A history of Britain's healthcare system, from the Victorian era to the post-World War II beginnings of the NHS to the Coronavirus pandemic.The Coronavirus pandemic in 2020 has changed life as we know it and thrust the NHS into the spotlight. A nation in lockdown has adorned windows with rainbows and stepped onto doorsteps every Thursday to celebrate the people who are risking their lives by turning up to work. But as the grim reports of deaths from the disease cumu...

2020 will forever be remembered as the year the Coronavirus pandemic changed life as we know it across the World. Economies crashed, livelihoods were eradicated, and thousands of lives were shortened or devastated by the effects of this novel virus. In the UK, the National Health Service was thrust into the limelight as the country watched our healthcare system respond to the consequences of this disease. This book traces a timeline of the COVID-19 pandemic, highlighting key events in how ...

A Taste for the Foreign examines foreignness as a crucial aesthetic category for the development of prose fiction from Jacques Amyot’s 1547 translation of The Ethiopian Story to Antoine Galland’s early eighteenth-century version of The Thousand and One Nights. While fantastic storylines and elements of magic were increasingly shunned by a neo-classicist literary culture that valued verisimilitude above all else, writers and critics surmised that the depiction of ...

Explores how Ancien Régime writers theorized public communication through acoustic metaphorsThe salons, cafés, theaters, and print shops of Ancien Régime France have long occupied a key place in histories of the “public sphere”—that is, a cultural arena where private individuals could discuss topics of public interest. Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century French writers certainly acknowledged the emerging importance of public discussion to their society and politica...

The seventeenth-century French diplomat François de Callières once wrote that "an ambassador resembles in some way an actor exposed on the stage to the eyes of the public in order to play great roles." The comparison of the diplomat to an actor became commonplace as the practice of diplomacy took hold in early modern Europe. More than an abstract metaphor, it reflected the rich culture of spectacular entertainment that was a backdrop to emissaries' day-to-day lives. Royal courts routinely ...

The seventeenth-century French diplomat François de Callières once wrote that "an ambassador resembles in some way an actor exposed on the stage to the eyes of the public in order to play great roles." The comparison of the diplomat to an actor became commonplace as the practice of diplomacy took hold in early modern Europe. More than an abstract metaphor, it reflected the rich culture of spectacular entertainment that was a backdrop to emissaries' day-to-day lives. Royal courts routinely ...

The fifteen articles in this volume highlight the richness, diversity, and experimental nature of French and Francophone drama before the advent of what would become known as neoclassical French theater of the seventeenth century. In essays ranging from conventional stage plays (tragedies, comedies, pastoral, and mystery plays) to court ballets, royal entrances, and meta- and para-theatrical writings of the period from 1485 to 1640, French Renaissance and Baroque Drama: Text, Performance, ...

HUMANITY AMONG THE STARS What happens when we reach out into the vastness of space? What hope for us amongst the stars? Multi-award winning editor Jonathan Strahan brings us fourteen new tales of the future, from some of the finest science fiction writers in the field. The fourteen startling stories in this anthology feature the work of Greg Egan, Aliette de Bodard, Ian McDonald, Karl Schroeder, Pat Cadigan, Karen Lord, Ellen Klages, Adam Roberts, Linda Nagata, Hannu Rajaniemi, Kathleen An...

The latest volume in the Hugo award-winning Infinity Project series, showcasing all-original hard science fiction stories from the leading voices in genre fiction. Sense of wonder is the lifeblood of science fiction. When we encounter something on a truly staggering scale - metal spheres wrapped around stars, planets rebuilt and repurposed, landscapes transformed, starships bigger than worlds - we react viscerally. Fear, reverence, admiration - how else are we to react to something so gran...

THE FUTURE IS OURSELVES The world is rapidly changing. We surf future-shock every day, as the progress of technology races ever on. Increasingly we are asking: how do we change to live in the world to come? Whether it's climate change, inundated coastlines and drowned cities; the cramped confines of a tin can hurtling through space to the outer reaches of our Solar System; or the rush of being uploaded into cyberspace, our minds and bodies are going to have to drastically alter. Multi-awar...

The universe shifts and changes: suddenly you understand, you get it, and are filled with wonder. That moment of understanding drives the greatest science-fiction stories and lies at the heart of Engineering Infinity. Whether it's coming up hard against the speed of light - and, with it, the enormity of the universe - realizing that terraforming a distant world is harder and more dangerous than you'd ever thought, or simply realizing that a hitchhiker on a starship consumes fuel and oxygen...

Those were Neil Armstrong's immortal words when he became the first human being to step onto another world. All at once, the horizon expanded; the human race was no longer Earthbound. Edge of Infinity is an exhilarating new SF anthology that looks at the next giant leap for humankind: the leap from our home world out into the Solar System. From the eerie transformations in Pat Cadigan's Hugo-award-winning "The Girl-Thing Who Went Out for Sushi" to the frontier spirit of Sandra McDonald and...