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This book demonstrates a fruitful cross-fertilisation of ideas between British queer history and art history. It engages with self-identified lesbians and with another highly important source for queer history: oral history. The book highlights the international dimension of what to date has been told as a classic British tale of homosexual law reform and also illuminates the choices made and constraints imposed at the national level. It embarks on a queer critical history, arguing for the centrality, in John Everett Millais's life-writing, of the strange-to-us category of unconventionality. The book aims to expose the queer implications of celebrity gossip writing. It offers a historical analysis of the link between homosexual men and gossip by examining the origins of the gossip column in the British tabloid press in the three decades after 1910. The book provides an overview of the emergence and consolidation of a number of new discourses of homosexuality as a social practice in postwar Britain. It explores a British variant on homophile internationalism before and immediately after the 1967 Sexual Offences Act by mapping Grey's cross-border connections while noting strain against transnational solidarity. The book focuses on evidence collected by the 1977 Committee on Obscenity and Film Censorship to illustrate how gay men conceptualised the place of pornography in their lives and its role in the broader struggle for the freedom.
Stephen King: ‘I have seen the future of horror … and his name is Clive Barker’ (on the front cover), and ‘What Barker does makes the rest of us look like we've been asleep for the last ten years’ (on the back). 1 Formally and aesthetically, the Books of Blood are clear products of their time. The short-form horror fiction anthology was enduringly popular in postwar Britain, a
Since the end of the twentieth century research on postwar British lesbian life and culture has commonly focused on themes such as socialising and the creation of networks, especially the lesbian bar scene and lesbian social organisations. Research into the history of Arena Three , the first lesbian magazine in Britain, for example, has provided evidence of the ways in which more geographically isolated women sought out connections and means of self-identification. 1 This focus is hardly surprising since the postwar period saw the most widespread
members, plus vacuous statements on wider global issues. The spheres of foreign policy In his perceptive book Between Europe and America , Andrew Gamble (2003, pp. 30–4) recalls Churchill’s 1946 invocation of Britain being at the touching point of three spheres: the British Empire; Anglo-America and Europe. Gamble suggests that ‘Britain’ should now be seen as a ‘union’ of its devolved constituent parts. There were at least three areas in which postwar British foreign policy could invest its emphasis, often represented by three spheres: Europe, America and the
Three groups of criminals make regular appearances in postwar British films. The first are the spivs. These black market traders are young, opportunistic and distinguishable by their clothes. Their adroitness in keeping a step ahead of authority stands them in good stead for evading conscription. The second group have served in the forces, but cannot adjust to civilian life. Many are officers down on their
tulip mania and anticipated our recent global dot.com fiasco. Was postwar British railway book publishing a greed-fuelled Gadarene rush like these eruptions of market irrationality? We need good data to answer this question, but they exist only for dates after 1990: the year when Whitaker’s Book List’s summary tables began to tally the total number of British railway books published each year. Using Whitaker’s data, Figure 2.2 shows that 298 150,000 600 100,000 400 50,000 200 0 1990 1995 All books Figure 2.2 2000 0 2005 Railway books Total number of books
Laurence Olivier’s spectacular death plunge at Stratford-upon-Avon’s Shakespeare Memorial Theatre (SMT) in 1959 provides Coriolanus and postwar British theatre with one of its most striking and best-known images. Having been impaled by Volscian spears, the fifty-two-year-old Olivier, incredibly, dived headfirst from a rocky ledge more than ten feet above the stage. Angus
–7. 25 For a similar point, see Ashley Franklin, A Cinema Near You: 100 Years of Going to the Pictures in Derbyshire (Derby: Breedon Books, 1996), p. 88. 26 Paul Swann, The Hollywood Feature Film in Postwar Britain (New York: St Martins Press, 1987), p. 21. 27 Walter
the reins, and realigning ones in which voters opt for a change of direction and the underlying strength of the main parties is significantly changed. Sometimes, of course, voting for a different party does not fundamentally shift policy onto a new course, but in most countries it is possible to think of landmark dates when electors signalled their wish to opt for something different. In postwar Britain, there have been elections which have produced (or promised to produce) a critical realignment, and these have included 1945, 1964, 1979 and 1997. In 2001, voters
bestow privileges including ‘learning, earning and marrying more’. 3 However, Levy also wrote that ‘America’s story will not do’ for Black experiences in Britain. 4 Taking this assertion as a crucial node of analysis in postwar Britain, this chapter maps a specifically Black British beauty story. The chapter explores the creation of Black British