Integrating a variety of historical approaches and methods, Joanna Bourke looks at the construction of class within the intimate contexts of the body, the home, the marketplace, the locality and the nation to assess how the subjective identity of the 'working class' in Britain has been maintained through seventy years of radical social, cultural and economic change. She argues that class identity is essentially a social and cultural rather than an institutional or political phenomenon and ...

A bold and provocative book about Australia's national identity and a plea to keep Australia's famed open-mindedness, Cater tracks the seismic changes in Australian culture and outlook since Donald Horne published THE LUCKY COUNTRY in 1964. 'A great book.' Rupert MurdochA bold and provocative book about Australia's national identity and how it is threatened by the rise of a ruling class. Nick Cater, senior editor at the Australian, tracks the seismic changes in Australian culture an...

As much as any country, England bore the brunt of Germany's aggression in World War II, and was ravaged in many ways at the war's end. Celebrated historian David Kynaston has written an utterly original, and compellingly readable, account of the following six years, during which the country rebuilt itself. Kynaston's great genius is to chronicle the country's experience from bottom to top: coursing through through the book, therefore, is an astonishing variety of ordinary, contemporary voi...

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 ...

The 1950s was a decade of international economic recovery in the United States and most of Western Europe after the disasters of World War II. There was just one exception. The Irish economy actually contracted in those years, and over four hundred thousand people, out of a population of fewer than three million, emigrated.Tom Garvin’s survey of the 1950s is based largely on a close reading of contemporary newspaper reports and analyses.This darkest decade of the Irish stat...

In No Turning Back, Paul Addison takes the long view, charting the vastly changing character of British society since the end of the Second World War. As he shows, in this period a series of peaceful revolutions has completely transformed the country so that, with the advantage of a longer perspective, the comparative peace and growing prosperity of the second half of the twentieth century appear as more powerful solvents of settled ways of life than the Battle of the Somme or the...

This year marks the centenary of Harold Wilson's birth, the fiftieth anniversary of his most impressive general election victory and forty years since his dramatic resignation as Prime Minister. He was one of the longest-serving premiers of the twentieth century, having won a staggering four general elections, yet, despite this monumental record, his place in Labour's history remains somewhat ambiguous.By the end of his two periods in power, both the left and right of the party were...

Class Struggle and the Industrial Revolution represents both a continuation of, and a stark contrast to, the impressive tradition of social history which has grown up in Britain in the last two decades. Its use of sophisticated quantitative techniques for the dissection of urban social structures will serve as a model for subsequent research workers. This work examines the impact of industrialization on the social development of the cotton manufacturing town of Oldham from 1790-1860; in pa...

Spanning four politically and socially tumultuous decades, Stephen Maxwell's writings explore the origins and development of the modern Scottish Nationalist movement. As an instrumental member of the SNP and a life-long socialist, Maxwell's work provides an engaging contemporary insight into the debate over Scottish independence, setting out a clear ideological and practical arguments for a socially just Scotland. The Case for Left Wing Nationalism - Maxwell's seminal 1981 pamphlet - consi...

The first general history of the English middle classes, based on BBC TV programme of which Will Self said "No simple overview can do justice to this programme - an exemplary series and mandatory viewing'.Afternoon tea, the Women's Institute, Mrs Beeton, department stores, suburbia, seaside holidays and cycling clubs - all preserves of the great middle class. But where did the middle classes come from? And what makes a person middle class today?Although the...

Gladstone and Disraeli surveys and compares the careers of these two influential Prime Ministers. Stephen J. Lee examines how Gladstone and Disraeli emerged as leaders of the two leading parties and goes on to consider their time in power, analyzing many different aspects of their careers.Using a wide variety of sources and historiography, Lee compares and contrasts the beliefs of Gladstone and Disraeli, their effect on the economy, social reform, the Irish problem and par...