An early leader in the girls’ Young Christian Workers (YCW) in England, Lancastrian Mary Lyons recalled in old age how the Movement had shaped her life, including her choice of husband and how they celebrated their wedding in 1942. She married a fellow YCW, Austin Lyons, and at their wedding, she wrote, ‘We sang “Rouse Up” and had the YCW badge as decoration on the wedding cake’. “Rouse Up” was the rallying song of the Movement, shared by both boys and girls, but the girls also had their own songbook. ‘Be proud to be a worker girl, like Christ your worker King; for carry on the world could not, save you your labour bring’ ran the chorus of one of the songs, set to the tune ‘Boys of Wexford’. Another began ‘What's that badge, what's that badge, O my brave Jocist girl’, and ended with a call to action typical of the YCW spirit:

Whilst sentiments of this kind were not unusual in the defensive and somewhat triumphalist culture of the English Catholic community in the 1940s and 1950s, the specific depiction of the status, dignity and mission of girls, and particularly of worker girls, was distinctive and rare.

To begin indirectly: any Irish person of my generation (I was born in 1958) who has read even a fraction of the commission reports and commentaries that have issued from Ireland in the past fifteen years on the record of pervasive child sexual abuse (much of it perpetrated by priests and religious and lay teachers), on the complicity between the Irish State and the Roman Catholic Church in the confinement and forced labour of young women and girls, on the systematic humiliation and punishment of unmarried mothers within institutions in which their children either died as infants or were forcibly taken from them as a matter of course, or on the incarceration of children within the vast and terrifying apparatus of industrial schools, will realise that the Irish story has been hollowed out. We are not as we once seemed to be.

1.1Como la comunidad de Pisa, toda Italia y casi todo el mundo os consideran extraordinario, invencible y victorioso señor Alfonso, rey por la gracia de Dios de Castilla, Toledo, León, Galicia, Sevilla, Murcia y Jaén, como el más distinguido de todos los reyes que viven o que vale la pena recordar […] y además saben que Vos amáis sobre todo la paz, la verdad, la piedad y la justicia, que vos sois el más cristiano y más fiel […] sabiendo que descendéis de la sangre de los duques de Suabia, una casa a la que pertenece el Imperio con derecho y dignidad por decisión de los príncipes y por entrega de los papas de la Iglesia […] Bandino di Lanzia's speech

Once the prize had been condemned, the agents were responsible for applying for the Bounty or Head Money due to their clients. They had to provide copies of the necessary documents:

• • The proof of condemnation

• • The proof of the number of men involved in the prize

• • The Power of Attorney from both crews

• • The certified muster lists from both crews

• • A reminder of the Act by which Bounty was to be paid

• • A statement by Samuel Seddon, the Admiralty's Solicitor, that the documentation was complete

• • The Treasury confirming that no flag officer had claimed a share within the fifteen days’ grace allowed

• • The deposition by the master of L’Heureuse that there had been seventysix men on board at the time of the capture

[On the cover of the little parcel of papers] Received the 22nd April 1757 No 395 extra William Redstone, James Bensley, Charles Brett and Philip Stephens Bounty to the Tartar and Happy sloop for taking the Heureux a French privateer £380 0s 0d

The state of the case of William Redstone, James Bensley, Charles Brett and Philip Stephens Esq claiming payment of Bounty Money at £5 per head for 76 men taken in the L’Heureuse a French privateer by his Majesty's ship the Tartar Captain John Lockhart Commander and the Happy sloop Captain Thomas Burnett Commander on 16th September 1756.

To have any hope of being released from French imprisonment, the American merchant seaman held as a prisoner of war had to be able to prove two things: that he was truly American and not British, and that he had not been working for the British at the time of capture. This is only partially analogous to the plight of the impressed American in the Royal Navy, who had to prove only his nationality, although most of the prisoners in France did not understand that.

There is a substantial amount in the historiography of impressment, of the impressment of Americans by a British institution, and of how that led to the creation of a document designed to prevent it, which in turn influenced the development of a modern understanding of citizenship. The 1924 publication, Impressment of American Seamen by James Fulton Zimmerman, remains the foremost study of the British practice as it was used against Americans. Denver Brunsman, in his article “Subjects vs. Citizens” defines its application as a sort of “forced migration”, while Jean Choate termed it “involuntary servitude”; but J. Ross Dancy, in opposition to such views, wrote “though impressment was not the tyrannical and evil implement that history has depicted, on some level it did physically deny men their freedom”, seeming not to perceive that that denial of freedom was the point of contention or that it required tyrannical and evil behaviour on the part of Royal Navy officers to enforce. Dancy's apology brought disputing responses from other historians, particularly Isaac Land. Because so few of the American seamen who ended up as prisoners of war in France had also been impressed by the Royal Navy, impressment is not the real concern of this chapter.

