Richard II's deposition of the throne was arguably the most portentous event in the political history of late medieval England. The real driving forces behind the thirty-year truce of 1396 were, on the English side, Richard II and John of Gaunt, and on the French side, Charles VI and his Uncle Philip duke of Burgundy. Of the three most substantial contemporary chronicles which cover the earlier part of Richard's reign, two cease before 1397: namely the Westminster Chronicle, which ends in 1394, and the Chronicon Henrici Knighton, which peters out in 1395. Fortunately, the third, the Chronica Maiora of Thomas Walsingham, continues through the revolution of 1399 and well beyond, right up to 1420. The chronicle, Traison et Mort covers the years 1397-1400, and was originally written at about the same time as the 'Metrical History', that is, in 1401-1402.

Earls Colne lies in north Essex, some sixty miles from London and very much within the market area of the metropolis. The village had a population of perhaps 430 in the early sixteenth century. In common with other English villages, it underwent a rapid expansion in numbers in the late sixteenth century, on one calculation from near 600 in 1560 to over 1,000 by 1610, after which there may have been a degree of decline to about 900 in the 1670s. Earls Colne had no market, but there was a developed retailing and victualling sector by the mid-sixteenth century. It was not simply an isolated agricultural community but was enmeshed in the textile production networks of Colchester and the Colne valley, and this distinguishes it from Terling, which, although only fifteen miles to the south, lacked any significant employment in textiles. More than this, Earls Colne stood only a day's journey from London (in fair weather), and it seems to have been a journey that many in the village, including some of the poorest inhabitants, undertook with amazing frequency. This chapter describes three aspects of Earls Colne's economy: farming, employment and the distribution of wealth.

This chapter explores how the thorny issue of inter-Republican conflict is represented in Land and Freedom/Tierra y Libertad, an overtly political cinematic engagement with the period that resurrects the conflict's revolutionary dimension. It explores the capacity of non-self-reflexive cinema to foster a historical consciousness in audiences, arguing that the social realist film form utilised by the filmmakers is an entirely valid one for representing the past cinematically and considering the political controversy surrounding the film's release. The chapter also examines some of the pitfalls in representing complex events through the medium of cinema, but concludes that in resurrecting the revolutionary aspects of the fight against fascism, Land and Freedom is one of the most important films dealing with the period.

This chapter discusses For Whom the Bell Tolls, an adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's best-selling novel, and also considers Blockade and The Spanish Earth. It examines how Hollywood appropriated Hemingway's novel as part of a broader move to construct cinematic depictions of the Spanish Civil War suitable to wartime America's needs. The shifting manner of US cinematic representations of the conflict provides an example of ‘willing backwards’, a process in which the past is re-narrativised in the interests of those in the present.

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book is concerned with history's relationship to memory which is a deceptively simple statement, since 'memory' and 'history' are both words that have multiple senses. It also is concerned with the practicalities of making memory an object of historical study and with the conceptual and methodological approaches that may help historians to define and to approach memory as an element in historical situations. Individual memory, social memory, and collective memory are the types of memory. The book discusses these types in detail. Finally, the book considers how people have envisaged and debated the perceived relationships between memory and history as forms of knowledge, each purporting in some way to connect present consciousness with past reality.

This chapter explores whether it is possible to narrativise the civil war as a comedy through an exploration of four Spanish productions from the 1980s and 1990s that utilise comic elements: ¡Ay Carmela!, Belle Époque, La vaquilla and Libertarias/Libertarians. It examines whether the past contains discernible patterns and whether representations of the past, written or cinematic, are determined by the intrinsic nature of the events that they purport to represent or, conversely, whether these representations are determined by the emplotment and narrativisation choices of those operating in the present.

Jon Stubbs engages with the complex relationship between the British and American film industries on multiple levels, demonstrating their dynamic but highly asymmetrical interaction through history, the resulting energetic cultural dialogue between the two nations, and the ways in which economic interests and government policy have influenced cultural representation. By examining the ways in which the national film industries grew intertwined in the interwar period, the impact of the First World War on Anglo-American film relations and alliance politics, and the postwar protectionist policies and internationalization of the movie business, Stubbs analyzes the ways in which the long unequal relationship between the US and UK film industries has nevertheless left the nations financially and culturally entangled.

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book provides an introduction to the English legal system and its development during the period c 1215-1485. It considers the theoretical and ideological aspects of medieval law and justice, examining the concepts and discourses to be found in official and non-official circles. The book concentrates on manifestations of crime and disorder and the royal response to this in the form of the development of judicial institutions. It looks at the dispensation of justice both inside and outside the courtroom. The book examines in detail the machinery and functioning of criminal justice both in the royal courts and in those autonomous areas exercising delegated powers. It focuses on the personnel of justice, the justices of the central courts and the local officials who carried out the day-to-day administrative tasks.