Recent Publications by History Department Staff

Matthew Worley, Oswald Mosley and the New Party (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010)

In 1931, as Britain's economy sunk further into depression, Sir Oswald Mosley made a fateful decision. Having served in Ramsay MacDonald's minority Labour government, he chose to secede from the Labour Party and launch a new political initiative. This was the New Party, inspired by the economic theories of John Maynard Keynes and the emergent modern movements on the continent. Though ultimately a spectacular failure, the New Party burned brightly if briefly. It helped pave the way for a wider debate on the possibilities of economic planning; it simultaneously led Mosley into the realm of fascism. Throughout this process, Mosley sought counsel from many of the period's most well-known personalities. As Mosley searched to find a solution to Britain's economic ails, he drew inspiration from the likes of George Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells; he looked to secure the backing of Lord Beaverbrook and Lord Rothermere; he endeavoured to strike political deals with Winston Churchill and Lloyd George whilst also hoping to draw on the support of young, radical politicians such as Aneurin Bevan, John Strachey and Bo Boothby. In the event, the New Party's appeal proved ephemeral. Nevertheless, its brief history proved integral to Mosley's adoption of the blackshirt. It was in the New Party that British fascism was formed in embryo; it was in the New Party that Mosley raised the slogan of a corporate state and struggled to conceive a new form of politics that transcended the perceived limits of parliamentary democracy.

 

Anne Lawrence-Mathers and Phillipa Hardman (eds.) Women and Writing, c.1340-c.1650: The Domestication of Print Culture (York Medieval Press, 2010)

The transition from medieval manuscript to early printed book is currently a major topic of academic interest, but has received very little attention in terms of women's involvement - an issue which the essays in this volume address. They add female names to the list of authors who participated in the creation of English literature, and examine women's responses to authoritative and traditional texts in revealing detail.

Taking its cue from the advances made by recent work on manuscript culture and book history, this volume also includes studies of material evidence, looking at women's participation in the making of books, and the traces they left when they encountered actual volumes. Finally, studies of women's roles in relation to apparently ephemeral texts, such as letters, pamphlets and almanacs, challenge traditional divisions between public and private spheres as well as between manuscript and print.

 

Jeremy Burchardt and Jacqueline Cooper (eds.) Breaking New Ground (The Family and Community Historical Research Society, 2010)

This important new book, published with the generous assistance of the Marc Fitch Fund  and the outcome of work by members of the Family & Community Historical Research Society, will change the way historians will look at 19th century allotments.
This book offers important new evidence about the history of 19th century allotments, and shows how deeply embedded they were in rural society. Based on a nationwide research project, Breaking New Ground reveals that allotments were numerous and widespread, cherished not only by agricultural labourers, but also by tradesmen, artisans and industrial workers. They were not just a means of alleviating poverty, but a major institution of Victorian village life.
The fifteen chapters include detailed local studies of how allotments developed all over England - in East Anglia, the West Country, southern England, the Midlands and elsewhere. Aspects of allotment history, little explored before, come under the spotlight: the moral dimension of allotment rules, the link between allotments and riots, the intervention of paternalistic employers and the people's desire for allotments to replace lost rights of common.

 

Helen Parish, Clerical Celibacy in the West: c.1100 - 1700 (Ashgate 2010)

The issue of clerical celibacy has played a long and profound role in the history of the Christian church. From the first Christian centuries to the present day, the question of whether clergy should be allowed to marry has attracted a vast amount of theological attention and debate. Yet despite the acknowledged importance of this issue, there have been few attempts to present an objective and historical study of the origins and development of clerical celibacy. In order to address this lacuna, Dr Parish offers a reassessment of the history of sacerdotal celibacy, examining the emergence and evolution of the celibate priesthood in the Latin church from the beginning of the twelfth to the end of the seventeenth centuries. Around this core area of study, the book also considers the influence of the early apostolic church and the example of the Greek church.

 

Richard Bosworth (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Fascism (OUP, 2009)

The essays in this Handbook, written by an international team of distinguished scholars, combine to explore the way in which fascism is understood by contemporary scholarship, as well as pointing to areas of continuing dispute and discussion.

From a focus on Italy as, chronologically at least, the 'first Fascist nation', the contributors cover a wide range of countries, from Nazi Germany and the comparison with Soviet Communism to fascism in Yugoslavia and its successor states. The book also examines the roots of fascism before 1914 and its survival, whether in practice or in memory, after 1945. The analysis looks at both fascist ideas and practice, and at the often uneasy relationship between the two.

