Louise Fuller claims that there can be no doubt that Irish Catholicism is in serious decline. The decline itself is no huge surprise: it is the extent of the implosion and the consequences this has had on Irish society that require explanation. The ‘aggressive secularism’ that is now commonplace has led to a situation where it has become extremely difficult to express a Catholic viewpoint in the public arena, a situation that is as unhealthy in its own way as the theocracy that dominated for far too long in Ireland. Major changes in how it communicates the Word of God will be necessary if the Church is to have any hope of reengaging the minds and hearts of a population that is becoming theologically illiterate and indifferent to religious observance of any type.

During a run of 51 performances that began on 15 May and ended on 5 September, the Globe As You Like It would have been seen by up to 50,000 men, women and children. For some, this might have been their first, last or only encounter with the play, with the theatre or with Shakespeare. For others, it might have been their fifth or fiftieth. But for all of them, for all of us, As You Like It will occupy a greater or lesser place in the ongoing, and for the time being unfinished, narratives of our lives. The Shakespeare and the theatre establishments are out in force today and later we find ourselves in an oak-panelled room at Court Lodge with Paul Edmondson, Stanley Wells, Paul Prescott and Michael Dobson. Paul and the author swap impressions of the Globe production, and the conversation turns to As You Like It.

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book includes reflections on the emergence and evolution of print culture, the impact of English and European influences. It also includes the construction and negotiation of Dublin literary identities, the habits of reading in early modern Dublin and the impact of Anglo-Irish political relations. The book constructs an image of what an Irish Renaissance might have looked like through studies of literature, language, translation and theatre-going in the capital city. Through the study of Dublin's 'textual communities', either real or only imagined, the book illuminates the ways in which readers composed and consumed literature in Dublin. Focusing on Spenser's time in the city as secretary to Arthur, Lord Grey de Wilton, the Lord Deputy, the book explores Edmund Spenser's political and social connections.

This chapter provides an ethnographic description of political relations in the city of Manchester by focusing on the attempts to distribute responsibility for reductions in the city's carbon emissions. It discusses the process of inclusion from the perspective of some of those people working in partnership with the local Council. The chapter focuses on the formation of the city of Manchester's environmental policy and response to the 2008 Climate Change Act. The broader field of environmental politics in the city was often characterised by pointing to an important but uneasy relationship between 'activists' and 'officers'. The chapter considers how the organisations who were being invited to be incorporated into the distributed form of politics responded to being part of the 'stab vest' organisation. Supporters of an entrepreneurial approach to urban politics in Manchester have argued that public-private partnerships have been the basis for a positive transformation of the city.

Un prophete and Dheepan are part of an ever-expanding number of contemporary French films which foreground and valorise the complexity and richness of multilingual interaction. In the dangerous settings of both Un prophete and Dheepan, language, power and violence are interlaced in a complex nexus that the protagonists gradually learn to navigate with skill. Contemporary multilingual banlieue cinema thus introduces the concept of the treacherous interpreter, and the language-power-violence triad, to re-envision the place of peripheral languages in contemporary (sub)urban France. French, of course, has its value in Un prophete and Dheepan, as the banlieue's lingua franca. In both Dheepan and Un prophete, education is empowering, and the most useful form of education is shown to be the acquisition of language. In both films, multilingualism and translation offer unique opportunities for advancement that challenge traditional perceptions of the value of languages.

This chapter focuses on the construction of literary authorship in Dublin during the first half of the seventeenth century. The constructions of literary authorship exploited the print culture to convey an image of the author at the centre of Dublin-based coteries. The chapter focuses on the ways in which liminary material shapes reception of the author-figure. In representing the author at the heart of a literary community, such constructions simultaneously depict Dublin as an amenably literary location. Print volumes by Richard Bellings, James Shirley and Henry Burnell assert images of Dublin as a city where literary folk could thrive. Inspired by his new location to try out a new genre, Francis Quarles' experience conforms with the rise and fall of literary community. The communities associated with Bellings, Shirley and Burnell, celebrated and crystallised in print, highlight the fitfulness of any literary renaissance in Dublin.

The First World War witnessed an unprecedented scale of amputation. Traditionally, it has been argued that design and innovation were a direct result of the numbers of prostheses required to re-embody the many thousands of amputees from the war. This chapter argues that innovations in artificial limbs were well-established in the nineteenth century. Furthermore, there were a number of reputable companies that maintained a good trade in artificial limbs. The surgical profession and the commercial arena, while aware of each other, operated separately in two spheres. The First World War physically narrowed this division, relocating the limb fitter and the surgeon in close proximity in specialist hospitals established for amputees. Many manufacturers, including some from overseas, were required to provide the amputee servicemen with limbs, yet the relationship between the two professions was not improved. Nevertheless, the specialist hospitals staffed with experts in surgical technique and artificial limb fitting benefitted a number of patients. Focusing on Queen Mary Roehampton Hospital, this chapter explores the relationship between physical spaces and professionals, and the impact that it has on medical care in the First World War.