In recent decades, the global wealth of the rich has soared to leave huge chasms of wealth inequality. This book argues that we cannot talk about inequalities in Britain today without talking about the monarchy. Running the Family Firm explores the postwar British monarchy in order to understand its economic, political, social and cultural functions. Although the monarchy is usually positioned as a backward-looking, archaic institution and an irrelevant anachronism to corporate fo...

Does the British monarchy still have a place in today’s society? Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s ‘exit’ cast light on institutional racism, multiple allegations around Prince Andrew highlighted troubling attitudes to gender and power, while the abolition of monarchy in Barbados accentuated its relationship to colonialism.But what is the monarchy actually for? Does it benefit the UK, or cause more harm than good? The death of Queen Elizabeth II and the dawn of the Carolean age make...

The prospect of Irish unification is now stronger than at any point since partition in 1921. Voters on both sides of the Irish border may soon have to confront for themselves what the answer to a referendum question would mean - for themselves, for their neighbours, and for their society. Journalists Fintan O'Toole and Sam McBride examine the strongest arguments for and against a united Ireland. What do the words 'united Ireland' even mean? Would it be better for Northern Ireland? Would it...

**'A crucial, riveting polemic in support of one of the most precious things humanity has built - democracy itself' OWEN JONES'Graham Smith shows what fools our rotten constitution makes of us, with a monarch as emblem of a country beset by nepotism, backhanders, chumocracy and inherited privilege. Read and rebel!' POLLY TOYNBEE**We're constantly told the same things about the monarchy:But the monarchy is good for tourism..It...

First published as part of the best-selling The Oxford Illustrated History of Britain, Christopher Harvie and Colin Matthew's Very Short Introduction to Nineteenth-Century Britain is a sharp but subtle account of remarkable economic and social change and an even more remarkable political stability. Britain in 1789 was overwhelmingly rural, agrarian, multilingual, and almost half Celtic. By 1914, when it faced its greatest test since the defeat of Napoleon, it was largely ...

Since Devolution in 1999 Scotland has become a focus of intense interest both within Britain and throughout the wider world. In this Very Short Introduction, Rab Houston explores how an independent Scottish nation emerged in the Middle Ages, how it was irrevocably altered by Reformation, links with England and economic change, and how Scotland influenced the development of the modern world. Examining politics, law, society, religion, education, migration, and culture, he examines ...

First published as part of the best-selling The Oxford Illustrated History of Britain, John Morrill's Very Short Introduction to Stuart Britain sets the Revolution into its political, religious, social, economic, intellectual, and cultural contexts. It thus seeks to integrate what most other surveys pull apart. It gives a graphic account of the effects of a century-long period during which population was growing inexorably and faster than both the food supply and the empl...

THE NUMBER 1 IRISH TIMES BESTSELLERSHORTLISTED FOR THE IRISH BOOK AWARDS HISTORY BOOK OF THE YEAR 2024An Irish Times Book of the Year 2024Ireland is a strikingly different country now to the one it was in the mid-1990s. Dramatic economic, social and cultural changes, including the Celtic Tiger boom and increasingly secular debate about abortion, the status of women and same-sex marriage underlined ...

Over the last three decades major advances in research and scholarship have transformed understanding of the Scottish past. In this landmark study some of the most eminent writers on the subject, together with emerging new talents, have combined to produce a large-scale volume which reconsiders in fresh and illuminating ways the classic themes of the nation's history since the sixteenth century as well as a number of new topics which are only now receiving detailed attention. Such major th...

"Tap[s] the power of new geospatial technologies . . . explore[s] the intersection of geography, religion, politics, and identity in Irish history."— International Social Science ReviewIreland's landscape is marked by fault lines of religious, ethnic, and political identity that have shaped its troubled history. Troubled Geographies maps this history by detailing the patterns of change in Ireland from 16th century attempts to "plant" areas of Irel...

Can this deeply divided island ever be united? Malachi O’Doherty’s ground-breaking new book explores this salient question and many more. Considering centuries of history alongside contemporary issues, he looks for answers by talking to those who know the island best: those who live there. O’Doherty speaks to politicians, journalists, writers, lawyers, sportspeople and residents of both the North and the Republic, to produce the most comprehensive picture yet of a divided nation and its un...

Between the years of the mid-thirties through to 1960, independent Ireland suffered from economic stagnation, and also went through a period of intense cultural and psychological repression. While external circumstances account for much of the stagnation – especially the depression of the thirties and the Second World War – Preventing the Future argues that the situation was aggravated by internal circumstances. The key domestic factor was the failure to extend higher and technical educati...