The book is not designed to provide any final answers to the fascist problem and no quick definition emerges from its pages. Readers will rather find there historical debate. On appropriate occasions, the authors disagree with each other and have not been forced into any artificial 'consensus', offering readers the chance to engage with the debates over a phenomenon that, more than any other single factor, led humankind into the catastrophe of the Second World War.

 

Patrick Major, Behind the Berlin Wall East Germany and the Frontiers of Power (OUP, 2009)

Few historical changes occur literally overnight, but on 13 August 1961 eighteen million East Germans awoke to find themselves walled in by an edifice which was to become synonymous with the Cold War: the Berlin Wall. This new history rejects traditional, top-down approaches to Cold War politics, exploring instead how the border closure affected ordinary East Germans, from workers and farmers to teenagers and even party members, 'caught out' by Sunday the Thirteenth. Party, police and Stasi reports reveal why one in six East Germans fled the country during the 1950s, undermining communist rule and forcing the eleventh-hour decision by Khrushchev and Ulbricht to build a wall along the Cold War's frontline. Did East Germans resist or come to terms with immurement? Did the communist regime become more or less dictatorial within the confines of the so-called 'Antifascist Defence Rampart'? Using film and literature, but also the GDR's losing battle against Beatlemania, Patrick Major's cross-disciplinary study suggests that popular culture both reinforced and undermined the closed society. Linking external and internal developments, Major argues that the GDR's official quest for international recognition, culminating in Ostpolitik and United Nations membership in the early 1970s, became its undoing, unleashing a human rights movement which fed into, but then broke with, the protests of 1989. After exploring the reasons for the fall of the Wall and reconstructing the heady days of the autumn revolution, the author reflects on the fate of the Wall after 1989, as it moved from demolition into the realm of memory.  

 

Rebecca Rist, The Papacy and Crusading in Europe, 1198-1245 (Continuum, 2009)

This study of crusading policy examines the relationship between the papacy and 'internal' crusades of Europe during the early 13th century. An 'internal' crusade is defined as a holy war authorized by the pope and fought within Christian Europe against those perceived to be foes of Christendom, either to recover property or in defence of the Church or Christians. This study is therefore not concerned with those crusades authorized against Muslim enemies in the East and Spain, nor with crusades authorized against pagans on the borders of Europe. Up to now these crusades have attracted relatively little attention in modern British scholarship.This in spite of their undoubted European-wide significance and an increasing recognition that the period 1198-1245 marks the beginning of a crucial change in papal policy underpinned by canon law. This book discusses the developments through analysis of the extensive source material drawn from unregistered papal letters, placing them firmly in the context of ecclesiastical legislation, canon law, chronicles and other supplementary evidence.  It thereby seeks to contribute to our understanding of the complex politics, theology and rhetoric that underlay the papacy's call for crusades within Europe in the first half of the thirteenth century.

 

F. Tallett (ed.), European Warfare 1350-1750, (Cambridge University Press, 2009)

The period 1350-1750 saw major developments in European warfare, which not only had a huge impact on the way wars were fought, but also are critical to long-standing controversies about state development, the global ascendancy of the West, and the nature of 'military revolutions' past and present. However, the military history of this period is usually written from either medieval or early-modern, and either Western or Eastern European, perspectives. These chronological and geographical limits have produced substantial confusion about how the conduct of war changed. The essays in this book provide a comprehensive overview of land and sea warfare across Europe throughout this period of momentous political, religious, technological, intellectual and military change. Written by leading experts in their fields, they not only summarise existing scholarship, but also present new findings and new ideas, casting new light on the art of war, the rise of the state, and European expansion.

Matthew Worley (ed.), The Foundations of the British Labour Party: Identities, Cultures and Perspectives, 1900-39 (Ashgate 2009)

Interest in the Labour Party remains high, particularly following the unprecedented election of a third successive Labour government and amidst the on-going controversies that surround the New Labour project. Increasingly, the ideological basis of the Labour Party has come under scrutiny, with some commentators and party members emphasizing progressive traditions within the party, whilst others refer back to the trade union foundation of Labour.
This volume brings together a group of scholars working within the field of labour history to consider the various elements that influenced the early Labour Party from its formation into the 1930s. The party's association with the trade union movement is explored through the railwaymen and mineworkers' unions, while further contributions assess the different ways in which the Independent Labour Party, the co-operative movement, liberalism, Christianity and the local party branches helped lay the foundations for Labour's growth from a parliamentary pressure group to a party of government.

