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Oscar Wilde's disastrous libel suit against the Marquess of Queensberry dominated British newspapers during the spring of 1895. This book shows that the Wilde scandal was just one of many events to capture the public's imagination that year. Had Jack the Ripper returned? Did the Prime Minister have a dreadful secret? Were Aubrey Beardsley's drawings corrupting the nation? Were overpaid foreign players ruining English football? Could cricket save a nation from moral ruin? Freak weather, flu, a General Election, industrial unrest, New Women, fraud, accidents, anarchists, balloons and bicycles all stirred up interest and alarm. The book shows how this turbulent year is at the same time far removed from our own day and strangely familiar. It interweaves literature, politics and historical biography with topics such as crime, the weather, sport, visual art and journalism to give an overarching view of everyday life in 1895. The book draws on diverse primary sources, from the Aberdeen Weekly Journal to the Women's Signal Budget, and from the Illustrated Police News to The Yellow Book; and is illustrated with stills from plays and reproductions of newspaper front pages, to bring Victorian culture to life.

Although General Practice is the commonest career choice for medical graduates, and the majority of encounters between doctors and patients take place in general practice, there was no formal teaching in or about the subject before the start of the NHS in 1948. Nor were there any staff trained in the discipline in a paid university position. This Book traces the revolution in medical education that took place between 1948 and 2000 resulting in every one of the then 31 established medical schools having a professorial appointment in the discipline, and some 15% of the medical curriculum nationally being taught in the general practice setting by general practitioners. Each of the 21 chapters describes how this change came about (the London chapter describes the process across 11 different schools), and captures the struggles of visionary doctors (most but not all of whom were general practitioners) to establish a new discipline against a mix of protectionism, apathy and sometimes hostility from the existing medical establishment. The Book includes a more general analysis of the recurrent themes which were common across the university system, and of the long process of trying to establish the financial parity with existing clinical disciplines which was critical to allowing the new discipline first to survive and more recently to thrive.

This book aims to show that Adam Smith (1723–90), the author of Inquiry into…the Wealth of Nations, was not the promoter of ruthless laissez-faire capitalism that is still frequently depicted. His ‘right-wing’ reputation was sealed after his death, when it was not safe to claim that an author may have influenced the French revolutionaries. But as the author also of The Theory of Moral Sentiments, which he probably regarded as his more important book, Smith sought a non-religious grounding for morals, and found it in the principle of sympathy, which should lead an impartial spectator to understand others' problems. The book locates Smith in the Scottish Enlightenment; shows how the two books are perfectly consistent with one another; traces Smith's influence in France and the United States; and draws out the lessons that Smith can teach policy makers in the twenty-first century. Although Smith was not a religious man, he was a very acute sociologist of religion. The book accordingly explains the Scottish religious context of Smith's time, which was, as it remains, very different to the English religious context. The whole book is shot through with an affection for Edinburgh, and for the Scottish Enlightenment. It begins and ends with poems by Smith's great admirer, Robert Burns.

The American Counterculture played a major role during a pivotal moment in American history. Post-War prosperity combined with the social and political repression characteristic of middle-class life to produce both widespread disobedience and artistic creativity in the Baby Boomer generation. This book explores the relationship between the counterculture and American popular culture. It looks at the ways in which Hollywood and corporate record labels commodified and adapted countercultural texts, and the extent to which countercultural artists and their texts were appropriated. It offers an interdisciplinary account of the counterculture and an appraisal of the key literary, musical, political and visual texts that were seen to challenge dominant ideologies.

Christians in British Mandate Palestine (1917-1948) comprised a significant minority of the Arab population, but it is commonly assumed that they were junior partners in the Palestinian nationalist movement, or perhaps even wary of the movement altogether. The period was tense, and Arab Christians did struggle to define their community in the face of Zionist immigration, British colonial policies, and the rise of both regional pan-Islamic ideologies and Palestinian nationalism. This book focuses on the relationship between Arab Christians and the nationalist movement as the British Mandate unfolded throughout the first half of the twentieth century. It also looks at the nature of interreligious religious relations between Christians and Muslims. The book uses major events of the period as a lens through which to examine Christian efforts to define their place in Palestinian society while being conscious of variations (denominational, socioeconomic and geographical, for instance) and debates within the diverse Arab Christian community. Despite such variations, trends among individual Christian behaviours and beliefs, as well as those of Christian organizations (both religious and social in nature), challenge the prevailing assumption that Arabs were prone to communalism or sectarianism. Instead, they were as likely as their Muslim compatriots to support nationalism. When social pressure led Christians to identify along communal lines, they did so in conjunction with a stronger dedication to nationalism.

