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Family Affairs: a history of the family in 20th century England (Print copy) by
The decades between the close of World War I and the end of the Thatcher era have changed and challenged family life in England dramatically. The Depression and World War II shifted priorities and behaviour, as did the Welfare State, the Pill and Women's Lib later on. What threatened a family's respectability in the 1920s is often commonplace today - abortion, contraception, the single parent family, or gay relationships. Family Affairs explores the secret life of English families from 1920 to 1990. Mary Abbott takes the reader into her subjects' homes and hearts and provokes readers to reflect on families past and speculate on families future. A product of intense original research of primary and secondary sources, this volume is a useful contribution to the history of the family.
Family Ties: English Families 1540-1920 (Print copy) by
r s1mily Ties provides a vivid and accessible introduction to the dynamics of life in English families of all ranks from the mid-sixteenth century to the end of World War I. Sections on methods, approaches and sources allow readers new to the study of the past to explore some of the historian's fundamental concerns: cause and effect; continuity and change and the nature and reliability of evidence. The chronological and thematic organization of the book enables readers to examine a number of sub-themes such as the history of childhood or of marriage. Combining extensive contemporary quotations and an unusual variety of illustrations with a wide range of written and material sources, the book provides a fascinating insight into the history of the family and encourages the reader to become a sceptical and imaginative investigator, prepared to venture beyond the historian's traditional documentary sources.
Approaches to the History of the Western Family 1500-1914 (Print copy) by
Over the past thirty years family history has been one of the most important and controversial growth areas in the development of social history. In this guide to the burgeoning literature on the Western family Professor Anderson reviews the main findings of historians and considers them in the light of the problems inherent in the interpretation of family history. He focuses particularly on the strengths and limitations of the different approaches that have been adopted, showing that although this variety of method has complicated matters, it has also produced a more rounded understanding of the history of the family. Updated to include work published between 1980 and 1994, this book will be invaluable to students of family history, and to scholars who are non-specialist in the field.
Family Love in the Diaspora by
Colonial social policy in the British West Indies from the nineteenth century onward assumed that black families lacked morals, structure, and men, a void that explained poverty and lack of citizenship. African-Caribbean families appeared as the mirror opposite of the "ideal" family advocated by the white, colonial authorities. Yet contrary to this image, what provided continuity in the period and contributed to survival was in fact the strength of family connections, their inclusivity and support. This study is based on 150 life story narratives across three generations of forty-five families who originated in the former British West Indies. The author focuses on the particular axes of Caribbean peoples from the former British colonies of Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados, and Great Britain. Divided into four parts, the chapters within each present an oral history of migrant African-Caribbean families, demonstrating the varieties, organization, and dynamics of family through their memories and narratives. It traces the evolution of Caribbean life; argues how the family can be seen as the tool that helps transmit and transform historical mentalities; examines the dynamics of family life; and makes comparisons with Indo-Caribbean families. Above all, this is a story of families that evolved, against the odds of slavery and poverty, to form a distinct Creole form, through which much of the social history of the English-speaking Caribbean is refracted. Family Love in the Diaspora offers an important new perspective on African-Caribbean families, their history, and the problems they face, for now and the future. It offers a long overdue historical dimension to the debates on Caribbean families. Mary Chamberlain is professor of modern social history at Oxford Brookes University, in the United Kingdom. She is co-editor of the Transaction Memory and Narrative series, which now has nineteen volumes in print.
White Heat by
Harold Wilson's famous reference to 'white heat' captured the optimistic spirit of a society in the midst of breathtaking change. From the gaudy pleasures of Swinging London to the tragic bloodshed in Northern Ireland, from the intrigues of Westminster to the drama of the World Cup, British life seemed to have taken on a dramatic new momentum. The memories, images and colourful personalities of those heady times still resonate today: mop-tops and mini-skirts, strikes and demonstrations, Carnaby Street and Kings Road, Harold Wilson and Edward Heath, Mary Quant and Jean Shrimpton, Enoch Powell and Mary Whitehouse, Marianne Faithfull and Mick Jagger. In this wonderfully rich and readable historical narrative, Dominic Sandbrook looks behind the myths of the Swinging Sixties to unearth the contradictions of a society caught between optimism and decline.
Unequal Britain by
This book probes what equality is and this means for both those at the centre and on the margins of British society.
From the Bomb to the Beatles by
Published in order to accompany an exhibition of the same name at the Imperial War Museum, this book focuses on the cultural and social developments in Britain in the twenty years following the Second World War'
Lovers and Strangers by
TLS BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2017 'Generous and empathetic ... opens up postwar migration in all its richness' Sukhdev Sandhu, Guardian 'Groundbreaking, sophisticated, original, open-minded ... essential reading for anyone who wants to understand not only the transformation of British society after the war but also its character today' Piers Brendon, Literary Review 'Lyrical, full of wise and original observations' David Goodhart, The Times The battered and exhausted Britain of 1945 was desperate for workers - to rebuild, to fill the factories, to make the new NHS work. From all over the world and with many motives, thousands of individuals took the plunge. Most assumed they would spend just three or four years here, sending most of their pay back home, but instead large numbers stayed - and transformed the country. Drawing on an amazing array of unusual and surprising sources, Clair Wills' wonderful new book brings to life the incredible diversity and strangeness of the migrant experience. She introduces us to lovers, scroungers, dancers, homeowners, teachers, drinkers, carers and many more to show the opportunities and excitement as much as the humiliation and poverty that could be part of the new arrivals' experience. Irish, Bengalis, West Indians, Poles, Maltese, Punjabis and Cypriots battled to fit into an often shocked Britain and, to their own surprise, found themselves making permanent homes. As Britain picked itself up again in the 1950s migrants set about changing life in their own image, through music, clothing, food, religion, but also fighting racism and casual and not so casual violence. Lovers and Strangers is an extremely important book, one that is full of enjoyable surprises, giving a voice to a generation who had to deal with the reality of life surrounded by 'white strangers' in their new country.
