‘England’ and ‘Englishness’ have received much attention in the twenty-first century, not least in debates over Brexit. About England explores how these concepts have been imagined since the 1960s, covering themes including politics, popular culture, geography, art, architecture, film and music.David Matless navigates the country’s complex cultural terrain, revealing the ways in which the national is entangled with the local, the regional, the European, the international, t...

England is known as a ‘green and pleasant’ land, but what does this mean? England’s Green explores how the country’s connection with the environment has shaped and reflected English national identity since the 1960s, when pollution, pesticides, industrial farming and upset ecologies were presented as signs of a world gone wrong. This book examines English cultures of nature, land, farming and other ways in which humans engage with the natural world; or with a world whose naturalne...

Landscape has been central to definitions of Englishness for centuries. David Matless argues that landscape has been the site where English visions of the past, present and future have met in debates over questions of national identity, disputes over history and modernity, and ideals of citizenship and the body.Landscape and Englishness is extensively illustrated and draws on a wide range of material – topographical guides, health manuals, paintings, poetry, architectural p...

In the Nature of Landscape presents regional cultural landscape as a new direction for research in cultural geography.Represents the first cultural geographic study of the Norfolk Broads region of eastern EnglandAddresses regional cultural landscape through consideration of narratives of landscape origin, debates over human conduct, the animal and plant landscapes of the region, and visions of the ends of landscape through pollution and floodDraws...

This volume brings together leading scholars in the geography and history of twentieth-century Britain to illustrate the contribution that geographical thinking can make to understanding modern Britain.The first collection to explore the contribution that geographical thinking can make to our understanding of modern Britain.Contains thirteen essays by leading scholars in the geography and history of twentieth-century Britain.

J. B. Priestley is the first book to provide a detailed and up to date analysis of the enormous contribution made by this playwright, novelist, journalist and critic to twentieth century British theatre.Priestley was often criticised for being either too populist or too experimental and this study unpicks the contradictions of a playwright and theatre theorist popular with audiences but too often dismissed by critics; describing and analysing in detail not only his plays b...

From the iconic Routemaster bus to the Dyson vacuum cleaner, the graphics of Penguin bookcovers or Vivienne Westwood garments, Britain has been at the forefront of design practice. In this informative and broad-ranging book Cheryl Buckley examines the culture as well as the products of design in Britain. In doing so, she explores questions of national identity, regional variations and notions of ‘Britishness’ in a Britain that has been transformed from leading an empire into a modern multi...

'An active pleasure to read' Mail on SundayHarold Wilson's famous reference to 'white heat' captured the optimistic spirit of a society in the midst of breathtaking change. From the gaudy pleasures of Swinging London to the tragic bloodshed in Northern Ireland, from the intrigues of Westminster to the drama of the World Cup, British life seemed to have taken on a dramatic new momentum.The memories, images and colourful personalities of those heady ...

Through the lens of the everyday, this book explores ’the countryside’ as an inhabited and practised realm with lived rhythms and routines. It relocates the topography of everyday life from its habitually urban focus, out into the English countryside. The rural is often portrayed as existing outside of modernity, or as its passive victim. Here, the rural is recast as an active and complex site of modernity, a shift which contributes alternative ways of thinking the rural and a new perspect...

People have always attached meaning to the landscape that surrounds them. In Storied Ground Paul Readman uncovers why landscape matters so much to the English people, exploring its particular importance in shaping English national identity amid the transformations of modernity. The book takes us from the fells of the Lake District to the uplands of Northumberland; from the streetscapes of industrial Manchester to the heart of London. This panoramic journey reveals the significance, not onl...

"Incorporating sharp questions and big ideas, Niven shifts deftly between history, politics, culture and literature to offer a fascinating and provocative analysis of the marginalisation of the North." Madeleine Bunting, author of Labours of Love: the Crisis of CareAn in-depth exploration of the importance of the North of England in the modern era.The North Will Rise Again covers the colourful adventures of its inhabitants...

The Making of English Popular Culture provides an account of the making of popular culture in the nineteenth century.While a form of what we might describe as popular culture existed before this period, John Storey has assembled a collection that demonstrates how what we now think of as popular culture first emerged as a result of the enormous changes that accompanied the industrial revolution. Particularly significant are the technological changes that made the production...