 

Jeremy Burchardt and Philip Conford (eds), The Contested Countryside: Rural Politics and Land Controversy in Modern Britain, (I B Tauris, 2008)

Life in rural Britain has changed beyond recognition since the beginning of the 20th century. Not only dramatic events such as the ban on hunting and mad cow disease but also the growth of the organic movement, changes in farming practices and increasing rural poverty have all had an effect on how we view the countryside and the people who live there. In "The Contested Countryside", the authors put contemporary rural issues in their historical context, which they argue is essential in order to see modern problems in a clearer light - and perhaps even find some solutions."The Contested Countryside" examines the historical background to some of the main controversies of contemporary rural life. The authors explore key elements of rural life, including the varying responses to animal disease from Biblical times to the 2001 outbreak of foot-and-mouth, the relationship between farming methods and landscape preservation as well as organic farming, the role of the European Union and the truth about the Countryside Alliance. In the process they address the thorny question of whether the countryside can still support a rural population.

 

Martin Parsons, War Child. Children Caught in Conflict (History Press, 2008) 

In September 1939 nearly 400,000 children were evacuated from London, followed by many more from other cities in the UK. Many of them were unaccompanied, and for most, it was the first time away from home and their parents. Yet this well-known disruption of childhood is a drop in the ocean compared to the effects conflict continues to have on children throughout the world. Children have always been the victims of war, and this fascinating new history examines the effects of conflict on those from Britain, Germany and Finland during and after the Second World War, as well as present day war zones in West Africa and other areas. Taking first-hand accounts from survivors, diaries and authentic wartime documents, this revealing history reflects the untold story of hundreds of thousands of children whose lives were affected by war.

 

Martin Parsons, Children. The Invisible Victims of War. An Interdisciplinary Study (DSM, 2008)

Images of children living in war zones, being evacuated from them, or falling victim to armed conflict, have been used to illustrate histories and media coverage for many years. What has been less evident is a consideration of children's experience of such conflict as a serious subject of study in its own right, rather than as an appendage to what are perceived as more weighty adult perspectives. This book brings together the work of some of the world's leading experts in the field of War Child studies and War Related Trauma, in order to provide new insights into what war means to children. Many of the contributors are ex-war children themselves. The effect that their experiences have had on their own lives and their families effectively invalidates claims that, given time, children simply forget or are able to put the past behind them; rather, their stories add a major new dimension to our understanding of war and conflict.

 

David Stack, Queen Victoria's Skull: George Combe and the mid-Victorian mind (Continuum, 2008)

This is a hugely entertaining study that goes beyond biography to vividly portray Victorian life in a wider framework."Queen Victoria's Skull" explores the life and thinking of the Edinburgh phrenologist George Combe. Phrenology is a theory which claims to be able to detect personality traits, character and predisposition to criminality on the basis of the shape of the skull. Now dismissed as risible, it was treated with reverence by many Victorians.George Combe was the author of "The Constitution of Man", an ethical treatise that sold over 100,000 copies in Britain and 200,000 copies in America by 1900. The quirkiness of his life and work, and the fact that he befriended and influenced many public figures - from Prince Albert to George Eliot - make for an engaging story. "Queen Victoria's Skull", however, does more than tell the tale of one idiosyncratic individual. By tracing the development of Combe's intellectual interests it provides a prism through which to view Victorian culture, science and politics, covering themes of class, religion, sex, crime, art and the theatre. David Stack has written an entertaining and erudite study of an important, and now neglected, Victorian figure.

 

Matthew Worley (ed.), with N. LaPorte and K. Morgan, Bolshevism, Stalinism and the Comintern: Perspectives on Stalinization, 1917-53 (Palgrave 2008)

The opening of communist archives has prompted a resurgence of historical interest in this most seminal of Twentieth-century political movements. Ironically, however, given the diversity of the domestic contexts within which communist parties operated, scholars have rarely undertaken a comparative approach to their subject, presupposing instead the existence of broad defining patterns across national boundaries. More recently, such presumptions have been challenged, with research focusing not just on the extent but on the character of Moscow's political authority and the complex forms of interaction that could be traced between communism and its different national milieux. Bringing together leading authorities and cutting-edge scholars of the younger generation, this collection provides a new perspective on these issues through a re-examination of the defining concepts of Stalinism and Stalinization.

