Marion Walker gives an account of her life as a nurse in Rhodesia known as Zimbabwe since 1980.She describes the early days of the War of Independence 1972 through to 1981 which saw the handing over the country from the colonial regime to the Mugabe administration. The bravery of the indigenous people who carried on living through impossible situations that took all their ingenuity and strength of character to survive the combat at all was admirable. After qualifying as a midwife she went ...

The essays in this volume address the displacement of natural and cultural heritage caused by disasters, whether they be dramatic natural impacts or terrible events unleashed by humankind, including holocaust and genocide. Disasters can be natural or human-made, rapid or slow, great or small, yet the impact is effectively the same; nature, people and cultural heritage are displaced or lost. Yet while heritage and place are at risk from disasters, in time,sites of suffering are sometimes re...

Aboriginal design is of a distinctly cultural nature, based in the Dreaming and in ancient practices grounded in Country. It is visible in the aerodynamic boomerang, the ingenious design of fish traps and the precise layouts of community settlements that strengthen social cohesion. Alison Page and Paul Memmott show how these design principles of sophisticated function, sustainability and storytelling, refined over many millennia, are now being applied to contemporary practices. Design: Bui...

In this era of climate crisis, in which our very futures are at stake, sustainability is a global imperative. Yet we tend to associate sustainability, nature, and the environment with distant places, science, and policy. The truth is that everything is environmental, from transportation to taxes, work to love, cities to cuisine.This book is the first to examine contemporary Singapore from an ecocultural lens, looking at the ways that Singaporean life and culture is deeply entangled...

Thoughts and feelings about home traditionally provided people of all cultures with a firm sense of where they belonged, and why. But with the world rapidly changing, many of our basic notions are becoming problematic. Both internationally and within countries, populations are constantly on the move, seeking better opportunities and living conditions, or an escape from violence and war. In spite of, or perhaps even because of these trends, ideas about home continue to shape the way people ...

Longlisted for the Wainwright Prize 2021 for Writing on Global ConservationClimate change is the greatest challenge to humankind today. While the coronavirus sheds a light on the vulnerability of our interconnected world, the effects of global warming will be permanent, indeed catastrophic, without a massive shift in human behaviour.Writer, scholar and broadcaster Alastair McIntosh sums up the present knowledge and shows that conventional solutions are not ...

The memoir of a Great Ormond Street nurse.This is the inspirational story of life as a nurse during the 1960s, 70s and 80s, most of which was spent at Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital.Susan Macqueen was 12 years old when she accompanied her mum to see her friend Ms Fairweather, the matron at the local nursing home and from that day on she knew she wanted to be a nurse. A few years later, despite being told that her grades weren't good enough and havi...

Landscapes is a timely and well-written analysis of the meaning of cultural landscapes. The book delves into the layers of meaning that are invested in ordinary landscapes as well as landscapes of spectacle and power. Landscapes is a powerful and vivid application of the new cultural geography to case studies not previously visited within cultural geography texts.

In DOCTOR, DOCTOR, Dr Rosemary writes with warmth, humour and honesty as she recalls the stories of 20 of her most memorable patients from her 25 years working as a GP in south London. These include an eco-protestor with appendicitis, an octogenarian nymphomaniac, a teenager in labour with a baby she didn't know about, a lonely ex-coal miner with a chronic chest condition and a middle-aged man who can't quite bring himself to tell her the real problem. Funny, heart-warming and a little bit...

The study of vernacular architecture explores the characteristics of domestic buildings in particular regions or localities, and the many social and cultural factors that have contributed to their evolution. In this book, vernacular architecture specialist Paul Oliver brings together a wealth of information that spans over two decades, and the whole globe. Some previously unpublished papers, as well as those only available in hard to find conference proceedings, are brought together in one...

Rivers have played an extraordinarily important role in creating the world in which we live. They create landscapes and provide water to people, plants and animals, nourishing both town and country. The flow of rivers has enthused poets and painters, explorers and pilgrims. Rivers have acted as cradles for civilization and agents of disaster; a river may be a barrier or a highway, it can bear trade and sediment, culture and conflict. A river may inspire or it may terrify. This Very Sho...

Our twenty first century world is facing a series of unprecedented crises. Pandemics of loneliness, obesity and diabetes. Spiralling inequality. Financial meltdowns. Environmental destruction.We’re obsessed with finding big, complicated, technological solutions to these modern ills. But what if the solutions lie not in techno fixes, but in harnessing the power of one of the oldest and simplest human units – the sympathy group? The sympathy group is the smallest social unit outside ...