first major historical analysis of the transformation of the royal household’s public relations strategy in the period 1932-1953. Beginning with King George V’s first Christmas broadcast, Buckingham Palace worked with the Church of England and the media to initiate a new phase in the House of Windsor’s approach to publicity.
This book also focuses on audience reception by exploring how British readers, listeners, and viewers made sense of royalty’s new media image. It argues that the monarchy’s deliberate elevation of a more informal and vulnerable family-centred image strengthened the emotional connections that members of the public forged with the royals, and that the tightening of these...
How is emptiness made and what historical purpose does it serve? What cultural, material and natural work goes into maintaining ‘nothingness’? Why have a variety of historical actors, from colonial powers to artists and urban dwellers, sought to construct, control and maintain (physically and discursively) empty space, and by which processes is emptiness discovered, visualised and reimagined?
This volume draws together contributions from authors working on landscapes and rurality, along with national and imperial narratives, from Brazil to Russia and Ireland. It considers the visual, including the art of Edward Hopper and the work of the British Empire Marketing Board, while concluding with a section that examines constructions of...
