Othello begins at the moment when comedies end, with a happy marriage. It also begins, where The Merchant of Venice and Twelfth Night leave off, with the question of ethnic or social outsiders as the catalysts for the destructive elements within society. It might seem that the terms are reversed, with the dangerous alien now the hero, while the mysterious, incomprehensibly malicious, diabolical villain is the insider. The fact aroused the indignation of Thomas Rymer, who in a notorious attack published in 1693 declared that Othello "impiously assumes the sacred name of tragedy," but was, on the contrary, nothing but "a bloody farce". The essential element of the drama that is omitted is Iago, and one of the most interesting things about Rymer's account of the play is that Iago really does not figure very significantly in it. Rymer ridicules William Shakespeare from the outset for having a black hero.

An international protest was organised to coincide with the G8 summit taking place in Genoa from the 19 to 22 July 2001. The afternoon of 20 July 2001, when the young protester, Carlo Giuliani, was shot dead, was arguably a turning point for the anti-capitalist movement. Dylan Martinez and Sergei Karpukhin of Reuters, Italo Banchero and Luca Bruno of the Associated Press and Jess Hurd were among the photographers who gave the world the picture of his death. In the Daily Telegraph, on 21 July, Dylan Martinez's photograph is on the front page with the title 'Protester pays with his Life' and followed with the subtitle 'Police open fire as violence erupts at Genoa. Photojournalism failed to represent the diversity that the movement experienced in Genoa, through a combination of diverse groups, direct action, small events, demonstrations and independent media.

This chapter examines how the hotchpotch of ideologies, practicalities and realities played out in Sierra Leone in the first days of the anti-slavery squadron. The governors of Sierra Leone during the early anti-slavery era had different ideas about how to deal with the liberated Africans who were under their purported care and command. In the earliest days of liberated Africans' arrival in Freetown the focus was on apprenticeships, which uncomfortably crossed the line into chattel bondage in some cases. In the villages the liberated Africans would be encouraged to behave like British labourers with 'proper' wooden houses, 'decent' clothing and regular attendance at church. Although women were sent to live in the mountain villages almost as regularly as men, in some ways the fate of liberated African women was divergent.

German prisoners spent varying periods of time behind barbed wire in Britain. Despite the uncertainties which might face them outside, hundreds, and perhaps even thousands, of German prisoners took the issue into their own hands by trying to escape. Some special groups of prisoners, agreed by the British and German governments and also stipulated by wider international agreements including the Hague Convention, found themselves released and returning home as the war progressed. The end of internment meant new challenges in view of the consequences of the First World War for both Britain and Germany. Soldiers who returned home found a transformed society and economy suffering from the consequences of four years of total war. In virtually all cases a return to pre-1914 lives proved impossible for either returning German soldiers or released civilians.

Lord Leverhulme brought remote and semi-savage communities to a higher spirit of development than they would have reached by their own unaided efforts,' wrote T. P. O'Connor in his obituary of the Old Man. The agreement or convention that generated so much disquiet was signed by Lever and the Belgian government on 1911. This agreement made Belgians anxious to draw in foreign capital, and grateful for an enlightened entrepreneur to help salvage their battered reputation. The transfer of power from King Leopold to the Belgian government had promised much: trade for Europeans and Africans, allowing unrestricted gathering and selling of produce by the Congolese. The British Solomon Islands Protectorate was established in 1893 to keep out the French. Joseph Conrad's searing indictment of European greed in the Congo, Heart of Darkness, was based on his travels in the region when ivory was the focus of colonial lust.

This chapter considers the ways in which the Elizabethan regime adapted its governing methods to the demands of war, in particular looking at the lord lieutenancies. The earlier history of this institution are sketched, and the revival of the lieutenancies in 1585-88 are discussed. This is considered in the context of continuing religious division in England, in which the Protestant Elizabethan regime remained fearful of English Catholics and conscious of its potential weakness in the event of a disputed succession. The problem of religious division is also applied to the wider picture of local government, suggesting that the council pursued a consistent policy of concentrating county government in the hands of small groups of highly trusted Protestant allies, a policy typified by the lieutenancy but also affecting the justices of the peace.

