Did you thrive at school or did it do your head in? Were you bullied, belittled or just plain bored to tears? Did it prepare you for the challenges of adult life and give you the confidence to see you through? Did it help resolve social and emotional issues? Did you find and fully express your true gifts, talents and passions? Were you really valued and appreciated just for who you are?Do your children come home every day excited about their new learning experiences?If your...

This study explores the interplay between money, status, politics and art collecting in the public and private lives of members of the wealthy trading classes in Brighton during the period 1840–1914.Chapters focus on the collecting practices of five rich and upwardly mobile Victorians: William Coningham (1815–84), Henry Hill (1813–82), Henry Willett (1823–1905) and Harriet Trist (1816–96) and her husband John Hamilton Trist (1812–91). The book examines the relationship between the ...

Do you know what goes on in a typical modern classroom? Have you noticed how many children actually hate going into school and the effect school has on them? Do you yourself feel an irrational fear of authority, ridiculously low in resilience, self-worth and self-confidence?You are not alone. This book reveals the dark agenda of the modern schooling system and its toxic effects on both pupils and teachers alike.Since it was first printed, the situation in the classroom has de...

With a keen eye for the juicy anecdote, Thévoz tells the fascinating and entertaining story of the rise, decline and resurgence of London's private members' clubs, from the late-eighteenth century to the present day. In doing so he looks at cultural and political developments beyond the clubs, revealing how while the clubs may have been products of their city and country, they also exerted significant influence on London, Britain and places far beyond.This is a chronicle, as inform...

When Theatres of Memory was first published in 1994, it transformed the debate about what is to be considered history and questioned the role of "heritage" that lies at the heart of every Western nation's obsession with the past. Today, in the age of Downton Abbey and Mad Men, we are once again conjuring historical fictions to make sense of our everyday lives.In this remarkable book, Samuel looks at the many different ways we use the 'unofficial knowledge'...

'A revelatory masterpiece, a true alternative history of our times' -Simon Jenkins, former Chair of the National Trust'Thoroughly researched and elegantly written' - Peter Parker, TLSLGBTQ+ histories and identities come out of the National Trust's properties in these touching, poignant and revealing stories.National Trust houses and landscapes might seem to embody conventional family values, but for generati...

Named after a small neighborhood in London where its members settled as young adults, the Bloomsbury Group produced an impressive body of work that yielded British Post-Impressionist painting, literary modernism, the field of macroeconomics, and a new direction for public taste in art. This Companion offers a comprehensive guide to the intellectual and social contexts surrounding Bloomsbury and its coterie, which includes writer Virginia Woolf, economist Maynard Keynes, and art critic Roge...

By drawing attention to the wide range of gruesome, bloody and confronting amusements patronised by ordinary Londoners this book challenges our understanding of Victorian society and culture. From the turn of the nineteenth century, graphic, yet orderly, ‘re-enactments’ of high level violence flourished in travelling entertainments, penny broadsides, popular theatres, cheap instalment fiction and Sunday newspapers. This book explores the ways in which these entertainments siphoned off much...

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...

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...

London's Soho district underwent a spectacular transformation between the late Victorian era and the end of the Second World War: its fin-de-siècle buildings and dark streets infamous for sex, crime, political disloyalty, and ethnic diversity became a center of culinary and cultural tourism servicing patrons of nearby shops and theaters. Indulgences for the privileged and the upwardly mobile edged a dangerous, transgressive space imagined to be "outside" the nation.Treating Soho as ...

The Victorian era produced artistic achievements, technological inventions and social developments that continue to shape how we live today. This Companion offers authoritative coverage of that period's culture and its contexts in a group of specially commissioned essays reflecting the current state of research in each particular field. Covering topics from music to politics, art to technology, war to domestic arts, journalism to science, the essays address multiple aspects of the Victoria...