When Wilf Kasmire is asked to guide some hunters on a newcomer’s ranch, he doesn’t think anything is up. He is nagged by the disappearance of a young woman he used to spend time with, and no one seems to be trying very hard to find her.

A BBC Radio 4 kitchen comedy by Annie McCartney, starring James Nesbitt as the Fridge. ‘Staring into the Fridge’ was originally broadcast as the ‘Afternoon Play’ on 13 September 2010. With two twenty-something children and a dubious boyfriend eating her out of house and home, Maggie (Annie McCartney) is beginning to lose the will to live. She feels she has no one to talk to or to listen. But all of that is about to change when she hears a voice speaking to her from the corner of the kitche...

This book uses original research and interviews to consider the views of contemporary members of the Orange Order in Canada, including their sense of political and societal purpose, awareness of the decline of influence, views on their present circumstances, and hopes for the future of Orangeism in Canada. In so doing, it details the organisational structure of Canadian society: the role of religion in public life, the changing context of multicultural Canada, and the politics of resistanc...

Between 1800 and 1914, Canadian society and its school systems were forged, populated, expanded and reformed. The Promise of Schooling explores the links between social and educational change in this complex and dynamic period. It raises and seeks to answer a number of questions: How extensive was schooling in the early nineteenth century? What lay behind the campaign to extend publicly funded education? What went on inside the Canadian classroom? How did schools address the needs...

Individual liberty will be the defining issue of the twenty-first century, while fear of terrorism, crime and social chaos has put our ideas of liberty into retreat in recent years.It is clear that there is not just a crisis of liberty, but a crisis in the way people talk about liberty. How do we, as individuals, negotiate the maximum amount of freedom in such a complex world? How can we resist the growth of intrusive authoritarianism without exposing ourselves to crime, terrorism ...

In this important book, historians, lawyers, economists and writers come together to put a coherent case: that although the Irish economic collapse has resulted in national humiliation, renewed emigration and a decline in living standards for the majority of the population, there is still hope that the country can be reformed and renewed.Irish politicians offered the now notorious blanket guarantee to all the banks which had got in over their heads during the great property bubble ...

They built some of the first communal structures on the empire's frontiers. The empire's most powerful proconsuls sought entrance into their lodges. Their public rituals drew dense crowds from Montreal to Madras. The Ancient Free and Accepted Masons were quintessential builders of empire, argues Jessica Harland-Jacobs. In this first study of the relationship between Freemasonry and British imperialism, Harland-Jacobs takes readers on a journey across two centuries and five continents, demo...

The decline in power, popularity and prestige of religion across the modern world is not a short-term or localized trend nor is it an accident. It is a consequence of subtle but powerful features of modernization. Renowned sociologist, Steve Bruce, elaborates the secularization paradigm and defends it against a wide variety of recent attempts at rebuttal and refutation. Using the best available statistical and qualitative evidence Bruce considers the implications for the

At the opening of the twenty-first century, while obviously the world is still struggling with violence and conflict, many commentators argue that there are many reasons for supposing that restrictions on the use of force are growing. The establishment of the International Criminal Court, the growing sophistication of international humanitarian law and the 'rebirth' of the just war tradition over the last fifty years are all taken as signs of this trend. This book argues that, on the contr...

In 2004 a public attitudes survey suggested that 31 per cent of British people believed that all or most MPs told the truth. In 2012 this had dropped to 20 per cent.In 2004 50 per cent of respondents believed that all or most MPs did not use their power for personal gain. In 2012 this had dropped to 33 per cent.Over the whole period from 2004–2012 the average level of trust in judges was over 80 per cent, that of MPs less than 30 per cent.The report also showed that...

What is the state? The State of Freedom offers an important new take on this classic question by exploring what exactly the state did and how it worked. Patrick Joyce asks us to re-examine the ordinary things of the British state from dusty government files and post offices to well-thumbed primers in ancient Greek and Latin and the classrooms and dormitories of public schools and Oxbridge colleges. This is also a history of the 'who' and the 'where' of the state, of the people who ran the ...

Why are the political polarities of Northern Ireland so intractable? Why, in a society riven by class division, do Northern Ireland's people identify most strongly with the nationalist and religious groupings of British Protestant versus Irish Catholic? Why, after over thirty years of violence and death, is dialogue about the future so difficult to create and sustain?In The Troubles in Ballybogoin, William F. Kelleher Jr. examines the patterns of avoidance and engagement d...