Colonial writings in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries projected the colonial home as a microcosm of the empire. The memsahibs at the head of a large retinue of household servants reproduced the power relations characteristic of imperial administration. In particular, it was the complex location of two female servants inside this household, namely, the ayah and the wet-nurse, which frequently evoked colonial anxieties. Most memsahibs' preoccupations were quite cut off from any concern with issues such as gendered social reform. An important aspect of memsahibs' experience of colonial India was the setting up of an English-style home in India. For European infants, 'native' ayahs were considered the best option, and in many colonial households the ayah virtually played the role of a surrogate mother. The dynamics of the memsahib-ayah relationship was a complicated one. The greatest sense of colonial insecurity for the memsahib, however, came from 'native' wet-nurses.

Modernisation had seen life expectancy rates rise and infant mortality rates drop, resulting in a dramatic increase in the Cypriot population, which led to a surplus of people searching for work. The British prevented them from migrating to places with work, thus making the Cypriot Mule Corps a golden opportunity. The service of Cypriots in the British armed forces during the Great War was truly enormous proportional to the population of the island. The British knew how to pull the Cypriots into the Mule Corps, and they knew how to limit their own responsibilities towards these men too. British imperial power was reflected in the passing of laws to procure mules more or less forcibly. In Salonica, they were worked very hard. Yet it was soon realised that mules, no less than men, needed to be rested to reduce sickness and casualties, and extract more effective work out of them.

In this chapter, the author presents five theses on how implementation works, which she propose can be observed in most if not all cases of policy implementation, be that national policy or international development policy. The following are the five theses. Thesis 1: interventions always have effects beyond their scope. Thesis 2: policy-makers project their "sites of intervention" as blank slates. Thesis 3: "local knowledge" is always situated and contradictory. Thesis 4: planning continues throughout the implementation process. Thesis 5: policy disintegrates and the contradictory nature of bureaucracy is fed by attempts to make something sensible take place. "Local knowledge" has long been a stock concept in international development literature, where is it seen as an important driver of viable policy. Active-Back Sooner offers a good example of bottom-up policy-making. Active-Back Sooner was, on a smaller scale, entangled in an attempt to create, "from scratch", a perfect reality.

For a short time following the Restoration of the Stuarts in 1660 there were writers who used republican ideas to defend and understand the newly restored monarchy. This chapter explores these ideas. It examines the ways in which the ‘commonwealth’ principles used to defend the republican governments of the Interregnum, and the ideas of James Harrington and his Rota club, could be re-directed in 1660-61 to identify monarch as the best form of a commonwealth. In doing this, these writers were also defending a view of limited as opposed to absolute monarchy. The constellation of ideas explored in the chapter is a reminder of the long-term continuity of the view that England was a ‘commonwealth’, as well as reminding us how the concept of ‘commonwealth’ could have multiple applications.

The second chapter focuses on the way in which parts of the youth articulated a specifically anti-regime critique and through it questioned some of the values embodied in contemporary politics and culture. In particular, it examines how older forms of political discourse and ritual - embodied by Tito’s personality cult and the Day of Youth relay race - were critiqued in both political and new cultural forms. For the most part, this critique was not reduced to a demand for outright abolishment of Yugoslav socialism, but it was rather about challenging the norms of an older generation and reinventing socialism through the state’s youth institutions.

In an ‘Epistle to his Father’, the Jesuit priest and poet Robert Southwell signs himself ‘Your most dutiful and loving son’. Dutiful it may be, but loving this letter certainly is not. Southwell threatens his father with a horrifying vision of his ‘departing-bed’, asking him to imagine himself ‘burdened with the heavy load of your former trespasses, and gored with the sting and prick of a festered conscience’, feeling ‘the cramp of death wresting your heart-strings’. This essay considers the relationship between Southwell’s construction of gender identity and his attempts to convert English Protestants – beginning with those in his own family. Southwell’s role as a son, and his relationship to his father, is central here, as this chapter reveals the ways in which early modern masculinity is both engendered and called into question by the process of religious conversion. The chapter also considers a different kind of conversion; that which Southwell effects upon the literary genre of the letter of advice. Drawing out the etymological relationship between ‘gender’, ‘genre’ and ‘generation,’ the analysis work in the interstices of these terms, showing their centrality to the confessional narrative at the heart of this volume.

Commemorative parades, such as those on Labour Day and May Day, were but one site of musical behaviour among many in the public sphere. This chapter examines the making of music that was unambiguously intended for the full gaze of public scrutiny. It also examines parades using Labour Day as the focus for a broader discussion of the sound of marching feet. The chapter considers the place of music in the formal political world of electioneering. Our point of entry into the public sphere of music-making by radicals and reformers is to rejoin the parade about to set off down Marshall Street under the burning sun in Cobar. The photograph of Cobar gives a sense of the structure of a parade and the role of music-making within it. Moreover, it is clear is that many bands across the Anglophone world donated their services to Labour Day parades.

Despite the fact that since 1968, American conceptual artist Lawrence Weiner’s primary medium has been language, he prefers to call his works sculptures rather than poems. Implying that his works are 3-dimensional. However, this is called into question when we consider Weiner’s "Statement of Intent" (1969), in which he asserts that his works need not be made by him, need not be authentic, indeed, need not be made at all. While this statement is most often used to link Weiner to Conceptual art’s emphasis of ideas over material objects, Price argues that Weiner’s works exist as forms of potential that require close attention to materiality and language. Weiner’s language sculptures—which take the form of statements, mathematical equations, artist books and more—exist somewhere in between art and literature, form and formlessness, the 2nd and 3rd dimensions. Weiner offers art historians and literary scholars a complex case study for thinking about how potentiality can be represented through form. Only by linking Weiner to the art and literary worlds, Price argues, can we fully understand Weiner’s forms of potential.

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book focuses on literary works by John McGahern. It includes a collection of Paula Meehan, who was inspired by McGahern in the formative years of her own career, pays homage to McGahern with a poem and a memoir. The book explores the sense of resentment and disillusionment in McGahern's novels, drawing parallels between the revolutionary memories of McGahern's protagonists and McGahern's own family experience. It offers a sociological reading of McGahern's representations of love, courtship and sex. The book provides an intriguing comparison between McGahern and Flannery O'Connor, a chronicler of the deep American South, known for her economical, dead-pan, reportorial style. It considers McGahern's representation of a Protestant family in a small Irish community.