The India Office was 'a miniature imperial government' operating independently of the English civil service until after the war. A more institutionally specific dimension to the process arose from the occasional need of the India Office to use newspapers to garner support for its point of view in cases of differences of opinion with the government in India. Though parliamentary and press opinion were distinct, they were interdependent, and the ultimate arbiters of the fate of the empire, the 'real government' of India, was the House of Commons. Lord Curzon took a keen interest in the conduct of newspapers in London as well as in India. In general the Minto-Morley partnership was sensitive to the London press and its possible influence, both within domestic politics and indirectly through its impact on Indian politics and Indian-run newspapers.

This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on concepts discussed in this book. The book shows that within the wider context of early modern antiquarian writing there exists a miscellaneous collection of county, urban and family histories; topographical writings and other related works that justify the use of the term local history. Genealogy, heraldry and the descent of manors remained staples of local history long after they had lost their centrality to the self-identity of local historians and their readers. The Elizabethan and early Stuart gentry saw themselves as socially differentiated from the remainder of the population. There were a number of factors that came together in the mid-sixteenth century to challenge the gentry's sense of cohesion and continuity. The most dramatic was the Reformation, which divided the contemporary gentry into protestants and catholics and separated the protestants from the religious beliefs and practices of earlier generations.

This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on concepts discussed in this book. The book shows that some form of sports medicine was being practised in Britain in the early twentieth century. British Association of Sport and Exercise Medicine (BASEM) was formed in 1952, and yet the recognition of sports medicine as a formal specialty in the UK is a feature of the twenty-first century. It compares the story of sports medicine in Britain with that across the world. Histories of specialisation and professionalisation have been a staple in the History of Medicine for at least two generations, and as such are, as one reviewer has put it, 'untrendy'. At a time when sport, exercise and physical fitness are increasingly on the agenda of governments in the developed world, the question 'fit for what?' grows more important.

W. B. Collins noted that a major reason for the missionaries' popularity amongst the Bhils was that they were providing medical care. Medical work has broken down many barriers, softened thousands of hearts, and drawn the people to the Mission. The crisis during the famine period was caused by starvation made lethal through disease. Food provided the best medicine against this deadly combination, and this the missionaries did their best to provide. Jane Birkett wrote to the Church Missionary Society (CMS) authorities stating that the mission needed a proper hospital. Although there was a cantonment hospital at Kherwara, this was not adequate for their needs, for it was forty-eight kilometres away from Lusadiya and about thirty-five from Biladiya, Bavaliya and Ghoradar. The Thakor of Karchha had been eager to provide land for the new hospital at Lusadiya on condition that he and his family receive free treatment.

The chaos that followed an air raid was an integral part of the event. The severity of a bombing campaign is often measured by the number of casualties, by contemporaries and historians. This chapter examines the fascinating and frightening scenes in the immediate aftermath of bombing that made lasting impressions on children, including destruction, chaos and encounters with violent, public death. The raid of 6 December 1942 in Lille completely destroyed one school and damaged five others; on 10 April 1944, seventeen schools were damaged. In the aftermath of a raid in Brest, dazed survivors set off through the rubble to seek home and family, surrounded by chaotic sights that cranked up anxiety on the way. Bombing damaged the human body just as it damaged buildings. Parental censorship aimed partly at shielding children from such sights. In the aftermath of bombing, children were 'directly in contact with death, with violence'.

The history of the Manchester Museum is fundamentally a history of people, and how they relate to objects. This chapter draws from the established bodies of work in cultural theory, mass communication studies and book history that view the communication process from both sides. In museum studies, visitor theory and contemporary surveys are replacing the passive audience with active participants in the construction of meaning, but seldom has the historical visitor been awarded the same courtesy. Text, arrangement and building worked together to condition the museum experience. From the First World War, the educational department of the Museum had an almost exclusive focus on primary schoolchildren. In Manchester, school buildings were required as military hospitals, so the town implemented a 'two-shift' system whereby classes from around twenty schools spent half the day outside school buildings.

The 'communications environment' within which the empire operated was a factor which shaped both the evolving character of British rule in India and the extent and potency of the nationalist challenge. At the heart of Britain's imperial and communications system was Fleet Street. Despite the development of wireless telegraphy and the cinematograph, the press remained the most significant medium of communication for projecting the image of empire in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The developing power and influence of the press transformed the morphology of the information environment within which the government operated. Press coverage of the Amritsar massacre and its aftermath fatally damaged the press-politics nexus that Edwin Montagu had cultivated over reforms as well his own standing within the Coalition. Montagu obtained press support for his reform initiatives through 1917 and 1918.

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book focuses on the late nineteenth century, a period that marks a new departure in Anglo-Muslim relations in the context of the British Empire, shifting the ground on which British identity politics operated. It discusses the role of the British Government and English activists respectively in the campaign to suppress slave traffic in Egypt and surrounding areas. The book elaborates on the idea that British imperialists in Egypt hoped both to penetrate the forbidden space of the harem themselves and to take action that would have a profound impact on that space. It examines the debates regarding what was referred to in England as 'the woman question'. It explains how the concept of the English nation as the centre of an empire helped to establish a place in England for Islam.