This chapter introduces Julia Kavanagh, one of many women writers of the nineteenth century who are now largely unknown. It first presents some background information on her early life, and then studies the status of domestic fiction during the Victorian era. From there, the chapter traces the progress of Kavanagh's writing career and describes her physical appearance and health. It then provides information on her family and background, as well as her communication with the editor of The Nation, Gavan Duffy. The chapter also considers Kavanagh's relationship with her estranged father, Morgan; her friendship with Charlotte Brontë; and her convictions on the importance of the woman's voice.

This book discusses how the original plans for a socialist form of housing were distorted, sometimes almost beyond recognition, by ideological confusion, financial constraints, corruption, ineptness, the banality of daily life and by tacit obstruction on the part of citizens. It also considers how the peculiarities of Soviet housing could be said to have led to a distinctly Soviet understanding of the home and of ‘private life’. It then explores the interaction between the Soviet housing programme and gender relations. The relationship between public and private space is significant for this book. In addition, the link between housing and daily life throughout the entire span of Soviet history is considered. It elaborates the ways in which official ideas on housing and daily life were propagandised through the print media. Finally, an overview of the chapters included in this book is given.

This chapter focuses on how the migration of the Caribbeans to various countries and their exposure to various political activities in their host countries led to the foundation of the Federation of the West Indies. Apart from the racist discrimination, West Indian migrants in the United States also experienced a political freedom unknown in the West Indies, where conditions and censorship stifled free debate and few had the right to vote. This led to the formation of Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) and African Blood Brotherhood (ABB), which played important role in mobilizing the West Indian migrants in the United States. Migrants particularly in New York also developed a unique radicalism based on West Indian consciousness and for whom national boundaries became increasingly meaningless. These political ideas gradually came home to the West Indies through various diasporic channels, thus making the West Indians at home aware of their race, the need for redistributive economic and social policies and some form of self-governance for the West Indies, principally through the mechanism of a federation.

This chapter tackles the question of group definitions and labels. On the one hand, new arrivals import elastic labels, and on the other, group scholars steadfastly defend interest group conventions. In both cases, scholarly progress is the casualty. The chapter starts by reviewing the labels in use and examining the ways in which they are deployed in the literature. Looking across disciplinary literatures, the chapter argues that one can find a core definitional base. And further, it argues that interest group scholars should be more ready to engage with their new intellectual neighbours operating in allied social movement, voluntary sector, global politics, and civil society literatures. The chapter settles on a ‘group’ definition, and then addresses areas of difference with other key terms used by social scientific scholars.

This chapter focuses on medical impostors and quacks in early modern England. It explains that quack is the term used to describe someone claiming medical skills or university degrees to gain the status of a licensed physician, and that it could also refer to someone using techniques and forms of knowledge which were disapproved of as superstitious. The chapter describes the performative strategies of so-called quacks that enabled them to become consultants to people of all social strata, and argues that medical imposture displays conflicts which arose over professionalisation and institutionalisation, either between regular and irregular doctors, or among the latter.

This chapter explores the vulnerability of maternity and the danger for the family that proceeds from it in the context of high tragedy, through readings of Hamlet and Coriolanus. Both plays, in their complex dealings with a son's relationship to his mother, demonstrate a reworking of typology to take account of shifting ideological preoccupations. In both plays, the mother has a public and political role that is dangerous and which makes her son vulnerable in a fragile political world. The mother as characterised may be sympathetic, but her maternity is destabilising, provocative of violence and a disturbance of family structure. The mother figure is here no longer a pathetic signifier of the personal consequences of political action; rather, she infects the political and creates danger through her own agency: an unhappy collision between her personal desires, her condition as mother and matters of state.

This chapter examines the cultural attitudes towards women novelists during Kavanagh's lifetime. It shows Kavanagh's importance as a novelist who drew on the cultural contradictions of the period, and suggests that her insights into gender and class differences were essential to her writing. The chapter then studies six of Kavanagh's works, including Daisy Burns and Rachel Gray, and aims to demonstrate Kavanagh's diversity as a novelist during the nineteenth century.

The Westminster parliament has attracted attention in recent years in terms of how it can be changed and reformed so as to improve the role it plays in British politics. Think tanks, public commissions, and even parliament itself have all examined the way in which it functions as a political institution and how changes might lead to enhanced public engagement with politics and thus to more robust representative democracy. This book explores some of the history of parliamentary reform in Britain. It draws on a series of interviews with some of the key political actors, particularly MPs, who have been interested in and involved with parliamentary reform in the post-1997 era. It analyses the content and arguments of historical institutional theory; the course of House of Commons reform from 1900 to 1997 in terms of efficiency reforms; how the Labour Party government delivered its manifesto commitment to ‘modernise’ the Commons, with a particular focus on how this process of modernisation affected the legislative process; and the House of Lords reform since 1997.

This chapter examines some applications of classicism in both form and content. This discussion focuses on the production of political meanings. It studies the extension of French neo-classical influence to the Elizabethan theatre in its most popular and public form, and tries to declassicise French drama itself. This chapter also studies the characters of Caesar and Brutus, the former becoming the epitome of greatness fatally tainted by ambition, and focuses on adaptations of classical machinery.

This chapter discusses new research concerning the pronouncements of anti-Market pundits including historians C.E. Carrington and Sir Arthur Bryant and economists James Meade and Roy Harrod. It traces the origins of their dissent and differentiates between the intractable sceptics and those whose opposition evolved from a ‘wait and see’ position. This chapter suggests in their analysis these pundits emphasised the political rather than the economic goals of the Treaty of Rome.

David Willetts's contribution to Conservatism is more substantial than that of anyone else at a senior level in the Party since the downfall of Margaret Thatcher in 1990. This chapter analyses the ways in which Willetts's ideas and the wider ideas of the Conservative Party have developed since November 1990. It examines the ideas of civic conservatism, what it is, how consistent and coherent it is and the extent to which its core ideas allow for a Conservative ideological revival. Willetts attempted to establish a synthesis between free markets and community in his book, Modern Conservatism, first through a reappraisal of the post-war history of the Conservative Party. The decentralisation of power may be a good thing in that citizens can become active in their communities, but some communities may not be able to meet welfare needs.