Are you worrying about how to find the words to honour your loved one's life? Would a gentle and straightforward step-by-step process of writing a few words help you through this difficult time? Does the idea of standing up and speaking about your loved one in front of others seem daunting?If you answer yes, then this book is for you. You are now no longer alone in your desire to speak about a loved one at their funeral."I Want to Say A...

This new series of cutting edge critical essays and articles in issues concerning Drama and Performance opens with Volume I, which will focus on issues of Interventionist Drama and related examples of Drama as Community.The list of contributors is impressive and quite consciously eclectic, ranging from established scholars such as Dr. Lionel Pilkington (University of Galway) through to the latest talent emerging in the field of theatre research such as Bill McDonnell (University of...

What value does theatre have in Britain at the beginning of thetwenty-first century? How has theatre responded to the challenge ofremaining relevant in the media-saturated world of today? These are thequestions that underpin this stimulating study of some of the leading dramatists of contemporary British theatre.At the Sharp End sets the scene examining how the forcesthat created a revolution in theatre fifty years ago have been...

An investigation of the fictional representations of the city in contemporary British and American television drama, assessing their political, sociological and cultural implications. The book draws on the following five key case studies for specific and detailed analysis:* Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City* Homicide & Life on the Street* Queer as Folk* The Cops* Holding OnEach is discussed in terms of structure, content, characterisation and ...

Theatres of Conscience offers an invaluable and essential insight into four touring British theatre companies whose work and contributions to post-war British theatre have largely gone unnoticed. Combining a rigorous scholarly evaluation of their work and their broadly ideological and ethical contribution to wider post-war developments in British theatre. Peter Billingham offers the reader a unique insight into four companies which, motivated by enthusiasm, principles and creative...

Cecil Davies' The Adelphi Players: The Theatre of Persons represents a uniquely interesting contribution to our understanding of touring British theatre in the mid-twentieth-century, post-war period. This book will interest everyone - whether student, academic or general reader - who wants to know more about issues concerning the recent history of British theatre. In their values and aims, the Adelphi Players pre-empted many of the post-war developments that we associate with the ...

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'...

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...

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...

Pevsner: The BBC Years gives the first full account of Sir Nikolaus Pevsner’s engagement with the BBC at a time when both were the dominant institutions in their own fields -- Pevsner as the most persuasive figure in architecture and art history, the BBC as the country's sole broadcaster. A German emigré, Pevsner was not at first trusted to speak on the air, and was only invited to appear at the very end of the war, in spite of his growing eminence in academia and publishing. With the arri...

London has provided the setting and inspiration for a host of literary works in English, from canonical masterpieces to the popular and ephemeral. Drawing upon a variety of methods and materials, the essays in this volume explore the London of Langland and the Peasants' Rebellion, of Shakespeare and the Elizabethan stage, of Pepys and the Restoration coffee house, of Dickens and Victorian wealth and poverty, of Conrad and the Empire, of Woolf and the wartime Blitz, of Naipaul and postcolon...

Oscar Wilde was a courageous individualist whose path-breaking life and work were shaped in the crucible of his time and place, deeply marked by the controversies of his era. This collection of concise and illuminating articles reveals the complex relationship between Wilde's work and ideas, and contemporary contexts including Victorian feminism, aestheticism and socialism. Chapters investigate how Wilde's writing was both a resistance to and quotation of Victorian master narratives and ge...