Part-Architecture presents a detailed and original study of Pierre Chareau’s Maison de Verre through another seminal modernist artwork, Marcel Duchamp’s Large Glass. Aligning the two works materially, historically and conceptually, the book challenges the accepted architectural descriptions of the Maison de Verre, makes original spatial and social accounts of its inhabitation in 1930s Paris, and presents new architectural readings of the Large Glass. Through a rich analysis, which...

Lying in the Dark Room: Architectures of British Maternity returns to and reflects on the spatial and architectural experience of childbirth, through both a critical history of maternity spaces and a creative exploration of those we use today.Where conventional architectural histories objectify buildings (in parallel with the objectification of the maternal body), the book—in the mode of creative practice research—presents a creative-critical autotheory of the arc...

This book presents a novel examination of urban commons which provides a robust base for education initiatives and future public policy guidance on the protection and use of urban commons as invaluable urban green spaces that offer a diverse cultural and ecological resource for future communities.This book's central argument is that only through a deep understanding of the past and a rigorous engagement with present users can we devise new futures or imaginaries of culture, well-be...

Literature is found in many primitive and modern cultures, and it does have group survival advantages, and so, according to sociobiological theory, the evidence is strong that literature has a genetic base.

WINNER OF THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE FOR CONSERVATION 2025A WATERSTONES AND GUARDIAN BEST BOOK OF 2024'Both dynamite and medicine' AMY-JANE BEER'Timely and rousing' THE TIMES________________________________The lie of the land: that Britain’s landowners care for the countryside.Our landowning elite are paid billions of taxpayer pounds to be good s...

This is the changing story of Britain as it has been preserved in our fields, roads, buildings, towns and villages, mountains, forests and islands. From our suburban streets that still trace out the boundaries of long vanished farms to the Norfolk Broads, formed when medieval peat pits flooded, from the ceremonial landscapes of Stonehenge to the spread of the railways - evidence of how man's effect on Britain is everywhere. In The Making of the British Landscape, eminent historian...

Welcome to a work of history unlike any other.Mothering is as old as human existence. But how has this most essential experience changed over time and cultures? What is the history of maternity—the history of pregnancy, birth, the encounter with an infant? Can one capture the historical trail of mothers? How?In Mother Is a Verb, the historian Sarah Knott creates a genre all her own in order to craft a new kind of historical interpretation. Blending m...

England's villages have survived, developed, and thrived over hundreds of years. But what makes a village and how has that changed over time?Take a charming and unexpected journey through the quirks of England's villages throughout the ages in the excellent company of Dr Ben Robinson, expert archaeologist. Join him in visiting villages from prehistoric, to Roman, to medieval times, all the way through to today's modern, urban villages. Discover how landowners, governments and commu...

From the author of ‘Britain BC’, ‘Britain AD’ and ‘Britain in the Middle Ages’ comes the fourth and final part in a critically acclaimed series on Britain's hidden past.The relevance of archaeology to the study of the ancient world is indisputable. But, when exploring our recent past, does it have any role to play? In ‘The Birth of Modern Britain’ Francis Pryor highlights archaeology’s continued importance to the world around us.The pioneers of the Industrial Revolution wer...

Some of the most innovative and spell-binding literature has been written for young people, but only recently has academic study embraced its range and complexity. This Companion offers a state-of-the-subject survey of English-language children's literature from the seventeenth century to the present. With discussions ranging from eighteenth-century moral tales to modern fantasies by J. K. Rowling and Philip Pullman, the Companion illuminates acknowledged classics and many more neglected w...

Family history should reveal more than facts and dates, lists of names and places it should bring ancestors alive in the context of their times and the surroundings they knew and research into local history records is one of the most rewarding ways of gaining this kind of insight into their world. That is why Jonathan Oatess detailed introduction to these records is such a useful tool for anyone who is trying to piece together a portrait of family members from the past. In a series of conc...

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...