The commemoration of the Arandora Star victims appears to have merged over time with Prisoner of War (POW) memorials to become a symbol of what it meant to 'be Italian' in Britain during the war. The exclusion of British Army veterans from Italian memorial activity has a historical precedent. At the time of the tragedy, the wider climate of hostility towards Italians meant there was little space for public mourning for the bereaved families of the Arandora Star victims. In 1990, the prestigious civic title of Cavalieri was awarded to twenty-one Arandora Star survivors still living in Britain by the Italian government following an intensive campaign by agencies, including the community newspaper Italiani in Scozia. At the launch of the Arandora Star memorial appeal in Glasgow there were indications that the rhetoric of the apology campaigners was being contested within the community itself.

The humanitarian and military spheres have never been as different as distinct as they might appear. In fact, the relationship between civilians and the military during and after war has been closely intertwined – in some cases, humanitarians and the military have been one and the same. To help explain how this relationship evolved over time, this chapter examines three closely interlinked stimuli – technology, strategy and ethics – which both created the need for humanitarians and prompted the military to undertake “humanitarian” tasks.

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book aims to make available a body of texts connected with the cultural phenomenon known as Gothic writing. Some of the texts document the ideological and aesthetic environment which gave rise to the new form of writing; its conditions of possibility. The book includes many of the critical writings and reviews which helped to constitute Gothic as a distinct genre, by revisions of the standards of taste, by critique and by outright attack. It covers the period from 1700-1820 of the Gothic vogue to the mid nineteenth century. The book contains a number of the standard references in any history of the genre, which it would be perverse to exclude. It includes extracts from Tacitus and Montesquieu, the authorities eighteenth-century commentators most often referred to.

Several Australian films of the 1990s incorporate Gothic elements, and often exaggerate the irony, black humour and reflexive characteristics exhibited by Gothic films of the 1970s and 1980s. Death in Brunswick adopts the Gothic sensibility wholeheartedly in its blackly humorous portrait of individual inadequacy, family authority and racial tension. A superior rendition of formative experience, which combines the rite of passage with the Gothic and the period film, is found in Celia. Having been made with the assistance of the Australian Film Finance Corporation (AFFC), Death in Brunswick went on to become the second highest grossing Australian film at the home box office in 1991. Muriel's Wedding is centred in the rite of passage formal. The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert extends the motifs of personal growth allied to travel seen in Muriel's Wedding by adhering closely to the road movie genre.

Best known of the five long tales of Sheridan Le Fanu which make up In a Glass Darkly is 'Carmilla'. The tale is a covert account of lesbianism, lusciously filmed with Ingrid Pitt and Kate O'Mara under the title The Vampire Lovers. Even so exotic a collection as In a Glass Darkly, with its German-writing exegete-behind-the-narrator and its continental locations, includes a sharp delineation of Georgian Dublin in The Familiar. 'German Ghosts and Ghost Seers' is likely one of Le Fanu's earliest sources for the doctrines of Emanuel Swedenborg. The ghostly Ferris must be treated as an influence upon the author of Uncle Silas and In a Glass Darkly. The stories of In a Glass Darkly arise, in several ways, from Dr Martin Hesselius's archive, and the variety of narrative-perspectives adopted in turn complicates the much-mediated relation between reader and character.

This chapter not only provides a general account of Afghanistan’s past but focuses on the history of the humanitarian-military relationship prior to the 2001 invasion. It uses the framework developed in Chapter 3 in analyzing the recent history of Afghanistan within the context of humanitarian-military relations. Three elements – technology, strategy and ethics – were established as historical drivers contributing to a close relationship between humanitarians and the military. This chapter traces five periods (from 1945-2001) which will be examined in light of these three elements.

The first part of this chapter compares three paintings of racing cyclist produced across Europe in quick succession during 1912–13. The works are by the expressionist Lyonel Feininger, the cubist Jean Metzinger and the Italian futurist Umberto Boccioni. The second half of the chapter looks at responses to motor-racing from Germany, Italy and France. Starting with the futurist F. T. Marinetti’s notorious infatuation with the motorcar, the chapter then considers the importance of the automobile to the purist project of Le Corbusier and Amédée Ozenfant. The chapter concludes by looking at a pair of articles that Werner Graeff wrote for the journal G. Although there are many similarities between Graeff’s attitude and those of the purists, it is Graeff who is most uncompromising in his vision of a modern artist-engineer.

The drafting and submission of the cahiers de doléances had helped to establish the principle that some form of popular participation would be crucial to the new politics in France. Those cahiers offered an opportunity to assess where the 'education question' stood at the start of the French Revolution. They also gave a reminder that the process of reading, writing, and circulating political views was central to the dynamics of revolutionary politics from their very start. This chapter is based upon a review of hundreds of letters, reports, and pieces of correspondence sent to the National Assembly, the departmental authorities in the Haute Garonne, and the municipal authorities in Toulouse. These letters revealed political and pedagogical authorities, teachers, students, and members of a broader public trying to understand, navigate, and contribute to the Revolution and articulate and foster a collective 'mentalité révolutionnaire'.

This chapter focuses on local services and their impact on strengthening civic engagement and local communities. It also focuses on central government policy. The chapter presents the analysis of new approaches by local authorities to service delivery. It analyses the extent to which potential for effective civic engagement was realised by focusing on three policy areas: crime and community safety; privatisation, marketisation and the choice agenda; and finally the emerging concept of the 'big society' and localism. The chapter reviews the role of the private sector such as banks and building societies, local post offices and community pubs, and the part it plays in providing local services. It further examines the various local service initiatives that have been developed out of the social enterprise and voluntary sectors and the local community. These include credit unions and community-run shops.

Charles Robert Maturin's second novel, The wild Irish boy, is very much aware of its ghostly inheritance. This chapter examines Maturin's novel as something more than a mere 'opportunistic imitation' of Sydney Owenson. In The wild Irish boy, Maturin produces a conglomerate novel, an intriguing mixture of society novel, national tale, Gothic novel, and early stirrings of both the Silver Fork novel and the roman a clef. This attests to and underlines the fractured nature of contemporary Irish fiction and society. Maturin's inclusion of a 'The wild Irish girl' costume further comments on Owenson's well-documented habit of appearing in public dressed as Glorvina and performing as her famous Irish princess. The heavy intertextuality of Maturin's novel, including its references to Owenson and The wild Irish girl, participate in a specific act of masculinisation undertaken by a 'purposeful borrowing from, resistance to, and remaking of, female-authored models'.