For more than one thousand years Arab medicine held sway in the ancient world, from the shores of Spain in the West to China, India and Sri Lanka (Ceylon) in the East. This book explores the impact of Greek (as well as Indian and Persian) medical heritage on the evolution of Arab medicine and pharmacology, investigating it from the perspective of materia medica — a reliable indication of the contribution of this medical legacy. Focusing on the main substances introduced and traded by the Arabs in the medieval Mediterranean — including Ambergris, camphor, musk, myrobalan, nutmeg, sandalwood, and turmeric — the chapters show how they enriched the existing inventory of drugs influenced by Galenic-Arab pharmacology. Further, they look at how these substances merged with the development and distribution of new technologies and industries that evolved in the Middle Ages such as textiles, paper, dyeing, and tanning, and with the new trends, demands, and fashions regarding spices, perfumes, ornaments (gemstones), and foodstuffs some of which can be found in our modern-day food basket.

The battle of Bannockburn, fought on the fields south of Stirling at midsummer 1314, is the best-known event in the history of Medieval Scotland. It was a unique event. The clash of two armies, each led by a king, followed a clear challenge to a battle to determine the status of Scotland and its survival as a separate realm. As a key point in the Anglo-Scottish wars of the fourteenth century, the battle has been extensively discussed, but Bannockburn was also a pivotal event in the history of the British Isles. This book analyses the road to Bannockburn, the campaign of 1314 and the aftermath of the fight. It demonstrates that, in both its context and legacy, the battle had a central significance in the shaping of nations and identities in the late Medieval British Isles.

This book examines the organisation of power and society in north-east England over two crucial centuries in the emergence of the English ‘state’. England is usually regarded as medieval Europe's most centralised kingdom, yet the North East was dominated by liberties — largely self-governing jurisdictions — that greatly restricted the English crown's direct authority in the region. These local polities receive here a comprehensive discussion; and their histories are crucial for understanding questions of state formation in frontier zones, regional distinctiveness, and local and national loyalties. The analysis focuses on liberties as both governmental entities and sources of socio-political and cultural identification. It also connects their development and their communities with a rich variety of forces, including the influence of the kings of Scots as lords of Tynedale, and the impact of protracted Anglo-Scottish warfare from 1296. Why did liberties enjoy such long-term relevance as governance structures? How far, and why, did the English monarchy respect their autonomous rights and status? By what means, and how successfully, were liberty identities created, sharpened and sustained? In addressing such issues, this study extends beyond regional history to make significant contributions to the ongoing mainstream debates about ‘state’, ‘society’, ‘identity’ and ‘community’.

For Britain, the Second World War exists in popular memory as a time of heroic sacrifice, survival, and ultimate victory over Fascism. In the Irish state, the years 1939–1945 are still remembered simply as ‘the Emergency’. Éire was one of many small states that in 1939 chose not to stay out of the war, but one of the few able to maintain its non-belligerency as a policy. How much this owed to Britain's military resolve or to the political skills of Éamon de Valera is a key question that this book explores. It also examines the tensions Éire's policy created in its relations with Winston Churchill and with the United States, and furthermore explores propaganda, censorship, and Irish state security, and the degree to which it involves secret co-operation with Britain. Issues such as the IRA's relationship to Nazi Germany and ambivalent Irish attitudes to the Holocaust are also raised. Drawing upon both published and unpublished sources, the book illustrates the war's impact on people on both sides of the border, and shows how it failed to resolve sectarian problems in Northern Ireland while raising higher the barriers of misunderstanding between it and the Irish state.

