An intellectual who did not like intellectuals, a socialist who did not trust the state, a writer of the left who found it easier to forgive writers of the right, a liberal who was against free markets, a Protestant who believed in religion but not in God, a fierce opponent of nationalism who defined Englishness for a generation. Aside from being one of the greatest political essayists in the English language and author of two of the most famous books in twentieth century literature, Georg...

George Orwell has never been more quoted and misquoted. Can he be rescued from the soundbites? George Orwell remains a work in progress. He is, or has become, a meme, a global writer, a national treasure, a London statue, a scholarly society, a Prize and a Journal, a trope and a show, various movies and murals, too many misquotations, two adjectives, at least half a dozen fictions, and most recently a dead metaphor with plenty more accolades to come. George Orwell: Lif...

Why did killing a fox mean liberty? What did parish revels have to do with the Peterloo Massacre? What did animal cruelty have to do with the English constitution? What did the Factory Acts mean for modern football? In This Sporting Life, Robert Colls explains sport as one of England's great civil cultures. The lived experiences of people from all walks of life are reclaimed to tell England's history through its great sporting cultures, from the horseback pursuits of the wealthy a...

Cities of Ideas: Civil Society and Urban Governance in Britain 1800-2000 addresses the changing nature of individualism and public service in the 19th and 20th centuries, and consists of a collection of essays authored by senior figures in economic, social, cultural and educational history. The question of the balance between the life of the private citizen and the need to play an active role in the wider community, is one that recurs throughout history. In this book the shifting nature of...

'Englishness' is by no means the unchanging quality of those living in the territory that has come to be England, but a concept that has been made and remade throughout history, expressing itself through existing symbols and ideas.Since its first publication in 1987 this collection has been regarded as a major work on English national identity as it evolved during the period 1880-1920 and has had a significant impact on writing and research. It is a classic text for students of mod...

'Adds enormously to our understanding of the man' Evening StandardGeorge Orwell was one of the greatest writers England produced in the last century. He left an enduring mark on our language and culture, with concepts such as 'Big Brother' and 'Room 101.' His reputation rests not only on his political shrewdness and his sharp satires (Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four) but also on his marvellously clear style and superb essays...

**NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The epic true story of Kim Philby, the Cold War’s most infamous spy, from the “master storyteller” (San Francisco Chronicle) and author of Prisoners of the Castle.Now an MGM+ series starring Damian Lewis, Guy Pearce, and Anna Maxwell Martin**“[A Spy Among Friends] reads like a story by Graham Greene, Ian Fleming, or John le Carré, leavened with a dollop of P. G. Wodehouse.”—Walter Isaacson, New Yo...

Charles Dickens' first novel, The Pickwick Papers, was a phenomenal success upon its release. Like most of Dickens' work, it was first published in serial form, where it became the most popular reading of the day. The Pickwick Papers tells the story of Samuel Pickwick, a good-hearted old gentleman and president of the Pickwick Club. With three other members of the club, Pickwick travels around the English countryside, where he becomes caught up in a serious of comic adventures, fr...

"Emma Griffin gives a new and powerful voice to the men and women whose blood and sweat greased the wheels of the Industrial Revolution" (Tim Hitchcock, author of Down and Out in Eighteenth-Century London).This "provocative study" looks at hundreds of autobiographies penned between 1760 and 1900 to offer an intimate firsthand account of how the Industrial Revolution was experienced by the working class ( The New Yorker). The era didn't just bring ...

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 ...

A brilliant true crime account of the assassinations that altered the course of Irish history from the "compulsively readable" writer ( The Guardian).One sunlit evening, May 6, 1882, Lord Frederick Cavendish and Thomas Burke, Chief Secretary and Undersecretary for Ireland, were ambushed and stabbed to death while strolling through Phoenix Park in Dublin. The murders were funded by American supporters of Irish independence and carried out by the Invincibles...

High and popular culture; family, race, gender and class relations; sexual attitudes and material conditions; science and technology - the diversity of social developments in Britain from 1945 to 2002 are thoroughly explored in this new edition of aclassic text.'Something of a tour de force... Without serious distortion or omission he moves dexterously through a wide variety of sources, ranging from poetry through film and novels to opinion polls.. it is astonishing how much he get...