This chapter explores the transformation of Irish childhoods since the early decades of the twentieth century, and shows how demographic and socio-economic changes are intertwined with a transformation in the meanings of childhood. Where once children’s labour contribution to the Irish household economy was a taken-for-granted part of their daily lives, contemporary children are carriers of their family’s aspirations for socio-economic mobility through education and cultural attainment, evident in their ‘concerted cultivation’. The chapter draws on memories of childhoods in the past, together with contemporary children’s voices from the Growing Up in Ireland study, to reveal the extent of children’s agency, in particular the ways in which children have consistently ‘pushed back’ against adult constraints in different socio-historical contexts, finding opportunities for the construction of their own social and family worlds and, in the process, shaping the family and community lives of adults. The chapter explores how, in different ways, class differences mediated Irish childhoods and public discourses about the consequences for children of ‘failing’ families across all historical periods.

This chapter outlines the general conditions and contexts which allowed the cult of an Anglo-Saxon king to flourish in nineteenth-century England. Arguably the most pervasive aspect of nineteenth-century medievalism was Anglo-Saxonism, the study and celebration of the Anglo-Saxon period. The medieval became the period of British history most commonly trumpeted as equivalent in prestige to the classical, partly because it was simply the earliest age to be fully documented. Arthur Conan Doyle's story about the Nelson statue introduces a factor which fed into the Victorian fascination with history, the role of fine art. King Arthur makes an interesting point of reference in considering the nineteenth-century cult of King Alfred. In his 1901 tract, God Save King Alfred, the Reverend Edward Gilliat proclaimed that while Alfred had 'united Anglekin in England', Victoria had 'united a wider Anglekin the world over'.

This chapter considers the milieu in which T. S. Eliot was writing and responding to poetry. Eliot's 1920 essay on Algernon Charles Swinburne had a lasting impact on the critical fortunes of the poet. Like Edward Thomas, Georgian poet John Drinkwater is critical of Swinburne, although he has a better sense of his achievement and his criticism is tempered by his sense of Swinburne's significance for English literature. As with Drinkwater, although for somewhat different reasons, Swinburne's poetry represents for Eliot a self-sufficient, independent 'world', and, as in Drinkwater, the emotion of this poetic world is 'impersonal'. Drinkwater and Eliot even evince apparent similarities in their conclusions as they ponder the state of literary writing after Swinburne, although on close inspection they have very different ideas about Swinburne's legacy.

Before, during, and after the 1926 General Strike, the government and media used metaphors of war, revolution, and sin to validate their response and persuade the populace of the wrongness of the strike and the necessity of national service. The General strike was designed to disrupt 'business as usual' among the men who had declared themselves defenders of the faith. The General Strike was fundamentally different from uprisings elsewhere, because it was so characteristically British. Many articles presented a picture of a society that was well organized by the volunteers and barely affected by the strikers. From all sources came descriptions of cheerful, patriotic, orderly, well-mannered, unflustered British folks 'carrying on' 'business as usual'. Besides reiterating that the General Strike was not an attack on the Constitution, strike bulletins maintained the 'Britishness' of their own conduct, as opposed to the incompetent and dangerous behaviour of the volunteers.

Journalists and politicians used Beatrice Annie Pace's personal experiences to highlight institutional, legal and social critiques during a period already marked by discontent about the criminal justice system. In the midst of a murder investigation, Beatrice had admitted telling two lies to the police. One was potentially relevant to the case. The other was itself illegal. Joynson-Hicks denied there was 'anything in the nature of third degree' in Britain and noted Beatrice had thanked the police for their 'consideration'. In addition to critiques of the police and of coroners' inquests, Beatrice's case sparked debates about poverty, marriage and equality before the law. The case generated some praise of Britain's courts and Britons' fundamental good sense. The Daily Express noted that 'a man proved innocent of murder in a criminal court may always bear the stigma of having been to all intents found guilty of murder in a coroner's court'.

The majority of the Liberal MPs and former MPs who joined the Liberal Nationals did not do so deliberately to defect from the Liberal Party. At the 1931 general election there were no constituencies where Liberals and Liberal National candidates opposed each other. The year 1939 was to mark the turn of the tide in defections from the Liberals to the Liberal Nationals. Generally, the earlier defectors had been motivated by career aspirations, either electoral advantage or promotion opportunities. The defections considered so far to Labour, the Conservatives and the Liberal Nationals did not require those defectors to make radical changes in their policy positions. With all the splits and dissent in the Liberal Party, it is, perhaps, surprising that there was not a greater number of former Liberal MPs who stood as Independent Liberals after being defeated or de-selected.