This history of the Celts from origins to the present draws on archaeological, historical, literary and linguistic evidence. It is divided into three parts. Part One covers the continental Celts in prehistory and antiquity, complete with accounts of the Celts in Germany, Italy, Iberia, and Asia Minor. The second part follows the Celts from the departure of the Romans to the late Middle Ages, including the migrations to and settlements in Ireland, Wales, Scotland and Brittany. Discussions of the Celtic kingdoms and the rise and fall of Celtic Christianity are also given. The final part brings the history of the Celts up to the present, covering the assimilation of the Celts within the national cultures of Great Britain, France, and Ireland. Included in this consideration are the suppression of Gaelic; the declines, revivals and survivals of languages and literatures; and the histories of Celtic culture. The book concludes with a discussion on the recent history of the meaning of Celtic in contrast to, for example, Germanic, and the effect this has had on modern perceptions of the Celtic past and attempts at Celtic cultural renewal.

This book offers a history of ‘Scotland’ before Scotland existed, and before people even thought of this area as a single ‘country’. It traces the emergence and disappearance of various ethnic and political groups from Roman times till circa AD 900, and their shifting relationships. But it also calls into question what are often seen as straightforward and obvious concepts such as ‘ethnicity’, ‘Christian conversion’, ‘law’. While following a broad chronological narrative over nine centuries, and dealing with political and large-scale developments, it also explores in some depth the culture of the societies (and there were several) of the time. In addition to the more narrowly political dimension, it explores the texture of experience in people’s lives: how they imagined themselves and their own identities; how they saw their place in the world; how communities managed their own internal affairs such as marriage, childhood and social conflict; how people understood gender, wealth, political power and religious belief. Important texts which have sometimes been read rather naively are here read in new ways, identifying the commitments of their authors, and seeking the literary influences which shaped them (which means we must read and understand not only what early medieval writers wrote, but also what they were reading).

In the American cultural imagination, the Wild West is a mythic-historical place where our nation’s values and ideologies were formed. The heroes of this dangerous world, most familiar to us through film, are men of violence who fight the bad guys as they build the foundations of civilization out of wilderness, forging notions of justice, manhood, and honor in the process. In the Greco-Roman societies that are America’s cultural ancestors, epics provided similar narratives: like Western film, Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey and Virgil’s Aeneid focus on the mythic-historical past and its warriors, men who helped shape the ideological frameworks of their respective civilizations. At the same time, the best works from both genres are far from simplistic, but instead, call the assumptions underlying society’s core beliefs and value systems into question even as they promote them. Cowboy Classics examines the connections between these seemingly disparate yet closely related genres by first establishing the broad generic parallels and then providing deeper analysis through case-studies of five critically acclaimed Golden Age Westerns: Howard Hawks’s Red River, Fred Zinnemann’s High Noon, George Stevens’s Shane, and John Ford’s The Searchers and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. In the end, this important comparison allows the American Western to serve as a lens through which to better understand the more remote works of antiquity, while identifying epic patterns in film provides the distance that allows us to see Westerns, in whose ideological undercurrents we are more directly implicated, in a more objective light.

The text offers a conspectus of the work of Professor McGowan and, in particular, focuses on French culture in the 16th and 17th centuries; the development of the study of dance in this early period and of the appropriate theoretical and historical approaches needed to bring court culture and choreographies of the baroque to the critical attention of modern scholars.

Storm clouds regularly gather over the story of the Highland Clearances and show no sign of dispersing. After more than a century the historical dispute about the eviction of the Highlanders from the glens continues unabated and unresolved. Debating the Highland Clearances introduces the Clearances as a classic historical problem: it focuses on the ways historians and others have approached the question and it concentrates on the methods and sources employed by the combatants. Half the book is devoted to a selection of documents which represent their main types of source material. Most of the book is about the perceptions, mentalities, politics and interpretations that dominate the noisy and continuing public debate about the Highland Clearances.

Eleanor of Aquitaine (1124–1204) still fascinates and intrigues historians today, who continue to try to penetrate the mystery surrounding her extraordinary life. Twice queen – of France as the wife of Louis VII, then of England as the wife of Henry II – and mother of three kings, she came into contact with famous churchmen such as Suger, Bernard de Clairvaux, and Thomas Becket; travelled across Europe; lived to be eighty; reigned for sixty-seven years; and produced getting on for a dozen offspring at a time when many women died in childbirth. In old age, Eleanor retired to the Abbey of Fontevraud, where she died and was buried beside Henry II and their son Richard I, the Lionheart. This book attempts the difficult task of writing the full story of this ‘unruly and rebellious’ queen, who was determined, in spite of the huge moral, social, and political and religious pressures bearing down upon her, to take charge of her own life in all its aspects. It is divided into two parts. The first is an account of what is reliably known about Eleanor's life and her role in history, in the main based on contemporary sources and drawing on the work of previous historians. The second part deals with questions about Eleanor and her legend currently under debate by scholars. It draws on hypotheses and controversies, and has recourse to ancient sources and a wide range of recent studies.

