Charting the growth of youth culture as a topic of historical enquiry, the introduction outlines the importance of commercial youth cultures. It outlines recent developments in the historiography of youth in modern Britain, and situates the book’s spatial approach within a broader consideration of the lived and everyday. It argues that there is a clear need for further consideration of commercial spaces of youth leisure and their relationship to the changing urban environment in the second half of the twentieth century.

This chapter builds on the ‘lives and legacies’ strand of John Derricke scholarship by examining the Scottish contexts and reception of The Image of Irelande, specifically through Sir Walter Scott’s inclusion of Derricke as part of his editing of Lord Somers’s tracts (1809–15) and the historical contexts for both Scott’s work and the 1883 edition (with Scott’s notes) by Edinburgh University librarian John Small. The richness of Derricke’s Scottish afterlife has yet to be fully explored, from the copy owned by William Drummond through the Advocate’s Library copy consulted by Scott, to Small’s landmark edition. How far did Scott’s and Small’s interventions influence Scottish opinion on Ireland? They certainly serve to remind readers that Derricke’s perspective is archipelagic rather than merely English. Given the extent to which Scott and Small shaped the modern reception of The Image of Irelande, it could be argued that it has come down to us as a distinctly Scottish image. The purpose of this chapter is to track some of the ways in which The Image of Irelande offers, through Ulster and Edinburgh, an image of Scotland.

The chapter examines the two concepts seen as the twin pillars of the constitution – parliamentary sovereignty and the rule of law. It defines parliamentary sovereignty, drawing on the classic work of A. V. Dicey, and draws out the problems associated with defining the rule of law and the implications of a clash between parliamentary sovereignty and the rule of law. Though twin pillars of the constitution, they are not necessarily equal pillars. It examines recent challenges by some judges to the supremacy of parliamentary sovereignty, developed in recent court cases, and the implications of the claim that the doctrine is the product of common law and therefore can be overridden by the courts.

Chapter 7 first describes the hardships deported people face in Jamaica, which were only hinted at in previous chapters. It focuses on poverty, violence, insecurity, ill-health and unemployment. These post-deportation experiences are situated in historical and global context. The chapter traces contemporary Jamaican economic and social relations through slavery and colonialism, before offering a broad theorisation of citizenship in global perspective. Ultimately, the chapter argues that citizenship is a global regime for the management of unequal populations, fixing people in space and in law. This fixing in space and law reaffirms global inequalities formed through colonialism, and in this way citizenship reproduces colonial-racial hierarchies in the present. Put another way, citizenship might appear to be a neutral and eminently sensible system for dividing up the global population, but it does so along grooves and map lines formed through colonialism. As a result, citizenship works as a system of colonial forgetting and racial disavowal.

This chapter shows how the year 1979 forever altered the relations between Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United States. It presents the Iranian Revolution and the Iran–Iraq war as events that transformed the strategic triangle into a ‘stable marriage’, in which the US–Saudi Arabia relationship grew stronger while the other two relationships became increasingly hostile. With the Twin Pillar order gone and Iran no longer willing to guarantee Western interests, the United States and Saudi Arabia were drawn together to seek political alternatives to maintain the status quo. This chapter reassesses the Persian Gulf balance of power throughout the period and explores how status satisfaction, state identity, and leadership preferences affect the three countries’ decision-making. It shows how Iran became a revisionist country, simultaneously promoting its Islamism as emancipatory from Western domination and as an alternative political project that diverged immensely from the Saudi one. As a result, sectarianism began to permeate the Iran–Saudi ties as a tool to compete for Islamic leadership. The chapter also explains how the fear of Iran exporting its revolution cemented the US–Saudi oil-for-security partnership. Yet, Iran’s isolation was not immediate, and only by contextualising power and scrutinising the domestic variables can one fully grasp the process that led to this triangle. By the second half of the decade, Riyadh and Washington’s anxiety toward the regional order reduced as it became clear that Iran would not fall under Soviet influence, and Ayatollah Khomeini consolidated the new regime despite (or thanks to) international isolation.

Chapter 4 explores fostering and adoption stories. Some fostering placements were a success while others were a disaster. Very few of the ‘brown babies’ were ever adopted; the reasons for this are examined, and the claim that few white British people wanted to adopt such children is questioned. Out of the forty-five war babies, only three were adopted by non-family: Ann, Deborah and Janet J. Their experiences are considered, as too is that of Leon L, the only one of the forty-five to be adopted by his US father. There were attempts to have the children adopted in the US, especially by Somerset County Council, and there was a definite demand for such children from African Americans, but these attempts were blocked by the British government, save for a short period of time.

This chapter examines the relationship between the courts and parliament as well as the executive. It addresses the consequences of creating a supreme court and the developments that have led to a more central role for the courts in determining issues of constitutional importance. It analyses the relationship between the courts and parliament, and between the courts and the executive, in terms of three models: strangers (respective autonomy), friends (democratic dialogue) and foes (competing authority), finding that the relationship between the courts and parliament has moved principally from one of respective autonomy to one of democratic dialogue, whereas that between the courts and the executive has become one on occasion of competing authority.

The chapter identifies the nature of constitutions and constitutionalism and explains the distinctive nature and history of the United Kingdom’s uncodified constitution, shaped especially by the outcome of the glorious revolution in the seventeenth century and the development in the nineteenth century of the Westminster model of government. It draws out the settled nature of the constitution for most of the twentieth century, the pressures it has since faced, the myriad constitutional changes that have occurred since the late twentieth century under successive governments and demands for more, including a codified constitution, and the different approaches to constitutional change that have developed, producing a constitution that has moved from being settled to unsettled and contested.