Examining the ways in which the BBC constructed and disseminated British national identity during the second quarter of the twentieth century, this book is the first study that focuses in a comprehensive way on how the BBC, through its radio programs, tried to represent what it meant to be British.The BBC and national identity in Britain offers a revision of histories of regional broadcasting in Britain that interpret it as a form of cultural imperialism. The regional organization ...

First published as part of the best-selling The Oxford Illustrated History of Britain, Christopher Harvie and Colin Matthew's Very Short Introduction to Nineteenth-Century Britain is a sharp but subtle account of remarkable economic and social change and an even more remarkable political stability. Britain in 1789 was overwhelmingly rural, agrarian, multilingual, and almost half Celtic. By 1914, when it faced its greatest test since the defeat of Napoleon, it was largely ...

Should England be independent from Scotland?May 1999. The Scots have their first opportunity in 300 years to elect their own parliament. In 2014 that referendum will finally take place.To many in England, the continuing rise of Scottish nationalism causes unease. Scotland could well choose to leave the United Kingdom. In this provocative polemic, Simon Heffer argues that England must let Scotland go. The lessons of trying to coerce Ireland should have been learnt: there is ...

From the first prehistoric inhabitants of the island to the St Andrews Agreement and decommissioning of IRA weapons, this uniquely concise account of Ireland and its people reveals how differing interpretations of history, ancient and modern, have influenced modern Irish society. Combining factual information with a critical approach, Coohill covers all the key events, including the Great Famine, Home Rule, and the Good Friday Agreement.Updated with two new chapters expanding the d...

What If? is an entertaining, thoughtful, provocative and original look at some of the milestones of twentieth century Irish history that offers a glimpse of what might have been. We all know that there was nothing inevitable about much of modern Ireland's history. Things could have turned out very differently, so it is natural to wonder what would have happened if certain events had never occurred or happened in a different way. What If? is the thought-provoking, enjoyable and insightful b...

This is a new, extended edition of an unusual book, which generated considerable interest and controversy when it was first published in 2004, and won the Ewart Biggs Memorial Prize the following year. In its original form it had three elements, a memoir giving the author's intellectual and political formation and his family connection to 1798 in Wexford, a critique of the bicentenary of the rebellion and of writing about it, and a detailed account of the pivotal battle of New Ross and the...

Seán Lemass enjoys unrivalled acclaim as the ‘Architect of Modern Ireland’. Yet there remain great gaps in our knowledge of this mythic figure and his golden age. Up to now Lemass, a colossus of twentieth-century Irish history, was airbrushed to fit a narrative of national progress. Today, this narrative is undergoing an agonising reappraisal. This groundbreaking study reveals the man behind the myth and asks questions previously skirted around. What emerges is an authoritarian, cunning, w...

This Text-book traces the evolution of the newspaper, documenting its changing form, style and content as well as identifying the different roles ascribed to it by audiences, government and other social institutions.Starting with the early 17th century, when the first prototype newspapers emerged, through Dr Johnson, the growth of the radical press in the early 19th century, the Lord Northcliffe revolution in the early 20th century, the newspapers wars of the 1930s and the rise of ...

Is the ‘United’ Kingdom really as united as its name might suggest? For many people in the UK, increasing nationalism in Scotland raises serious questions about what Britain is, and where its future lies. In The Road to Independence?, Murray Pittock not only gives an account of modern Scottish nationalism, but also explains what Scotland’s role in Britain has been historically, and why it has changed radically in the last fifty years, with the debate about independence coming to t...

Patrick Pearse, teacher, poet, and one of the executed leaders of the 1916 Rising has long been a central figure in Irish history. The book provides a radically new interpretation of Patrick Pearse's work in education, and examines how his work as a teacher became a potent political device in pre-independent Ireland. The book provides a complete account of Pearse's educational work at St. Enda's school, Dublin where a number of insurgents such as William Pearse, Thomas McD...

The story of the creation of Britain's national game has often been told. According to the accepted wisdom, the refined football games created by English public schools in the 1860s subsequently became the sports of the masses. Football, The First Hundred Years, provides a revisionist history of the game, challenging previously widely-accepted beliefs.Harvey argues that established football history does not correspond with the facts. Football, as played by the 'masses' prio...

From the myth of William Webb Ellis to the glory of the 2003 World Cup win, this book explores the social history of rugby union in England.Ever since Tom Brown’s Schooldays the sport has seen itself as the guardian of traditional English middle-class values. In this fascinating new history, leading rugby historian Tony Collins demonstrates how these values have shaped the English game, from the public schools to mass spectator sport, from strict amateurism to global professionalis...