A history of celebrity from Byron to BeckhamLove it or hate it, celebrity is one of the dominant features of modern life—and one of the least understood. Fred Inglis sets out to correct this problem in this entertaining and enlightening social history of modern celebrity, from eighteenth-century London to today's Hollywood. Vividly written and brimming with fascinating stories of figures whose lives mark important moments in the history of celebrity, this book expl...

In his life, Raymond Williams played many parts: child of the Black Mountains, inspirational adult lecturer, Cambridge professor, folk hero and guru of the left. After his death, he has remained a symbolic figure and his classic works, Culture and Society, The Long Revolution, The Country and the City continue to inspire new generations all over the world.In this first major biography, Fred Inglis has spoken to those who knew this complex and charismatic m...

This is the first biography of the last and greatest British idealist philosopher, R. G. Collingwood (1889-1943), a man who both thought and lived at full pitch. Best known today for his philosophies of history and art, Collingwood was also a historian, archaeologist, sailor, artist, and musician. A figure of enormous energy and ambition, he took as his subject nothing less than the whole of human endeavor, and he lived in the same way, seeking to experience the complete range of human pas...

Our holidays lie near the heart of our emotional life, enjoyed for a fortnight, fed on imagination for eleven months of the year. What we want from our holidays tells a lot about who we are and what we wish we were. In this charming account, Fred Inglis traces the rise of the holiday from its early roots in the Grand Tour, through the coming of Thomas Cook and his Blackpool packages, to sex tourism and the hippie trail to Kathmandu. He celebrates the bodily pleasures of generations of tour...

Richard Hoggart has been, perhaps, the best-known, and certainly the most affectionately acknowledged, British intellectual of the past sixty years. His great classic, The Uses of Literacy, provided for thousands of unsung working-class readers a wholly recognisable and tender account of their own coming-to-maturity and of the preciousness and the hardships of the life of the poor in pre-World War II Britain.But he was far more than narrator of a neglected class. Hoggart w...

[The SAGE Key Concepts series provides students with accessible and authoritative knowledge of the essential topics in a variety of disciplines. Cross-referenced throughout, the format encourages critical evaluation through understanding. Written by experienced and respected academics, the books are indispensable study aids and guides to comprehension.]′Dipping into this short collection reveals an eminently useful resource aimed at providing not just a use-friendly lexicon but als...

E.P. Thompson is best known for his seminal historical works, such as The Making of the English Working Class, and his political essays, collected in volumes such as The Poverty of Theory and The Heavy Dancers. Although his poetry is less widely known, it lacks nothing of his famous passion and energy. This is his collected work, edited by Fred Inglis

An incomparable retrospective of writings by one of the world's great anthropologistsClifford Geertz (1926–2006) was perhaps the most influential anthropologist of our time, but his influence extended far beyond his field to encompass all facets of contemporary life. Nowhere were his gifts for directness, humor, and steady revelation more evident than in the pages of the New York Review of Books, where for nearly four decades he shared his acute vision of ...