This essay recovers episodes in the wide and varied sporting history of the Crystal Palace in the later nineteenth and early twentieth century, and situates it in the context of ideas about the body, nation and empire that were manifest in the 1850s Fine Arts Courts, showing how the Greek and Roman courts in particular were received in changing ways across Victorian and Edwardian culture. The Sydenham Palace brought together ‘Fine Arts’, consumer, and sporting cultures, and allows an examination of the ways in which these three seemingly disparate areas of study were closely intertwined. The essay emphasises the national, racial and gender politics implicit in the relationship between these three categories. Discussing Sandow’s Institute, the 1911 Inter-Empire Games, and the occupation of the Palace by the Royal Navy during the First World War, it relates the Palace’s apparently more formal Fine Arts Courts and Natural History Department to its grassy grounds, its static exhibits to its moving, breathing visitors, art historical education to bodily reformation.

Britain’s radical left influenced the Northern Irish Troubles along two separate tracks: through its impact on British politics, and through its contacts with Irish republicanism and the Irish far left. The idea for a civil rights movement in Northern Ireland came from the far-left milieu, and was put into practice by activists who had cut their teeth on the British leftist scene. When conflict between the IRA and the British Army took centre-stage, sections of the British far left provided advice and encouragement for the Provos as they executed a left turn under the leadership of Gerry Adams, and Irish Trotskyists argued for a broad campaign of protest in support of republican prisoners. But despite their best efforts, left-wingers in Britain were unable to shift the Labour Party away from its position of support for the ‘bi-partisan’ consensus on Northern Ireland.

This chapter outlines four major needs-assessments undertaken to better understand the impact of the bombing and the way in which the findings helped in the development of services for psychological and mental health needs. It includes Omagh needs-assessments, adult needs-assessment, children's and adolescents' needs-assessments, and health and social care services staff needs-assessment. In the history of the Troubles in Northern Ireland there had not been an incident with a combination of so many deaths, so many injuries and so many exposed to highly traumatic experiences. The chapter describes the Sperrin Lakeland Trust under the leadership of its occupational health consultant in collaboration with the University of Northumbria. The adult study was undertaken by the Trust with the support of Professor David Clark and his colleagues, based then at Oxford University.

This chapter reflects on the challenges of peacemaking in various contexts, including in Northern Ireland. It sets out a variety of challenges, focussing on the conflict between the forces of integration and harmony, democracy, diversity, peace, trade, information technology, shared advances in health and sciences against the forces of disintegration, chaos, terror, weapons of mass destruction, poverty, disease, ignorance, racial, religious, ethnic and tribal hatred. It underlines the importance of the Good Friday Agreement.

The point of departure of John Drakakis’ investigation of notions of death and decay is Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Drakakis takes the use of a real skull in Gregory Doran’s RSC production of the play (2008) as the starting-point for a discussion of the implications of rereading the Renaissance through the history of the Gothic in terms of the current obsession with notions of death, material and virtual reality. Drawing on a wide variety of Renaissance writers including Donne, Webster and Middleton as well as on Gothic novelists such as Horace Walpole, Ann Radcliffe and Isabella Kelly, he discusses possible connections and their legitimacy in connection to theoretical approaches from Freud to Bataille and Derrida.

London River and Des hommes et des dieux comprise a collection of disparate characters, cultural groups and languages, which find themselves at first in conflict, and then in cooperation, with one another. In these films' multicultural environments, multilingualism is an asset, and those who can speak multiple languages have increased access to control, information and support. In both films French functions in a new way rarely seen before in cinema, and becomes an unanchored language in Des hommes et des dieux and London River's British and Algerian settings alike. Unsurprisingly, terrorism renders both London River and Des hommes et des dieux tragic and violent films. When encountering real or suspected enemies in both films, tensions between groups are brought to the fore, and various characters in each film display mistrust and fear of the ethnic and religious other.

This chapter focuses on the lived experiences of gypsies (collectively referred to as gypsies rather than Roma or travellers). The author argues that the relationship between the legal system and the specific lifestyle of this group is itself causing many tensions which cannot be separated from the long-held myths about gypsies. Jago shows how the standing of gypsies in the UK legal system has, in turn, become the object of various myths. He demonstrates how judgements by the European Court of Human Rights in favour of gypsy claims created in many an image of the law being always on the side of the gypsy. A perception which Jago demonstrates is far from true. After addressing the nature and role of myths in general the author illustrates the tension between positive, romanticised myths about the freedom of gypsy lifestyle and three derogatory myths, namely gypsies as "child-snatchers", as thieves and as "land grabbers". Jago illustrates that these myths are linked to deep-rooted beliefs around property and its ownership.

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book aims to make a contribution to contemporary interests in re-emphasising the relevance of sociological and related inter-disciplinary perspectives for the understanding of events and mega-events. It outlines a framework for interpreting contemporary macro-structural social change and applies it in general terms to media, urban and locational mega-event issues. The book explores the problems that so-called internet piracy causes for sport mega-events, states' policy responses to this and mega-event organisations' search for a new symbiosis between events and the media. It looks into mega-events' simultaneous record of creating new public spaces in modern cities, and it does so mainly with reference to the Expo event genre. The book focuses on the main non-Western region of East Asia, and specifically on its core, the People's Republic of China.