This essay focuses principally on 'The Ballroom of Romance' and argues for a more nuanced and differentiated account of his work than has tended to be offered to date. William Trevor's short story 'The Ballroom of Romance' has attained iconic status in Irish culture in the forty years since its publication. The title and ambience of the story, evoking memories of dancehall days, partly explains this public appeal, which was enhanced by the BAFTA award-winning film adaptation of the story by Pat O'Connor. Trevor vividly demonstrates the ways in which the lives of both women and men were atrophied in mid-twentieth-century Ireland. That this is a persistent interest in his fiction is revealed in later short stories such as 'Kathleen's Field' and 'The Hill Bachelors', and in his fine novella Reading Turgenev.

The Channel Islands (Jersey, Guernsey, Alderney and Sark) are situated off the coast of Normandy (France), west of the Cotentin peninsula. A brief look at a map shows that, from a geographical point of view, they are much closer to France than to England. As the original language in these islands is a form of Norman French, they have traditionally been regarded in dialectology as a French-speaking area. However, the exclusive interest of traditional dialectology in Channel Islands French is not an adequate reflection of the current linguistic situation. Today, English is clearly the dominant language in the Channel Islands. The number of speakers of Norman French is rather small and steadily decreasing. Over the past 200 years, English has gained more and more influence and has gradually replaced the local Norman French dialects. Indeed, there are clear indications that they will become extinct in the not-too-distant future.

John Locke’s influential account of personal identity emphasizes the importance of consciousness.  This had led many commentators to argue that Lockean selves just are consciousnesses.  Charles Taylor has mounted persuasive critiques of this “punctual” Lockean self; such a conception of the self is too thin and stands divorced from our values and moral agency.  This chapter shifts the focus from Locke’s views on personal identity to his views on personhood in an effort to show that Locke is sensitive to the kinds of worries raised by Taylor.  Lockean persons are more than consciousness.  In particular, the chapter focuses on Locke’s exploration and analysis of the complex faculty psychology undergirding consciousness and on the ways in which persons can be embodied.  This allows for a richer conception of the self.  It then argues that this richer conception better aligns with Locke’s own views about the value and importance of the self and with what he says regarding our moral agency and our duty of self-improvement.  Finally, the chapter shows that understanding Locke’s examination of human cognition as contributing to an analysis of the self allows us to resituate him with respect to some of his predecessors in seventeenth-century England.

The State of Play was created in response to a journalistic critique regarding the limits of Paul Abbott's ability. It provides a valuable insight into the contemporary power of the British press to telegraph, shape and control public opinion. Using a cinematic aspect ratio, the stylistic grammar of State of Play is also telling in that it points to the dynamic and fast-moving pace of technology, information and people in the modern world. On a literal level, characters in State of Play are always on the move, on the Tube, in taxicabs, on trains, running, chasing and consciously critiquing the events of their worlds. The aesthetics and style of State of Play speak of a new rhythm, a new formula of delicate, dynamic storytelling. State of Play explores the public as well as the private face of deceptive performance.

This chapter investigates the continuum which exists between vernacular speech and standard language and examines various issues which arise in this area. Key to the continuum of speech in any Western-style society is the notion of a supraregional variety which, on the one hand, embodies sufficient vernacular features to fulfil the identity function of language but, on the other hand, does not contain features which are stigmatised in a speech community. Supraregional varieties are dynamic entities and are thus subject to language variation and change. Such varieties are only occasionally explicitly codified. However, speakers in any speech community will be aware of stigmatised and non-stigmatised features (with regard to accepted usage in more formal situations) and can move along the continuum of relative vernacularity in given contexts.

This chapter explores some of the changes experienced by middle-class men as they went about their 'everyday' lives in wartime. Focusing particularly on the first twelve months or so of the war, the chapter suggests that the middle-class men were physically distanced from the actual fighting, the war intruded in their lives in a variety of ways. According to Macleod Yearsley, it was only in the early months of 1915 that people on the home front really began to realise the seriousness of the war. News, as well as gossip and rumours, were increasingly acquired through such word-of-mouth sources. In December 1915 H.C. Cossins noted that several series of cinematograph records have been taken of life at the front. Reginald Gibb's attitude towards the conflict was more critical than that of most middleclass civilian men.

This chapter examines a segment of Palestinians who were granted citizenship in Lebanon through a process of tawtin, a naturalization strategy underpinned by notions of national belonging and identity. It draws upon interviews and observations with naturalized citizens and refugees to illustrate and reveal patterns of citizenship practice that challenge national discourses of tawtin, and suggest the emergence of a paradigm that posits citizenship-as-rights, and not identity. Despite the dichotomous discourse that posits Palestinian identity in dialectic to citizenship, naturalized Palestinians constructed dynamic spaces for both to exist, somewhat harmoniously. Despite the globalization of human rights and the rise of universal personhood, access to rights remains inextricably bound and dependent upon access to citizenship. Analyses of citizenship practice remains, for the most part, conscripted to frameworks that posit citizenship-as identity on the one hand, and the subsequent emergence of citizenship-as-rights on the other. Belying these existing frameworks is a negotiation and re-negotiation of citizenship by individuals that inherently challenges them from within. This necessitates a paradigmatic shift from the top-down lens within which tawtin of Palestinians in Lebanon is presented, towards a bottom-up approach that explores the individuals’ agency in its conceptualization.

Women who wrote and circulated their verse in manuscript sought and stayed within a congenial circle. Carol Barash describes the general profile of late seventeenth- century women who preferred to publish in manuscript rather than with a bookseller as 'usually elite and well educate. Kathryn King studied of the life and complicated literary career of another late seventeenth-century woman poet, Jane Barker. Anne Killigrew's poem 'Upon the saying that my Verses were made by another' has been used as evidence of her involvement in a literary exchange circle and also her indictment of the masculine court culture's ridicule of female ambition. Anne Killigrew was no novice in the world of coterie, courtier and commercial theatrical culture, with its intrigues and rivalries. Her decision to seek 'Fame' led her not to seek publication but to entrust her verses to 'some few hands'.