This chapter examines the figure of the vampire as symptomatic of contemporary neoliberal subjectivity and the way it relates to the current understanding of capitalist relations. The threat of the vampire represents fears of being deprived of life and opportunity, of losing in the neoliberal game. It is possible to argue that today those individuals who are able to adapt to the current state of affairs by playing the neoliberal game and sharpening their fangs against anyone who threatens their selfish interests are the survivors. Given the fact that neoliberal life is predicated on the freedom of consumer choice, the inability to participate due to inadequate financial income results in ostracism, aggression and violence. In this game of fangs only the fittest survive, and an ideology of Social Darwinism is perpetuated that seeks to exclude by spreading fear and polluting relations.

Catherine Maignant’s chapter deals with Tony Flannery, another Irish priest whose writings and liberal media pronouncements led to a caution from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which disqualifies him from publishing work or accepting invitations to express his views at public events without seeking prior permission from Rome. Maignant argues that Flannery has all the traits of a Christian witness, in that he is a prophet who appears to be reviled by certain forces within his own Church for daring the express unpalatable truths. Notwithstanding his censure, he has continued to write and to air his sometimes-daring opinions, all the while knowing that they could eventually lead to his excommunication.

Discussions about the display of Indian art and material culture in the Victorian imperial metropolis have largely focused on the Great Exhibition of 1851 and its progeny, the South Kensington Museum (now the Victoria and Albert Museum). However, the Crystal Palace at Sydenham Hill was an important, but much overlooked, location of imperial and colonial display well into the twentieth century. This essay begins by examining the Sydenham Palace at a site of imperial spectacle from its opening in 1854 and well into the twentieth century. Relevant events included the African Exhibition of 1895, the opening of the Victoria Cross Gallery in the same year and the Colonial Exhibition of 1905, and the display of Major Robert Gill’s copies of the frescoes from the Buddhist rock-cut temples at Ajanta in India (until they were destroyed by fire in 1866). The crowning occasion in the Sydenham series of imperial events was the Festival of Empire in 1911 which celebrated the ascension of George V as ‘King-Emperor’. Taking the 1911 Festival as a case study, this essay explores the complex and often conflicting narratives of empire that were communicated through the courts and grounds at Sydenham.

The final substantive chapter explores the difficulty and importance of achieving reconciliation after the Agreement. Groups in Northern Ireland need to focus more on taking responsibility for their role in continuing sectarian differences rather than looking for reconciliation from or with others. Previous research has stressed the need for reconciliation, social learning, and dialogue as key mechanisms that allow a transformation of former enemies. Memory studies have recently looked to constructivism and studies of international norms in analysing the resilience of collective memory and the politics of apology, while commemoration studies have increasingly explored questions of globalisation and the transfer of internationally recognized tropes in producing memorial cultures. The chapter maps the various initiatives and policy proposals that have been developed in Northern Ireland, which have increasingly looked not only to international examples, but also the importance of cultivating US involvement.

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book charts the development of the movement against its intellectual culture, and with that the changing nature of its politicisation of everyday life. It focuses on the Radical print culture of the 1820s and 1830s to revise the notion that the early Chartists were austere and moralistic. The book considers the itinerant activism of Henry Vincent in the west of England between 1837 and 1839 as the central case study to establish how early Chartist activists integrated plebeian culture and everyday life into the movement. It looks at the impact of repression and imprisonment between 1839 and 1843 on Chartist leaders, and argues that this experience was the impetus for moral improvement to increasingly come to the forefront of the movement.

This introduction presents an overview of key concepts covered in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book focuses on the performance of As You Like It in the twentieth century. It examines the play as a text for performance on the early modern stage. The book examines the long history of As You Like It at Stratford, which pay particular attention to three contrasting RSC productions. It addresses two productions beyond the English (and English-speaking) theatre context. The first of these, seen at l'Atelier in Paris in 1934, is Jacques Copeau's redaction Rosalinde; the second Peter Stein's monumental four-hour production for the Schaubühne Berlin in 1977. The latter, described by Dennis Kennedy as 'one of Stein's greatest productions' (Kennedy 261), was a landmark in the history of European Shakespeare. It is also one deeply embedded in the politics and history of its troubled times.

This chapter analyses the sources of anti-Americanism under a number of headings: personality; philosophical differences; policy differences; and systemic divisions. It demonstrates that when America retreats from the world bad things happen, instancing rejection of the League of Nations. America needs to be engaged with the rest of the world, since it cannot meet the challenges of the twenty-first century by itself. American values, it argues, are universal values.