An engaging and informative account of 'kitchen sink realism' looking at the artists, musicians, playwrights and authors who wrenched Britain out of post-war austerity and paved the way for the swinging 60s and beyond.Everything AND the Kitchen Sink analyses 'kitchen sink realism' and the birth of 'pop cinema' in the context of contemporaneous debates surrounding politics, civil liberties, sexuality, race, immigration and urbanisation. Covering the lives a...

Surrender to the Rhythm takes a trip back to the world before punk. Covering the bands, the pubs, the characters, the albums, the songs and the personal histories that emerged out of the 60s, it shows how they provided the foundations for the musical explosion that swept the UK after 1977. The role of London's Irish community in enabling this is discussed, as are the economic circumstances that prevailed then, both being factors which briefly led to a heavy concentration of affordable musi...

Between 1967 and 1970 Italian auteur Giovanni "Tinto" Brass directed four feature films in London, each starring a woman as the main character.Exploring the political, cultural and sexual ideas of their time, often in a deliberate pop-art style, they contain much priceless footage of now forgotten neighborhoods, galleries, clubs and events as well as an abundance of contemporary music.A fascinating blend of social history, pop culture, cinema, music and TV, ...

For nearly 150 years living in a house in the country has been what many of us aspire to. This book explores how this idea was imported from the US by Ebenezer Howard, founder of the garden city movement, the impact it has had in the UK and why, on cost and environmental grounds, it's time to move on from this approach. House in the Country presents a richly detailed narrative containing much social and cultural commentary as well as interviews with key figures in this field, including Lor...

Looking for a New England covers the period 1975 to 1986, from Slade in Flame to Absolute Beginners. A carefully researched exploration of transgressive films, the career of David Bowie, dystopias, the Joan Collins ouevre, black cinema, the origins and impact of punk music, political films, comedy, how Ireland and Scotland featured on our screens and the rise of Richard Branson and a new, commercial, mainstream. The sequel to Psychedelic Celluloid, it describes o...

The World Might Be in Chaos, But You Don’t Need to Be.If you feel like you are constantly fighting an uphill battle—exhausted by the grind and overwhelmed by the world around you—the problem isn’t your circumstances. It’s your internal operating system.Stop waiting for the world to get quieter or for your problems to disappear. The truth is, you are in complete control of how you experience your life. You just haven’t been given the tools t...

James "Elshender" Alexander was born poor and remained so for the duration of his life. His struggle was one of survival, beset on all sides by the 'laws of the land' which made such a task increasingly difficult. A man who found his way from the lowlands of Scotland to Lower Canada, in search of a life free from interference from over-zealous authorities. On his return to Scotland, to aide his wife's mental health problems, the authorities would not leave him be, and eventually fabricated...

An anonymous narrator... An anonymous boy... An anonymous girl... None extraordinary... None connected... Does anyone even care?The Way of the World: A Novella is an experimental work dealing with the complications of narrative voice. How 'real' are those voices within our own minds? Which thoughts are worthy of utterance? How do we feel about those areas of the mind which contain disturbing elements? The chaotic impulses of human existence are explored...

Lone Star State (Book One), of which Lone Star State: Welcome to the Pleasuredome… belongs, contains three main narrative strands: Robyn, a gender ambiguous street-worker in Austin, Texas, lives life for the moment in an attempt to forget the many and regular traumas of the past; Chip Brewsky and Dale Turdlewand, multi-trillionaire tech-company CEOs, believe that they need to buy a country in order to escape from the clutches of oppressive U.S. tax legislation. However, each experiences th...