Histories and Memories by
Who are the migrants that have flocked to Britain since the nineteenth century? How do they understand their experiences? Histories and Memories examines this question from the perspective of the migrants themselves, and the ways in which historians and popular culture have recognized them. In so doing, it explores a wide range of ethnic groups and experiences from racism to Britishness, self-perception and the role of memory in migrant history.
Housewives and Citizens; domesticity and the women's movement (Print copy) CURRENTLY ON ORDER by
After an extremely successful debut in hardback, Housewives and citizens is now available in paperback for the first time. This book explores the contribution that five conservative, voluntary and popular women's organisations made to women's lives and to the campaign for women's rights throughout the period 1928-64. The book challenges existing histories of the women's movement that suggest the movement went into decline during the inter-war period, only to be revived by the emergence of the Women's Liberation Movement in the late 1960s. It is argued that the term 'women's movement' must be revised to allow a broader understanding of female agency encompassing feminist, political, religious and conservative women's groups who campaigned to improve the status of women throughout the twentieth century. The book provides a radical re-assessment of this period of women's history and in doing so makes a significant contribution to ongoing debates about the shape and impact of the women's movement in twentieth-century Britain.
Cultural Ideals of Home: the social dynamics of social space. (Print copy) by
Spanning the nineteenth to twenty-first centuries, this book investigates how home is imagined, staged and experienced in western culture. Questions about meanings of 'home' and domestic culture are triggered by dramatic changes in values and ideals about the dwellings we live in and the dwellings we desire or dread. Deborah Chambers explores how home is idealised as a middle-class haven, managed as an investment, and signified as a status symbol and expression of personal identity. She addresses a range of public, state, commercial, popular and expert discourses about 'home': the heritage industry, design, exhibitions, television, social media, home mobilities and migration, smart technologies and ecological sustainability. Drawing on cross-disciplinary research including cultural history and cultural geography, the book offers a distinctive media and cultural studies approach supported by original, historically informed case studies on interior and domestic design; exhibitions of model homes; TV home interiors; 'media home' imaginaries; multiscreen homes; corporate visions of 'homes of tomorrow' and digital smart homes. A comprehensive and engaging study, this book is ideal for students and researchers of cultural studies, cultural history, media and communication studies, as well as sociology, gender studies, cultural geography and design studies.
Art and Masculinity in Post-War Britain. (Print copy) by
In this book, Gregory Salter traces how artists represented home and masculinities in the period of social and personal reconstruction after the Second World War in Britain. Salter considers home as an unstable entity at this historical moment, imbued with the optimism and hopes of post-war recovery while continuing to resonate with the memories and traumas of wartime. Artists examined in the book include John Bratby, Francis Bacon, Keith Vaughan, Francis Newton Souza and Victor Pasmore. Case studies featured range from the nuclear family and the body, to the nation. Combined, they present an argument that art enables an understanding of post-war reconstruction as a temporally unstable, long-term phenomenon which placed conceptions of home and masculinity at the heart of its aims. Art and Masculinity in Post-War Britain sheds new light on how the fluid concepts of society, nation, masculinity and home interacted and influenced each other at this critical period in history and will be of interest to anyone studying art history, anthropology, sociology, history and cultural and heritage studies.
The Shadow of Marriage: singleness in England 1914 - 60 (Print copy) by
This book stakes out new territory within an exciting, emerging field of study. Not only does it uncover the history of a neglected group, but it also offers valuable insights into the significance of marital status which are equally relevant to current debates on marriage and family.The book examines representations and experiences of men and women who never married between 1914 and 1960, drawing upon an exceptionally wide range of sources including biographies, oral histories, novels, films, government statistics and social surveys. An introductory chapter on work and non-familial lifestyles highlights the significance of age, generation and gender. The main focus in the rest of the book is on unmarried men and women's intimate, sexual, familial and professional relationships. These raise important questions about how these categories have been defined and expose power relations between married and single people. The material on adult/child relationships is particularly innovative. The author probes the boundaries of the nuclear family in the mid-twentieth century through her account of the high levels of interest and involvement in children's care and education by unmarried women as well as largely invisible relationships between children and unmarried men.As the first major study of the history of single women and men in England, this will be a valuable resource for researchers and students in social history, gender studies, women's studies, social policy and sociology. Its accessible style and the inclusion of personal material from the author's life and family will undoubtedly also attract a wider readership.
Ideal Homes: uncovering the history and design of the interwar house. (Print copy) by
Ideal homes investigates the tastes and aspirations of the new suburban communities that emerged in Britain following the First World War. In a period when homeownership was becoming the norm, these communities sought out varieties of architecture and design that were both nostalgic and modern, reflecting longings for 'Old England' on the one hand and technological convenience on the other. The book draws on exhibitions, memoirs, advertisements and films, as well as surviving examples of suburban architecture and interiors, to identify a distinctively suburban modernism, embodied by the Tudorbethan semi. Arguing that the 'ideal' home of the period was both a retreat from the outside world and a site of change and experimentation, it concludes by considering how such houses are lived in today. This new edition also features an introductory chapter on researching the history of your own home.
