This chapter examines the final stages of the campaigns for and against voting for marriage equality in the forthcoming referendum in May 2015. This includes an examination of the Catholic Church’s stance and their actions in the weeks before the referendum.

This chapter focuses on the judicial duel 'as it was practised in the courts' during the reigns of King Henry II of England and his sons Richard I and John (1199-1216 - in this last instance curtailed by King John's loss of Normandy to the Capetian king Philip Augustus in 1204). Originally it was intended to devote as much discussion to the 'cross-channel' territories of these kings, as to the English kingdom. The main focus of the study is a handful of cases in which the judicial duel raises important questions about the interaction of political issues and the conduct of legal affairs after Henry of Anjou succeeded to the English throne; and all of these - including the abortive Poitevin trial - involved members of the secular aristocracy in Angevin- ruled territories.

In 763-4, a renewed version of the oldest Frankish law-code, Lex Salica, was issued in the name of the first Carolingian king, Pippin. Claims about Frankish 'invincibility' like those voiced in 763-4 articulated the forging of new aristocratic coalitions around the new ruler: this much is well known. But what of the identification of Frankish rule with Christian orthodoxy, and the denigration and denial of the Christian credentials of the Franks' opponents, claims which constitute a secondary but all too easily overlooked theme of the royal ideology of the Lex Salica revision? This chapter argues that such claims were rooted in the debates staged at the Church councils of the 740s, and the development of a programme of religious 'correction'. Looking at the uses of the rhetoric of heresy in Pippin's reign inevitably involves focusing on the career of Boniface.

This chapter takes a nonhierarchical reading through the art history of flesh (widely conceived across animal and vegetable) rather than ‘inanimate’ matter. This is an important extension of ‘the political’ and the ‘environmental’ that takes us beyond the human, into the territory of the ‘other-than-human’. This kind of work can be understood as part of a larger, flattening ontological set of studies nested within the wider humanities discourse on ecology. It offers alternatives to conventional art historical approaches to animals (iconographic or social-historical perspectives which maintain and reinforce a value-laden, hierarchical system of understanding art). One important exception within contemporary art history is the work of Steve Baker. Critical animal studies is discussed, specifically in relation to its potential for eroding normative, hierarchical value systems in undertaking ecologically orientated, ‘green’ art history (such as Haraway, Wolfe, etc.). Such human-animal-biopolitical theory has a long history as part of the fight for rights of other-than-humans on the planet. Therefore, the discussion is extended to the growing work done in relation to plants, such as that of Marder. This chapter builds a case for a more formal and grounded nonhierarchical art history of the other-than-human.

This chapter begins by showing the limitations of traditional means of influencing citizen behaviour, using the example of a failed attempt to encourage the inhabitants of a housing estate to increase their recycling. It then proceeds to introduce the idea of ‘nudge’ and ‘think’ strategies. These ‘softer’ forms of intervention involve working more closely with citizens, understanding how they think, and encouraging them to make better decisions. Nudge – a concept pioneered by Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler – is about framing choices and using social cues to help citizens decide what to do. Think constitutes a broad set of tools, stretching from consultation to handing over decisions to citizens. This chapter argues for the efficacy of these approaches, which will be explored and tested in depth throughout the following chapters.

The chapter explores the euphoria and optimism that the events of 2011 spread among Arab liberals, whose long and stubborn struggle to expand the sphere of personal freedom and democracy was confirmed as not being pointless and unproductive. It also examines the disappointment and frustration in their ranks in light of the success of Islamic movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and al-Nahda in Tunisia in harvesting the political capital generated by these events.

The palatinate of Lancaster provides a unique case in the study of 'bastard feudalism,' an opportunity to observe the operation of a lord's favor almost unrestrained by the exercise of royal power. This chapter examines the state of law and order in the palatinate of Lancaster under John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, in the light of the Commons' complaints. It seeks to assess the extent to which they were justified, and then use the conclusions derived from this local evidence to attempt a more general estimate of the nature and effects of 'bastard feudalism' in later medieval England. Intense competition and pressure for land, the ever-growing complexity of the law, the opportunities for manipulation and collusion, all seem more important causes of disorder than the deliberate lawlessness of the nobility. The palatinate should be ascribed to the endemic failure of medieval rulers to control their local agents.

This chapter foregrounds female professionalisation in the FANY through an examination of two case studies of New Women: Mabel St Clair Stobart, who posed a number of challenges to Edward Baker’s chaotic governance, demanded improvements that would turn the Corps into a more professional organisation and subsequently resigned to set up a rival women’s corps, and Grace Ashley-Smith, who sought to work from within to professionalise the FANY (making changes to the Corps’s recruitment, training, uniform, discipline and activities, as well as founding a magazine) and eventually ousted Baker, taking over command herself and readying the Corps for active service during the Irish Home Rule crisis. The chapter draws on the substantial written records that both women left, including autobiographies, articles, a log book, a regimental order book and letters. It also utilises Corps ephemera, including minutes of meetings, regulations and written correspondence, as well as newspaper articles, in order to examine how female members transformed the unit from one that was premised upon the part-modern, part-premodern romantic whims of its male founder into a more professional and decidedly modern women’s equestrian and first aid movement that was in a state of war-readiness.