This chapter focuses on the early intersections of Byatt's fiction with both modern debates on the novel and the continuing relationship of mid-twentieth-century literature with the Romantic legacy. It provides readings of The Shadow of the Sun and The Game, which indicate Byatt's life long project of ‘critical storytelling’. It is a practice of storytelling that does not separate the literary from the critical imagination, but instead aims at a deliberate and thoughtful combination of the two ways of seeing and describing the world.

The Catholic Church brought disaster on itself through its corruption. Most recent historians have become increasingly wary of any simple link between the Church's perceived 'corruption' and its collapse in 1559-60. This chapter examines the state of the late medieval Scottish Church, to ask whether its problems contributed to its downfall. By one set of definitions, the Scottish Church was measurably more 'corrupt' than its English counterpart. Catholics blamed the Scottish Reformation on the Catholic Church's failure to live up to its own principles. During and after the crisis of 1559-60, noble control of Church wealth was actually entrenched. In 1560, the Protestant nobles vetoed plans to use ecclesiastical incomes to support the Reformed ministry. They were enthusiastic for the reform of doctrine, but they had no intention of allowing such reform to undermine the 'corruption' from which they and their peers had benefited for so long.

This chapter emphasizes the feminine public sphere. The notion of the feminine public sphere is based on the active participation of women in the formation of a middle-class identity, which was derived from a commitment to civic life and public service. Associationalism was a key feature of civil society in the 1870 to 1914 period, and while women's contribution to philanthropic societies has received some attention this study represents a more concerted effort to link women's public careers with the rise of a middle-class identity. By taking a fresh perspective on the ‘bourgeois public sphere’ through the lens of local, urban civic life—as opposed to high politics and the upper echelons of industrial capitalism—this research shows that the wives, sisters and daughters of men in the local elite mirrored their male kins' investment in a public profile in order to assert their own social position. The feminine public sphere of this study is the sphere of influence more affluent women carved out of a hostile, male oriented ‘public’ through heterodox interpretations of separate spheres; it is the discursive and organisational sites from which women contributed to the socio-political issues of their day while further reinforcing middle-class notions of civic duty.

Newton envisaged an immaterial, all-powerful, and active God at the head of the universe. The difference between deist and non-deist presentation of contemporary natural philosophy is indistinguishable in the middle of the eighteenth century. It is also worth noting at this stage, that many of the views advanced by the deists are not reducible to one representative. Tindal saw unfounded appropriation of the soul's care as a defining aspect of priestcraft. Collins and his fellow deists proposed that total human freedom was the basis for the liberty enjoyed by all Britons. Many saw Collins writings as emblematic of deism. Any accurate picture of deism or deists is found in the writings of the individual deists themselves. They were more than owners of a meaningless pejorative designation hurled at them by the godly. One of the most vocal opponents of deism was Henry Sacheverell DD, who in 1709 created much controversy with his inflammatory oratory.

This chapter addresses the essential contributions of women to their Methodist societies as ‘purveyors of hospitality, visitors, class members, and leaders’. It begins with some exceptional female evangelicals, not all Methodists, who stepped outside their domestic environments to engage in philanthropy, founding missions to working men, rescuing prostitutes, organizing mothers' meetings, campaigning for temperance, and recruiting and training Biblewomen. Most Methodist women did not engage in these activities, especially in rural areas, but did sick-visiting, distributed pamphlets, led classes, played the harmonium or sang in choirs. The chapter describes and evaluates the growing opportunity for women as Sunday school teachers, and show how women were important fund-raisers, as missionary fund collectors, bazaar organizers, and tea organizers. The last part of the chapter returns to female evangelism. Female preaching did not die in the 1840s; Primitive Methodists and Bible Christians relied on female local preachers to fill their plans, and female evangelists who preached outside their circuits at special services could be relied on to attract larger than usual congregations and swell the size of the collections. By the mid-century there were women who had developed careers as fund-raisers and revivalists within Methodist circuits.

Catholic communities have never been interchangeable nor have they been monolithic. The example of the Catholic right showed that Catholicism as such was certainly not a bulwark against antisemitism or indeed fascism. The antisemitism of the Catholic right and its antiparliamentarianism fed on each other. Nationalism was a constituent part of the right's antisemitism, both in Germany and in England. The different responses to the antisemitism of the radical right were the result of differences in Catholic organisation. It is noted in this chapter that religious and modern anti-Jewish prejudices cannot be cleanly separated from each other, and neither were religious and racial concepts of the Jews an irreconcilable paradox. The Catholic defence against Alfred Rosenberg made clear that religious teaching did not necessarily transfer respect for ancient Jewry to modern Jewry.

Scots did not wait until the first British capture of the Cape in 1795 to be engaged in the establishment of a white community at the southern tip of Africa. In this respect, they were following a long-standing propensity to be involved in commercial ventures throughout the North Sea and Baltic regions. Thus, when such ventures reached out into the South Atlantic, they were soon there too. This chapter discusses prominent Scots in the British occupations, the Moodie settlement and the 1820 settlement.

This introduction discusses the importance of the Annals of St-Bertin (AB), the conditions of its production, its authors, how it was written, the manuscripts and the AB in print and translation.

This chapter elaborates the different scales of allowances that were applicable depending on whether the serviceman was deemed to be missing, prisoner of war or killed. For many families, the point at which a missing breadwinner changed from being categorised as ‘missing’ to ‘presumed dead’ or ‘prisoner of war’ was often critical in terms of family budgeting. The chapter explains how the lack of a coherent policy on length of payment of temporary allowances and the length of time taken to make decisions on these matters affected the finances of the families concerned. It raises the question of why the government chose to extend the ‘missing’ allowances on a short-term basis rather than agree a workable solution for the duration of hostilities, throughout 1941 to 1945.

The Catholic right has been a stepchild of historical research into German conservatism and its relationship to National Socialism. The antisemitism of the Catholic right was certainly the most virulent form of Jew-hatred amongst Catholics in Weimar Germany. The German National People's Party (DNVP) would express its hope for an ‘unconditional denominational peace’ and stress the need for Germany's rebirth in a Christian spirit, and for a German culture and economy based on a ‘true Christian-religious worldview’. The antisemitism expressed across the network of the Catholic right was an amalgam of Christian, cultural and Darwinian anti-Jewish sentiments and reflects their Catholic faith and their discontent with the political and economic changes in Germany. The organisations of the Rechtskatholiken and Distributism worked with similar methods for the same aim: Christian national re-education. Negative images of Jews remained an unfailing part of the public discourse in both Catholic communities.