 

Richard Bosworth, Nationalism (Pearson, 2007)

Why do many of us swell with pride at the sound of the national anthem or sight of the national flag? Why do we use our nationalities to describe who we are? Why do politicians claim to stand for 'national values' above all else?

In his new critical study of nationalism, R.J.B. Bosworth explores the origins and purpose of the division of human kind into national groupings. The book explores the history of nationalism, arguing that the present is seeing a dangerous growth of what might be called 'national fundamentalism'. Bosworth suggests that nations work best when they possess the ability to criticize their nationalism. They become menacing when they demand the nationalization of people's empathy, lauding 'national values', for example, rather than humane or civilized ones. Nationalism demonstrates how the globalizing world is seeing a renaissance and adaptation of ideas that were prevalent in the inter-war period, and challenges us to decide whether we should reject nationalist fundamentalism in a civilized world.

 

Richard Hoyle (with Dr H. French, University of Exeter), A handlist of Star Chamber pleadings for northern England before 1558 (Manchester University Press, 2007)

This is a major study of the transformation of early modern English rural society. It begins by assessing the three major debates about the character of English society: the 'Brenner Debate'; the debate over English Individualism; and the long running debate over the disappearance of the small landowner. It then turns to the history of Earls Colne in Essex, which has never before been the subject of a full-length study despite it being one of the most discussed villages in England. It is a key work for all those interested in how English rural society changed between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries.

 

Richard Hoyle, (ed.), Our Hunting Fathers: field sports in England, c.1850-1970 (Carnegie Publishing, 2007)

In recent years field sports - hunting, shooting and fishing - have become one of the most hotly contested of pastimes in Britain. Shooting, hunting and even angling are now regarded as morally dubious or abhorrent; indeed, hunting with hounds in its classic form and hare coursing have recently been banned in Britain. Yet for an older generation hunting, whether foxes, hares or deer, or shooting pheasant, grouse or partridge, were quintessentially English activities which the rich exercised and to which the middle classes aspired. But if one separates moral and political emotion from historical reality, what do we actually know about the history of field sports? How did their practice evolve? What effect did their pursuit have on the countryside? Who were the people who committed so much time, money and enthusiasm to the pursuit of animals and birds? Surprisingly, perhaps, this book is the first attempt to offer a proper historical perspective on the subject of field sports in England. Ranging widely through a variety of distinct sports dedicated to the pursuit of all sorts of wildlife, from foxes, deer, hares and otters to game birds, wildfowl and salmon, it discusses the involvement and participation of royalty, industrial plutocrats, the middle classes and even the working classes in sports.

In a series of readable and accessible essays, handsomely illustrated, the authors, each expert in their subject, make a case for the study of sports by historians, showing how their history impinges on the history of the countryside and environment, as well as on broader currents in the modern British rural scene.

  

Esther Mijers (With David Onnekink eds.), Redefining William III: The Impact of the King-Stadholder in its International Context (Aldershot, 2007)

William III (1650-1702) was Stadholder in the United Provinces and King of England, Scotland and Ireland. His reign has always intrigued historians, as it encompassed such defining events as the Dutch year of Disaster (1672), the Glorious Revolution (1688) and the ensuing wars against France. Although William has played a pivotal role in the political and religious history of his countries, the significance and international impact of his reign is still not very well understood. This volume contains a number of innovative essays from specialists in the field, which have evolved from papers delivered to an international conference held at the University of Utrecht in December 2002. By focusing on the entire period 1650-1702 from an international perspective, the volume moves historical discussion away from the traditional analysis of single events to encompass William's entire reign from a variety of political, religious, intellectual and cultural positions. In so doing it offers a new perspective on the British and Dutch reigns of William III, as well as the wider European milieu.

