To many contemporary observers and some later historians, one of the most perplexing and puzzling questions of the Highland clearances was the failure of the people to show more active resistance to landlord policies. The economic transformation had caused social havoc, enormous displacement of populations and the destruction of an ancient way of life, yet, the people had apparently remained quiet and accepted their fate. It became common to contrast the violent truculence of the Irish and their bitter struggle against an alien landlord class with the passive stoicism of the Scottish Gaels. It is also interesting to note that virtually all the famous incidents of the Crofters' War were the results of the initiative of the local population rather than responses to landlord action as had been the pattern in the past.

From 1923, responsibility for proletarian education had been prised away from that which the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) derided as the unaffiliated intellectual fringe of the labour movement. Proletarian culture within British capitalism was, therefore, by necessity, bound to be immature and under-developed. Convinced that 'bourgeois' culture aimed to secure the docility, passivity and ultimate compliance of the masses, the CPGB sought to dislodge apparently corrupting bourgeois thoughts from the minds of its activists and replace a bourgeois cultural perspective with a communist one. The communist approach to culture not only marked a departure from the perceived deficiencies of bourgeois culture but also from that of earlier positions on culture taken by the British Left. Maurice Dobb glanced, approvingly, at developments in Soviet Russia in the fields of drama, literature, music and particularly literacy to give him a sense of the new culture.

This chapter considers all the defectors who left the Liberal/Liberal Democrat Party to join the Labour Party. The existence of the Independent Labour Party (ILP) attracted potential anti-war recruits to the Labour Party, while at the same time acting as a divisive influence. As a divisive influence, it was more attractive to the middle class than to the workers to whom it was directed. In some cases the War Policy Objectors defected from the Liberal Party, but for reasons other than the war. Between 1919 and 1920 a small group of idealistic former Liberals left for the Labour Party. The Disillusioned Progressives were the most numerous of the defectors to Labour and were highly significant as they included many individuals of prestige, wealth and ability. The events of 1915 to 1918 had created and solidified the split between the followers of Asquith Coalition and those of Lloyd George.

During the interwar period, the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) worked to create a separate space for its members to enjoy leisure outside the dominant commercial framework which was said to be infused with bourgeois values. Despite being over-burdened with Party tasks and other responsibilities, Britain's interwar communists did find space to play. Communist political values would be affirmed through leisure, while the Party and Young Communist League (YCL) would pursue wider political goals through leisure activities. Through participation in Party, YCL and British Workers' Sports Federation (BWSF)-run leisure, communist allegiance was affirmed and stridently announced. Although activists young and old were encouraged to play at Party or YCL-run social occasions, communist leisure was never free from the imperatives of the political struggle. The communist-led United Mineworkers of Scotland (UMS) sought to build model youth organisations with a robust leisure orientation.

This chapter discusses the extension of ‘early adulthood’ in contemporary Ireland. It traces changes in the transition to independent household formation amongst young adults, from tightly ordered and sequenced around the middle of the twentieth century, towards a pattern of ‘unbundling’ from the latter half of the twentieth century onwards. Unbundling is explained in the context of changing meanings and values around sexual intercourse, cohabitation, birth outside marriage and lone parenthood throughout this period. Narratives from the Life Histories and Social Change collection reveal how such experiences were often disguised in the past and how, just as today, middle and upper-class people were frequently better able to cope with the consequences of disorderly transitions. They also show how young adults worked to maintain family relationships in the context of migration and return in different historical times. The authors show how the transformation of early adulthood took place in the context of changing inter-generational power relations, as Ireland moved from a social structure centred on small property holding to one with increasing opportunities for economic survival through waged employment. The chapter includes a discussion of public debates around the ‘de-institutionalization of marriage’ and marriage equality for same-sex couples.

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book examines the development of the concept of the author-portrait in early modern England. It begins with a reconsideration of Elizabeth's famous characterization of herself as her tragic ancestor. The book offers a radically unorthodox reading of John Milton's Maske, and focuses on both the nominal villain and the place of women in the society for which the work was composed. It takes a broad view of the question of performance through disguise. The book also focuses on the growing influence of women on literature and drama in the English Renaissance. It proposes that forgetting, or the suppression or subversion of memory, is an essential creative principle. The book discusses the history of attitudes toward plagiarism, and its relation to concepts of literary creativity.