Meta-analysis of previous VAR studies shows that QE multipliers can differ by a factor of 100. But it is unknown if this wide dispersion arises from the use of different QE measures or different VAR modelling approaches. This chapter examines this question

This appendix records the evidence for forms of prayer used by the main nonconforming denominations in Britain on the occasions of special worship appointed by the state or the established churches. In Scotland, the use of set forms was opposed by the established church until the early twentieth century, but congregations of the Episcopal Church adopted the use of the BCP and special forms of prayer from the early eighteenth century. In England and Wales, the position was reversed. In contrast to the Church of England's prolific production of special forms, the dissenter chapels and later the nonconformist and the free church denominations did not publish forms of prayer until the early twentieth century. It should, however, be noted that some dissenters undertook occasional conformity with the Church of England in order to qualify for public office, and so would sometimes be present at church services which used the BCP and perhaps special forms of prayer.

The Episcopal Church in Scotland

As explained in volume 2, pp. lxxvii–lxxviii, cxxiii–cxxiv, an act of toleration in 1712 (10 Anne c. 7) legalized use of the BCP in Scotland, and protected the worship of those members of the Episcopal Church in Scotland who took oaths of loyalty to the crown. From 1714, the always small number of these ‘qualified’ chapels received further official recognition, in being specified together with the Church of Scotland in the orders in council that were issued for alteration of names in prayers for the royal family.

From a sixteenth-century Republic of Letters confined mostly to Europe and centered on practices associated with the recovery, study, and wider use of Greco-Roman antiquity, eighteenth-century learned culture acquired a more global geography, expanding its remit to include critical scholarship about a greater variety of subjects: civic virtue, sentiment, commerce and political economy, natural philosophy, natural rights, and the normative sphere of equality. In ways that are of increasing interest to eighteenth-century intellectual and cultural historians, as well as to historians of early modern cultures’ scholarly practice, aspects of late humanism remained vital as the midwife of the eighteenth-century scholarly culture that begat the Enlightenment. But exactly how the culture of late humanism evolved into one that produced the spectrum of Enlightenment practices and reformist imaginaries remains a fruitful and understudied avenue of inquiry. As I argue in what follows, the articulation of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth century learned cultures emerges into sharpened focus when the origins of the ‘secular Enlightenment’ – and indeed, the full spectrum of Enlightenment practices and reformist imaginaries that flourished by the middle eighteenth century – are historicized as contingent outcomes of a longer-term process by which participants in the expanding early modern republic of letters injected humanist methods and textual erudition into confessionally- driven religious debates, and extended their application to the study of non- European textual traditions.

Chapter 8 synthesizes the book’s theoretical and empirical findings, arguing that partisan inclusion is a critical, but often overlooked, mechanism for building de facto autonomy in electoral management bodies. The conclusion reflects on how Mexico, Ghana, Venezuela, and Kenya illuminate different pathways through which consultation, transparency, and institutional design shape electoral integrity and democratic stability. It outlines the broader implications for policymakers, international organizations, and scholars seeking to strengthen election administration worldwide. The chapter also identifies future research avenues, including the role of technology, decentralization, and evolving party systems. Ultimately, it highlights the importance of designing electoral management bodies that balance independence with engagement, ensuring institutions that can withstand political pressure and earn public trust.

Do psychiatrists have a mandate to recommend how society could be made less stressful for vulnerable people?

Theodor Fontane's Graf Petöfy, presented here for the first time in English translation as Count Petöfy, was originally published serially, in weekly installments, in the summer of 1884, with the first book edition appearing just a few months later. The novel's namesake character is Austro-Hungarian count and theater enthusiast Adam Petofy. Set in the year 1874, the story begins in Vienna, where Petofy, seventy years old and a lifelong bachelor, has decided to propose marriage to the young Prussian actress Franziska Franz. Friends and family on both sides express misgivings and urge caution; they predict that the marriage could be unhappy or even end badly. The two marry anyway and leave Vienna for Arpa Castle in Hungary, where it doesn't take long for things to go badly.

Even from this brief summary, one could make an educated guess and attribute the novel to Fontane. It begins with an ill-advised marriage and ends with the consequences that come of it. The characters make plans and try to carry them out, but things don't work out the way they had planned. It is a book in which not much happens, and what little does happen comes as no surprise. There is an almost tragic element to how things come to pass in the novel, as the characters, despite their best efforts, eventually live out and realize the pessimistic predictions expressed at the outset.