 

Richard Bosworth, Mussolini's Italy: life under the dictatorship 1915-1945, (The Penguin Press, New York, 2006)

For almost all nations the First World War was an unparalleled disaster, but the Italian experience especially was to have catastrophic consequences. Weakened and embittered, trying and failing to come to terms with 600,000 dead and with an entire generation of men militarized by fighting, Italy gave birth to a new form of political life: Fascism. Richard Bosworth brings to life the period when Italians participated in a vast and ultimately ruinous political experiment under their dictator, Benito Mussolini, and his fascist henchmen. The fascists were the first totalitarians, aiming to reshape Italy and its people utterly. Their regime was based on a cult of violence and obedience. Yet, despite this, Italians found ingenious ways of adapting, limiting, undermining and ridiculing Mussolini's ambitions for them. The heart of this book is its engagement with the life of these ordinary Italians and their families, struggling through terrible times. Bosworth creates a powerful, plausible and entertaining picture of Italian life and a regime which - as the world hurtled towards the cataclysm of the Second World War - was to force humiliation, defeat, invasion and the utter collapse of the nation state.

 

Paul Brassley, Jeremy Burchardt and Lynne Thompson (eds), The English Countryside between the wars: Regeneration or Decline?  (Boydell Press 2006)

 England is the country, and the country is England', as Stanley Baldwin famously said in 1924, but what kind of country was it? There are persistent memories of depression and depopulation, of dilapidated villages and deserted country houses, in a period of bitter discontent and disturbance when the brief febrile excitements of the 1920s gave way to the thirties, Auden's 'low dishonest decade'. Recent work has radically modified the history of the interwar years, but largely from an urban and industrial viewpoint. Hitherto this revisionist perspective has left unquestioned one of the central components of the old orthodoxy: that this was a period of unremitting, unmitigated decline in the countryside. In The English Countryside Between the Wars an interdisciplinary group of scholars have come together to challenge this view. Organised into sections on society, culture, politics and the economy, and embracing subjects as diverse as women novelists and village crafts, the book argues that almost everywhere we look in the countryside between the wars there were signs of new growth and dynamic development. This will be required reading for everyone with an interest in British history between the wars and to lecturers, teachers and students studying social, cultural, political, economic and environmental history, historical and cultural geography, English literature, performance studies and art and design history.

 

Lindy Grant, Architecture and Society in Normandy, c.1120-c.1270, (Yale University Press 2005)

This wide-ranging book explores the architecture, principally ecclesiastical, of Normandy from 1120 to 1270, a period of profound social, cultural, and political change. In 1204, control of the duchy of Normandy passed from the hands of the Anglo-Norman/Angevin descendants of William the Conqueror to the Capetian kingdom of France. The book examines the enormous cultural impact of this political change and places the architecture of the time in the context of the Normans' complicated sense of their own identity. It is the first book to consider the inception and development of Gothic architecture in Normandy and the first to establish a reliable chronology of the buildings. Lindy Grant extends her investigation beyond the buildings themselves and offers also an account of those who commissioned, built, and used them. The humanised story she tells provides insights not only into Normandy's medieval architecture but also into the fascinating society from which it emerged.

 

Matthew Worley (ed.) Labour's Grass Roots: Essays on the Activities of Local Labour Parties and Members, 1918-45 (Ashgate 2005)

The period between 1918 and 1945 witnessed dynamic social and economic developments in Britain as the notion of a government controlled economy and welfare state took root. In order to be understood, this shift in the political landscape needs to be seen in context of the growth of mass political movements and the implementation of fuller democratic processes in the aftermath of the Great War. But whilst much has been written on the rise of the Labour Party, the decline of the Liberals and the domination of the Conservatives in the sphere of high politics, much less research has been done on the local or regional experience of Britain's main political parties between the wars. This volume brings together ten essays that together provide an introduction to the role, influence and effectiveness of Labour Party activists across Britain. Taking a systematic and comparative approach that examines a range of representative areas, this volume is more than simply a collection of local studies. Instead it utilises the local to develop and illuminate the wider dynamics at work inside the Labour Party. By emphasising the role of the party membership, Britain's social and political evolution can be reconstructed from grass-roots level, taking into account the priorities and expectations of the people who sustained and cultivated the nation's social-political base.