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book presents the details of the Beatrice Annie Pace case while also considering what one woman's story reveals about the history of the police, the development of celebrity culture and the interests of the public in inter-war Britain. It then focuses on the police investigation and the lengthy coroner's inquest, the most extensive of the legal tribunals Beatrice would face. The book also focuses on the evidence given by Harry Pace's kinfolk, and considers the vivid testimony given by the Pace children, the police, family friends and forensic experts. A general conclusion and a postscript evaluate the case's significance and examine what happened to some of its key figures after the name 'Mrs Pace' had, once and for all, faded from the headlines.

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book examines the way in which abandonment to the Foundling Hospital developed, how it was used as a strategy by parents and parish officials and how it was mediated into health and survival outcomes for the infants involved. It examines the characteristics of groups of foundlings to discover where they came from, how old they were and what their family backgrounds had been. The chapter investigates the mortality of the same sample of infants to provide an estimate of death rates, which is properly comparable with those of infants outside the hospital. It presents the results of a statistical analysis of the factors which made the foundlings die in such numbers, and discusses how this related to their birth conditions, as opposed to their experience of hospital life.

This chapter discusses changes in the ‘middle years’ when people expend most energy caring for those who are younger or older, while also working and contributing taxes that enable the state to subsidize, to a greater or lesser extent, the work of caring, placing the Irish experience in comparative context. Narratives from the Life Histories and Social Change collection are combined with contemporary parent interviews from the Growing Up in Ireland study to trace the changing character of adult partner relationships from undemonstrative affection, to an emphasis on companionship, followed by a shared commitment to active parenting as women increasingly remain in paid employment following the birth of children. Decisions about marriage, work and childcare across the generations are explored with reference to complex gendered moral rationalities. There is a discussion of the changing ways in which couples and parents are embedded in wider kinship networks and community life. The chapter also examines how the continuing tension between the private spaces of families and the public spaces of community and social life creates gaps in which some of the darker aspects of family life are concealed, with a particular focus on intimate partner violence.

German public opinion focused upon almost the reverse of the issues which worried the British. British public and official opinion focused upon the Hun as the central image of Germans. In Germany, press and official opinion painted the reverse picture of the one which existed in Britain, focusing upon the mistreatment of the prisoners of war held by the enemy. The internment campaign in Britain had two key elements: the demand for wholesale incarceration; and the issue of the positive treatment of German prisoners, especially in contrast to Britons held in Germany. Similar to the British one, the German propaganda machine, backed up by official material, claimed that the British mistreated working prisoners, in this case behind the lines in France. This mistreatment of prisoners by the enemy offers one insight into the way in which public opinion in both Britain and Germany understood this issue.

Explores the political culture argument and illustrates it through a description of how political culture shaped threat perceptions and such national security analyses and statements as the Project Solarium position papers NSC-68 in the formative years of the Cold War. The chapter also explores the process by which the US came to view the entire world as its ‘national security zone’, in which virtually every event was of importance to US national security.

This chapter reconsiders the reasons why Francis Hutchinson condemned witchcraft trials in the Historical essay. It is generally agreed by historians of the subject that witchcraft trials in England were sporadic, trying the crimes of individuals or very small groups, and very likely to end in acquittal. The chapter provides a literary critique of the Historical essay, ascertaining how it was constructed and how it works as a text. According to Dr Ian Bostridge, Hutchinson had to wait until 1718 to publish the Historical essay, when witchcraft had become a marginal concern to mainstream, educated culture. Hutchinson may have used the arguments and methodology of witchcraft sceptics and opponents of enthusiasm in the Historical essay, but he nonetheless made deliberate parallels between his book and Sir Issac Newton's Principia Mathematica. It was typical of Newtonian Latudinarians to try to bolster Whig social and cultural ideology by reference to Newtonian science.