Eleftherios Venizelos, Prime Minister of Greece, 1910–1920 and 1928–1932, could be considered from many points of view as the creator of contemporary Greece and one of the main actors in European diplomacy in the period 1910–1935. Yet the last book-length study discussing the man, his politics and his broader role in twentieth-century history, appeared in English more than fifty years ago. The aspiration of the present book is to fill this lacuna by bringing together the concerted research effort of twelve experts on Greek history and politics. The book draws on considerable new research that has appeared in Greek in the last quarter century, but does not confine the treatment of the subject to a purely Greek or even Balkan context. The entire project is oriented toward placing the study of Venizelos' leadership in the broad setting of twentieth-century politics and diplomacy. The complex and often dramatic trajectory of Venizelos' career from Cretan rebel to an admired European statesman is chartered out in a sequence of chapters that survey his meteoric rise and great achievements in Greek and European politics in the early decades of the twentieth century, amidst violent passions and tragic conflicts. Five further chapters appraise in depth some critical aspects of his policies, while a final chapter offers some glimpses into a great statesman's personal and intellectual world. The book offers a sense of the hopes and tragedies of Greek and European history in the age of the Great War and of the interwar crisis.

This volume brings together the best of the author's recent articles and contributions to books and journals on the topic of environmental history and offers them as a collection of ‘explorations’. The author's interests are multi-faceted and, though often focussed on post-1600 Scotland, by no means restricted to that area.

This book examines the transformation of Iron Age northern Britain into a land of Christian kingdoms, long before ‘Scotland’ came into existence. Perched at the edge of the western Roman Empire, northern Britain was not unaffected by the experience, and became swept up in the great tide of processes which gave rise to the early medieval West. Like other places, the country experienced social and ethnic metamorphoses, Christianisation, and colonization by dislocated outsiders, but northern Britain also has its own unique story to tell in the first eight centuries ad. This detailed political history treats these centuries as a single period, with due regard for Scotland's position in the bigger story of late Antique transition. It charts the complex and shadowy processes that saw the familiar Picts, Northumbrians, North Britons and Gaels of early Scottish history become established in the country; the achievements of their foremost political figures; and their ongoing links with the world around them. It is a story which has become much revised through changing trends in scholarly approaches to the challenging evidence, and that transformation too is explained for the benefit of students and general readers.

In the 780s, northern Britain was dominated by two great kingdoms: Pictavia, centred in north-eastern Scotland; and Northumbria, which straddled the modern Anglo-Scottish border. Within a hundred years, both of these kingdoms had been thrown into chaos by the onslaught of the Vikings, and within two hundred years they had become distant memories. This book charts the transformation of the political landscape of northern Britain between the eighth and the eleventh centuries. Central to this narrative is the mysterious disappearance of the Picts and their language, and the sudden rise to prominence of the Gaelic-speaking Scots who would replace them as the rulers of the North. The book uses fragmentary sources that survive from this darkest period in Scottish history to guide the reader past the pitfalls which beset the unwary traveller in these dangerous times. Important sources are presented in full, and their value as evidence is thoroughly explored and evaluated.

This book offers a new perspective on Scotland's past since around 1700. It addresses some of the main themes in Scottish history from a different perspective. It asks what happens to the story of Scotland's past when women's experience is added and when understandings about masculinity and femininity are applied to the past. Politics and citizenship, nation-making, the imperial project, the Enlightenment, industrialisation, religion, education, and cultural production are not neutral processes or events. They are coloured by assumptions about men and women, masculinity and femininity and the roles deemed appropriate to the sexes.This is the first text to offer an accessible introduction to the ways in which theories of gender might offer new readings of modern Scottish history. It engages with central themes such as politics, identity, work and religion as well as some more unusual topics such as science and medicine and culture.