 

Stephen Taylor,Evangelism in the Church of England c.1790-c.1890, A Miscellany, ed. with Mark Smith (Church of England Record Society, 12, Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2004)

Between the end of the eighteenth century and the end of the nineteenth evangelicalism came to exercise a profound influence over British religious and social life - an influence unmatched by even theOxford movement. The four texts published here provide different perspectives on the relationship between evangelicalism and the Church during that time, illustrating the diversity of the tradition.Hannah More's correspondence during the Blagdon controversy illuminates the struggles of Evangelicals at the end of the eighteenth century, as she attempted to establish schools for poor children. Thecharges of Bishops Ryder and Ryle in 1816 and 1881 respectively reveal the views of Evangelicals who, at either end of the nineteenth century, had a forum for expressing their views from the pinnacleof the church establishment. The major text, the undergraduate diary of Francis Chavasse [1865-8], also written by a future bishop, provides a fascinating insight into the mind of a young Evangelicalat Oxford, struggling with his conscience and his calling. Each text is presented with an introduction and notes.

 

Emily West, Chains of Love: Slave Couples in Antebellum South Carolina (University of Illinois Press, 2004)

Historians have traditionally neglected relationships between slave men and women during the antebellum period. In Chains of Love, Emily West remedies this situation by investigating the social and cultural history of slave relationships in the very heart of the South. Focusing on South Carolina, West deals directly with the most intimate areas of the slave experience including courtship, love and affection between spouses, the abuse of slave women by white men, and the devastating consequences of forced separations. Slaves fought these separations through cross-gender bonding and cross-plantation marriages, illustrating West's thesis about slave marriage as a fierce source of resistance to the oppression of slavery in general. Making expert use of sources such as the Works Progress Administration narratives, slave autobiographies, slave owner records, and church records, this book-length study is the first to focus on the primacy of spousal support as a means for facing oppression. Chains of Love provides telling insights into the nature of the slave family that emerged from these tensions, celebrates its strength, and reveals new dimensions to the slaves' struggle for freedom.

 

Matthew Worley (ed.) In Search of Revolution:  International Communist Parties in the Third Period (I.B. Tauris 2004)

The end of the Cold War and the opening of the Soviet, and especially the Communist International (Comintern), archives, have revolutionized the history and historiography of Communism and the Soviet Union and national communist parties. And nowhere has the upheaval been greater than in the history of the "Third Period". The Comintern officially announced in 1928 the "Third Period" in capitalist development and communist struggle. All national communist parties had to cease collaboration with social democrat and labor movements and adopt the policy of 'class against class' as dictated by Moscow. Most historians have seen this policy as a disaster leading to the demise of communism as an international force. However, this collection of contributions by an international team of scholars demonstrates not only that international communism survived, national parties flourished, fought fascism, and the Popular Front emerged as a major international force.

 

Jonathan Bell, The Liberal State on Trial: The Cold War and American Politics in theTruman Years (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004).

How did the perception of a communist threat to American democratic values determine the fate of political life in the United States after World War II? Why did the United States, unlike Europe, develop during the Truman years a much less state-centred approach to solving the problems of postwar society? Exploring the Cold War's role in shifting the center of gravity in American politics sharply to the right, in this book Jonathan Bell demonstrates that there was vigorous and vibrant debate - far more than has generally been recognized - about the potential for liberal reform before it was submerged in the anti-state rhetoric of the Cold War.   

 

 Helen Parish, Monks, Miracles and Magic: Reformation and Representation of the Medieval Church (Routledge 2003)

Helen L. Parish presents an innovative new study of Reformation attitudes to medieval Christianity, revealing the process by which the medieval past was rewritten by Reformation propagandists. This fascinating account sheds light on how the myths and legends of the middle ages were reconstructed, reinterpreted, and formed into a historical base for the Protestant church in the sixteenth century. Crossing the often artificial boundary between medieval and modern history, Parish draws upon a valuable selection of writings on the lives of the saints from both periods, and addresses ongoing debates over the relationship between religion and the supernatural in early modern Europe.

Setting key case studies in a broad conceptual framework, Monks, Miracles and Magic is essential reading for all those with an interest in the construction of the Protestant church, and its medieval past.  

 

Helen Parish (with W.G.Naphy eds.),  Religion and Superstition in Reformation Europe  (MUP, 2003)

What, in the 16th and 17th centuries, was "superstition"? Where might it be found and how might it be countered? How was the term used and how effective a weapon was it in the assault on traditional religion? The ease with which accusations of "superstition" slipped into the language of Reformation debate has ensured that one of the most fought-over terms in the history of early modern popular culture, especially religious culture, is also one of the most difficult to define. This text offers a novel approach to the issue, based upon national and regional studies, and examinations of attitudes to prophets, ghosts, saints and demonology, alongside an analysis of Catholic responses to the Reformation and the apparent presence of "superstition" in the reformed churches. It challenges the assumptions that Catholic piety was innately superstitious, while Protestantism was rational, and suggests that the early modern concept of "superstition" needs more careful treatment by historians. The book also demands that the terminology and presuppositions of historical discourse on the Reformation be altered to remove lingering sectarian polemic.