Previous chapters have framed the scope of the Alfonsine interest in the imperial dream and demonstrated that the ideological project pursued by Alfonso X permeated all aspects of his reign. Whilst in a, theoretically, ideal position, the Learned King faced the opposition of the papacy and his own kingdom. His response was to develop an ideological apparatus that could, on paper, explain the reasons why his aspirations were not just fair, but also unquestionable by any earthly powers.

This cultural production ranged from poetry and music to science and games and from political treaties to lengthy chronicles that would go back to the moment of creation. All these works had a place within the ideological universe of Alfonso X and served a purpose: for instance, the legislative works mentioned in the previous chapter exhibited, profusely, the new Alfonsine organization of the kingdom/empire, and the Setenario developed, amongst other topics, the relationship between the monarch with his own past, and with God and religion.

Hence, Alfonso X's cultural programme materialized as the embodiment of the ideological underpinnings of the Castilian-Leonese monarchy during the latter half of the century. These literary creations served to rationalise and bolster Alfonso X's endeavours in pursuit of the imperial crown. While this political aspect is more discernible in select works promoted by Alfonso X – like the Siete Partidas and the Setenario – all of the compositions overseen by the erudite monarch played a role in shaping the ideological architecture of his reign. Together with these legislative works, those within the historiographical genre proved to be key for the Castilian-Leonese monarch's ambitions.

Over the course of the nineteenth century, the violin—hitherto a simple but successful and popular musical instrument—underwent a significant metamorphosis. By 1900 it had become a fetishized art object, an icon of classical music, and a prominent symbol of Western civilization. Developments in the composition and practice of classical music can account for much of this transformation, but the shadow cast by the Industrial Revolution with its overwhelming influence on commerce, consumption, class relations, workplaces, leisure, education, transportation, and communications calls into question a strictly musical explanation. The full account of this fascinating transfiguration includes a number of important factors and a diverse mix of characters. The “sacralization” of the listening experience certainly contributed to the consecration of the violin, but the ways in which these instruments were made, maintained, bought, sold, referred to, collected, exhibited, and—most importantly—identified, were collectively of greater consequence. With the demise of the patronage system, the status of cultural objects—especially art and antiques—suddenly became ambiguous. They were thrust into a state of flux. In the art market that emerged to fill this void in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the destinies of such objects were now determined by broader sociocultural developments external to the objects themselves. Violins, like other cultural artifacts in this new economic environment, became commodities whose value was calculated, not in terms of labor and materials but according to abstract concepts like “authenticity,” “purity,” and “genius.”

Loosely translated as ‘random drawings or sketches’, manga (漫画) and its derivative media can still be frowned upon as an unhealthy subculture, but there is no denying their economic, social, and cultural impact on both domestic and global levels. To begin with, the manga media are a multi-million-dollar industry, in which a single series – often spanning decades – generates countless jobs and income, not only through the traditional sale of books and magazines but also by branching out into animation, merchandise, video games, and collaborations in other forms. Take Berserk as an example: during the past thirty-six years of its serialisation and despite its lack of an ending, the manga has been made into two animated series (1996–97, 2016–17), one animated film trilogy (2012–13) which was re-versioned into a memorial series (2022), and three video games (1999, 2004, 2016), while an exhibition has been touring Japan since 2021. It even has a collaboration cafe in Tokyo where fans can enjoy character- themed snacks and purchase limited edition household items. Nor should the vigorous fan culture be ignored: in addition to staging iconic scenes through cosplay, fans also participate in the process of creation by producing fanart and dōjinshi – that is, self-published print works exploring the manga's narrative world as the fans see fit. On the global level, the manga industry has steadily expanded into international markets since the early 2000s.

In this article, I explore the Angevin royal family's role in the Guelf and Ghibelline conflict that engulfed late medieval Italy. More specifically, I identify the extent of Angevin involvement in Tuscan warfare in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and I explain how the success or failure of monarchs in that conflict shaped contemporary narratives surrounding several monarchs, including Charles I, Robert I, Louis I and Duke Otto of Braunschweig. So, through a close reading of chronicles, letters and epic poetry, I suggest it was this factional violence as much as any other event that shaped the legacy of not only individual rulers but also the Angevins more generally in Italy.

Often did the sounds and cries of war echo around Tuscan cities during the later Middle Ages. Without fear of hyperbole, it is clear that factional warfare, and warfare's terrifying violence, was a common reality for many Tuscans. In fact, the violence was so ubiquitous that medieval chroniclers and other literary voices often framed notable events, ranging from the torture of an abbot to a fire that destroyed half of Florence in 1304, within the light of this great conflict. Dino Compagni (c. 1255–1324) calls the factions an “evil” (mali). Giovanni Villani (c. 1276–1348) writes that “Italy was stained and almost all of Europe, and many ills and perils, and destructions and changes have followed thereupon to our city and to the whole world.”