A central project of colonial encounters is establishing and maintaining clear boundaries between intrusive and indigenous populations. While delineating boundaries is, in part, a means of securing a superior identity for colonizers, these boundaries also attempt to mask the violence of colonialism. This chapter uses animals as a point of entry into the contradictions that creep into the imaginative space created by the text and illustrations of John Derricke’s Image. It begins with a review of the effort to create a clear boundary between English and Irish populations by showing their different engagements with animals. But, implicit in this animals-make-the-man strategy is the threat of disorder. Interacting with the wrong species in the wrong way can make the man wrong. Illustrating the violence of conquest blurs boundaries. In these moments, the metaphorical associations with animals grow recalcitrant. Artfully constructed boundaries give way to a violent and confusing muddle.

The growing commercial leisure industry was big business in twentieth century Britain. Charting the fortunes of large leisure providers including Mecca Leisure Ltd and The Rank Organisation, this chapter demonstrates the power of youth commerce in the post-war period. Leisure organisations fought to attract this growing market of young consumers, and in doing so played a significant role in shaping the landscape of leisure across Britain.

The single currency was overtly designed to lock a newly united Germany into a common monetary union in which it would act in concert with countries possessing less powerful economies rather than dominate them outright. This chapter focuses on the evolution of the crisis in the eurozone and the shortcomings which have impeded the EU from bringing it under control. The financial sector had not become a protected zone of the eurozone overnight. Ever since the passing of the Single European Act in 1986, its perceived needs had come to shape the concerns of EU decision-makers to an increasing degree. EU decision-makers at the centre of a marathon economic crisis are increasingly insistent that there is no way out except for a union adopting full political and economic standardisation.

This chapter examines the calls for powers to be devolved to elected bodies in different parts of the United Kingdom, the extent to which powers have been devolved to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, the way in which devolution is a process rather than an event, with powers being further devolved over time, and the tensions generated, including in England (‘the English question’) as a result of the West Lothian question and the Barnett formula. It looks as demands for further devolution and for Scottish independence and the problems specific to Northern Ireland.

Kureishi's provenance as a novelist - as in his films - is overwhelmingly from within western traditions. Kureishi's novels eschew not just the linguistic, epistemological and formal play of works like Midnight's Children, but also their recourse to non-western narrative resources. As in all his earlier work, the focus of Kureishi's novels is primarily on Britain's youth and its sub-cultural styles and forms of expression. Kureishi's interest in popular culture is evident throughout his earlier work, most obviously in the attention given to pop music. As with his earlier work, Kureishi's novels unrelentingly attack these different forms of British cultural nationalism and express considerable sympathy for various modes of opposition to them. If Kureishi's novels are hostile to cultural nationalism, they are also critical of a variety of metropolitan anti-racisms.

The introductory chapter presents the intricate relationship between three key countries in the Persian Gulf. The chapter casts Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United States as key actors in this regional system and advocates for a unified approach to understanding the dynamics of their interactions. It argues for why studying the relations between the three countries simultaneously and uniformly in a strategic triangle framework is critical for uniing nuance, interdependencies, and interconnections between the actors and their behaviour. It presents the main questions that guided the research and sets the theoretical and methodological grounds of the book.

The Conclusion ties together some of the key arguments from the preceding chapters. It offers some final reflections and intimations of hope.

Chapter 6 delves into the restoration of a ‘stable marriage’ arrangement within the strategic triangle, with working US–Saudi relations while US–Iran and Saudi–Iran relations soured. Emphasising the complexity and fluctuation of power dynamics, the chapter examines how the Iraq invasion catalysed a re-evaluation process in Riyadh, reaffirming, therefore, the strategic triangle. This event favoured all three parties: the US expanded its military presence and security ties with the GCC, Iran bolstered alliances with empowered Shia groups, and Saudi Arabia, above all, welcomed Saddam’s downfall. The 2000s oil boom further boosted the military capacities of Iran and Saudi Arabia. However, by the 2010s, the United States showed signs of war fatigue, and sanctions curbed Iran’s momentum. Only Saudi Arabia retained steady growth and arrived at the end of the period with more power than it started with. The chapter argues that while Iran’s empowerment, together with the strong rhetoric of new neoconservative figures like President Ahmadinejad, explains the détente’s discontinuance, Riyadh’s new aspiration for regional leadership also emerged due to its discontent with US policies, especially during the so-called Arab Spring and Iranian nuclear talks under President Obama. Leadership assessment is also pivotal in understanding the timing of nuclear negotiations and the factors that, for the first time, aligned to reduce tensions between Iran and the United States. However, it also points out how Obama’s failure to assess Saudi Arabia’s dissatisfaction while reaching out to Iran led to increased anxieties in the Arab nation, which responded with proactivity, sectarianism, and militarisation.