 

David Stack, The First Darwinian Left: Socialism and Darwinism 1859-1914 (New Clarion Press, 2003)

This book provides the first detailed account of how Socialists wrestled with the paradoxical challenges that Darwinism posed for their politics. Cutting through the myths, misunderstandings and neglect that have obscured an appreciation of the importance of Darwinism to radical and socaielist thought, Stack argues that Darwinism was central to late nineteenth and early twentieth century socialism. 'The First Darwinian Left' refers to that generation of socialists for whom Darwinism provided a language and an heuristic structure within which to conceive and express this politics. Lifting 'the enormous condescension of prosterity' from their shoulders, this book demonstrates that socialists, from Alfred Russel Wallace through to Emile Vandervelde, developed their political thought in an isomorphic interaction with the most advanced biological theories of their day.  In the process it offers a commentary and warning to who today seek to use Darwinism as a foundation of the new politics of the left.

 

Richard Hoyle, The Pilgrimage of Grace and the politics of the 1530s (OUP, 2003)

This is the first full account of the Pilgrimage of Grace since 1915. In the autumn and winter of 1536, Henry VIII faced risings first in Lincolnshire, then throughout northern England. These rebellions posed the greatest threat of any encountered by a Tudor monarch. The Pilgrimage of Grace has traditionally been assumed to have been a spontaneous protest against the Dissolution of the Monasteries, but R. W. Hoyle's lively and intriguing study reveals the full story.
Professor Hoyle examines the origins of the rebellions in Louth and their spread; he offers new interpretations of the behaviour of many of the leading rebels, including Robert Aske and Thomas, Lord Darcy; and he reveals how the engine behind the uprising was the commons, and notably the artisans, of some of the smaller northern towns. Casting new light on the personality of Henry VIII himself, Professor Hoyle shows how the gentry of the North worked to dismantle the movement and help the crown neutralize it by guile as events unfolded towards their often tragic conclusions.

  

 F. Tallett ( with N. Atkin), Priests, Prelates and People: A History of European Catholicism since 1750 (I B Tauris, 2003)

The Catholic Church has always been a major player in European and world history. Whether it has enjoyed a religious dominance or existed as a minority religion, Catholicism has never been diverted from political life. "Priests, Prelates and People" records the Church struggling to adapt to the new political landscape ushered in by the French Revolution, and shows how the formation of nation states and identities was both helped and hindered by the Catholic establishment. It portrays the Vatican increasingly out of step in the wake of world war, Cold War and the massive expansion of the developing world, with its problems of population growth and under-development.

 

Richard Bosworth, Mussolini (Arnold, London & OUP, New York, 2002)

In 1945, disguised in German greatcoat and helmet, Mussolini attempted to escape from the advancing Allied armies. Unfortunately for him, the convoy of which he was part was stopped by partisans and his features, made so familiar by Fascist propaganda, gave him away. Within 24 hours he was executed by his captors, joining those he sent early to their graves. He was one of the tyrant-killers who so scarred interwar Europe, but we cannot properly understand him or his regime by any simple equation with Hitler or Stalin. Like them, his life began modestly in the provinces; unlike them, he maintained a traditonal male family life, including both wife and mistresses, as did he seek to be an intellectual. Bosworth's Mussolini allows us to come closer than ever before to an appreciation of the life and actions of the man and of the political world and society within which he operated. With extraordinary skill and vividness, drawing on a huge range of sources, this biography paints a picture of brutality and failure, yet one tempered with an understanding of Mussolini as a human being, not so different from many of his contemporaries.

 

Jeremy Burchardt, Paradise Lost: Rural Idyll and Social Change 1800-2000 (I B Tauris, 2002)

The enduring 'Town versus Country' debate lies at the root of modern British society. How far did the idealization of the countryside by artists and writers since the Industrial Revolution foster anti-urban, anti-industrial values? How have such values affected government policy, social structure and economic dynamism? Did post-war developments, in particular rural-urban commuting and environmentalist criticism of modern 'industrial' farming, undermine the traditional distinction between town and country, or are they themselves symptoms of the continuing allure of the rural idyll? This book demonstrates the remarkable influence that attitudes to the countryside have had on the evolution of modern British life.

