Philip Sidney's and John Donne's portraits, or at least the iconographic assumptions embodied in them, are an essential part of their literary history. The iconographic tradition in England, even in providing a frontispiece for his imaginative writing, largely ignored the Sidney of poetry and romance. The version of the Abraham Blyenberch portrait engraved by Robert Vaughan, faced the title page of the second edition of his folio Workes published in 1640. Ironically, the William Shakespeare and Ben Jonson folios, despite Jonson's best efforts, made the authors' portraits inescapable for large, expensive and, especially, posthumous dramatic collections. There were four such folios in the remainder of the century, devoted to the works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, Thomas Killigrew and Sir William Davenant. In fact, Jonson's resistance for being identified with his picture, rather than his book, was, even during his lifetime, outmoded.

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book focuses on the wartime renegotiations of gender. It explores the everyday lives of a group of British women volunteers named the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY) who found themselves 'straight out of Edwardian drawing rooms into the manifold horrors of the First World War'. The book historicizes the FANY Corps' beginnings in social and cultural changes at the turn of the century that encouraged women's patriotic call to service amidst a growing nationalist and militarist discourse. It analyses the service and adventures of Grace Ashley-Smith, who worked as a FANY in Belgium in the autumn of 1914. The book examines the first collective FANY war service in Calais and their work with the Belgians at the Lamarck Hospital during late 1914 through 1915.

This chapter sketches out the acceleration of public interest in King Alfred from his birth in 1801, to the Wantage celebration organised almost single-handedly by Martin Farquhar Tupper in 1849 and Alfred Millenary committee's week-long extravaganza in 1901. Early on in the planning of the Millenary, it had been agreed that it would be desirable to open a museum of early English history in Winchester, as part of the Alfred commemoration. In the wake of the Winchester Millenary, many writers enlisted Alfred to their cause, capitalising on the sense of a seminal anniversary. Alfred's ninth-century kingdom of Wessex incorporated the Victorian counties of Somerset, Wiltshire, Berkshire and Devon. Alfred Bowker's achievement is all the more remarkable when it is considered that Winchester was not particularly prominent on the Alfredian tourist trail.

The Restoration Church of England rested on a paradox. This chapter explores how the church tried to negotiate various pitfalls caused by its monarchs, the church's 'one fatal flaw'. The royal supremacy provides a window onto the church's relationships with the crown, with other religious groups, and its internal heterogeneity. With a monarch like Charles II, tying the church to human law and royal supremacy was not a very secure defence. Some churchmen therefore retreated to the safer terrain of divine law. Much of the story of the later Stuart church is illuminated by the clash between coercive jurisdiction, held by monarchs, and moral authority, wielded by the church. William Wake emphasised the royal supremacy's constraints on convocation, albeit adding the caveat that in dire necessity the church could act on its own authority.

This explores the strike's distinctive Scottish industrial politics. The chronological focus is mainly from March to October 1984, when support for the strike among miners was generally strong, but when the broader solidarity of the labour movement in Scotland was tested by the picketing of the British Steel Corporation works at Ravenscraig and Hunterston, the coastal terminal through which strike-breaking coal passed. Against the grain of existing literature, this picketing is presented as highly rational: Ravenscraig represented a rare opportunity for the strikers to exert pressure on the government, and its closure would greatly have weakened Conservatism's already fragile position in Scotland. The head of BSC, Bob Haslam, after discussions involving government ministers, it is surmised, pressed Strathclyde Police to disperse the pickets and ensure a steady flow of coal into the plant.

The Liberal Party was the dominant party of British Government from its emergence in the 1850s until the Great War, but by the 1950s it was virtually wiped off the political map. Defections played a significant part in the decline, but until now they have never received detailed attention from historians or political analysts. The defection of a person who has served as an MP is effectively the verdict on their party at a specific date of a well-informed person with vested interests. A political defection is a significant act, which usually involves a public explanation, a severing of old links, a forging of new relationships and significant financial and career implications. In the cases of both outward and inward defectors the person must have served as an MP before the defection and at some stage the person must have served as a Liberal or Liberal Democrat MP.

Explores how security and stability within less developed countries became a central element of US security and ‘counter-subversion’ policy during the first Eisenhower administration. The chapter also examines how US policy in decolonizing countries had to go beyond internal security to development and nation building. The events described herein represent Washington's first in-depth exploration into events and processes defining the decolonizing world, and how it formulated and modified its response, the NSC 1290-d or Overseas Internal Security Program.

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.