 

Jeremy Burchardt, The Allotment Movement in England, 1793-1873, (Woodbridge, 2002)

A full and important study of allotments which addresses wider rural social issues and relationships. This book is about more than the early allottment movement: it is a book about changing rural, social and class consciousness, and  the creation of a social consensus. In this study of the eretofore-almost-ignored allotment movement, Burchardt makes a compelling case for locating allotments at the heart of the narrative of mid-nineteenth century social progress and stability.

   

Anne Lawrence, Manuscripts in Northumbria in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries, (Woodbridge, 2002)

In the century after the Norman conquest a new elite came to power in northern England, in the old Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria. The processes of assimilation are followed here through a detailed study of the libraries which belonged to the religious institutions of the region and their surviving manuscripts. The changes in the perception and writing of the region's history are discussed together with the production of the manuscripts in which the works survive. Changes in script, illumination and codicology are demonstrated, and discussed as evidence both of new cultural influences and of interaction between the networks of religious houses in the region. The introduction of new religious orders and their interaction with existing cathedrals and monasteries, and the ongoing role of the cults of the region's major saints are given particular attention, using evidence from the surviving manuscripts.

 

 F. Tallett (with N. Atkin) (eds), The Right in France from the Revolution to Le Pen (I B Tauris, 2002)

The French Right is a constant, evolving and continuing theme in all aspects of the political life of the French nation - shaping much of this country's nation-state from the Revolution to the present - and is now a burning contemporary issue. The authors show how the influence of the French Right has entered into all areas of political, economic, social, cultural, religious and especially, radical aspects of Bonapartism, the Vichy experience and the World Wars, Gaullism, post-Gaullism and the resurgence of the Right under Le Pen. This edition updates the story and demonstrates that the French Right, despite electoral defeat, remains a potent force ans an underlying constant in French political experience.

  

Anne Curry and Elizabeth Matthew, Concepts and Patterns of Service in the Late Middle Ages (Boydell 2000)

The notion of service was ingrained in medieval culture, and not just as a part of the wider concept of patronage: it is prominent throughout the language and life of the time. These studies examine the nature and importance of service in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in a variety of contexts both within and beyond the dominions of the English crown, including contracts between domestic servants and employers, labour legislation, career opportunities for graduates, the public service ethos embodied by the king's household retinue and a scheme for its reform, public service in France, ducal service in Brittany, and bastard feudalism in Scotland.

 

Helen Parish, Clerical Marriage and the English Reformation: Precedent, Policy, and Practice (Ashgate, St Andrews Studies in Reformation History, 2000)

This volume is an examination of the debate over clerical marriage in Reformation polemic, and of its impact on the English clergy in the second half of the sixteenth century. Clerical celibacy was more than an abstract theological concept; it was a central image of mediaeval Catholicism which was shattered by the doctrinal iconoclasm of Protestant reformers.
This study sets the debate over clerical marriage within the context of the key debates of the Reformation, offering insights into the nature of the reformers' attempts to break with the Catholic past, and illustrating the relationship between English polemicists and their continental counterparts. The debate was not without practical consequences, and Parish sets this study of polemical arguments alongside an analysis of the response of clergy in several English dioceses to the legalisation of clerical marriage in 1549. Conclusions are based upon the evidence of wills, visitation records, and the proceedings of the ecclesiastical courts.   

 

Patrick Major, The Death of the KPD: Communism and Anti-Communism in West Germany, 1945-1956 (OUP, 1998).

Why was the West German Communist Party banned in 1956, only 11 years after it had emerged from Nazi persecution? Although politically weak, the postwar party was in fact larger than its Weimar predecessor and initially dominated works councils at the Ruhr pits and Hamburg docks, as well as the steel giant, Krupp. Under the control of East Berlin, however, the KPD was sent off on a series of overambitious and flawed campaigns to promote national unification and prevent West German rearmament. At the same time, the party was steadily criminalized by the Anglo-American occupiers, and ostracized by a heavily anti-communist society. Patrick Major has used material available only since the end of the Cold War, from both Communist archives in the former GDR as well as western intelligence, to trace the final decline and fall of the once-powerful KPD.