TELEGRAPH BOOKS OF THE YEAR and OBSERVER BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2014 'This book is a record of what has moved me between Uxbridge and Dagenham. My hope is that it moves you, too.' Nairn's London is an idiosyncratic, poetic and intensely subjective meditation on a city and its buildings. Including railway stations, synagogues, abandoned gasworks, dock cranes, suburban gardens, East End markets, Hawksmoor churches, a Gothic cinema and twenty-seven different pubs, it is a portrait of the soul of a place, from a writer of genius.
Hollywood Online provides a historical account of motion picture websites from 1993 to 2008 and their marketing function as industrial advertisements for video and other media in the digital age. The Blair Witch Project is the most important example of online film promotion in cinema history. Over the last thirty years only a small number of major and independent distributors have converted internet-created buzz into box-office revenues with similar levels of success. Yet readings of how the film's internet campaign broke new ground in the summer of 1999 tend to minimize, overlook or ignore the significance of other online film promotions. Similarly, claims that Blair initiated a cycle of imitators have been repeated in film publications and academic studies for more than two decades. This book challenges three major narratives in studies about online film marketing: Hollywood's major studios and independents had no significant relationship to the internet in the 1990s; online film promotions only took off after 1999 because of Blair; and Hollywood cashed-in by initiating a cycle of imitators and scaling up corporate activities online. Hollywood Online tests these assumptions by exploring internet marketing up to and including the film's success online (Pre-Blair, 1993-9), then by examining the period immediately after Blair (Post-Blair, 2000-8) which broadly coincides with the rise and decline of DVD, as well as the emergence of the social media sites MySpace, Facebook and Twitter.
For decades the cities of the developed world were seen as problem-beset relics from times of low mobility and slow communications. But now, their potential to sustain creativity, culture and innovation is perceived as crucial to success in a much more competitive global ecomony. The vital requirement to secure and sustain this success is argued to be the achievement of social cohesion. Working Capital provides a rigorous but accessible analysis of these key issues taking London as its test case. The book provides the first substantial analysis of key economic, social and structural issues that the new London administration needs to deal with. In a wider context, its critical assessment of the bases of the new urbanism and of the global city thesis will raise questions both about the adequacy of urban thinking and about the capacity of new institutions alone to resolve the fundamental problems faced by cities.
Containing some 85 new and, we believe, previously unpublished colour photos accompanied by detailed captions, recording London and its transport network and other aspects of the city in the years between the end of World War 2 and the 1960s.
This book explores the cultural life of Italian opera in late eighteenth-century London. Through primary sources, many analysed for the first time, Ian Woodfield examines such issues as finances, recruitment policy, handling of singers and composers, links with Paris and Italy, and the role of women in opera management.
The wedding of Tom Smith's son and Coddy Hughes' daughter joined together two of England's most ruthless and powerful crime syndicates. Time has not been kind to these two royal families of British organized crime. "The end of an era was drawing in," according to Dave Smith, scion of the dying kingpin Tom Smith. "The legends were dying out." I. K. Watson's novel, 'London Town', recounts the mob savagery that erupts when bad blood on the domestic front spills over into the arena of business (and, of course, crime).
The Figure of the Crowd in Early Modern London examines the cultural phenomenon of the urban crowd in the context of early modern London's population crisis. The book explores the crowd's double function as a symbol of the city's growth and as the necessary context for the public performance of urban culture. Its central argument is that the figure of the crowd acts as a supplement to the symbolic space of the city, at once providing a tangible referent for urban meaning and threatening the legibility of that meaning through its motive force and uncontrollable energy.
This contribution to the debate about the relation of religion to the modern city fills a gap in the historiography of early 19th-century religious life. It provides a pioneering study of local churches in the urban environment.
This title, first published in 1985, examines the evolution of the laws relating to debt and credit during the industrial revolution. Since economic activity was so precarious during the industrial revolution it is important to explore the legal procedures designed to deal with its victims. This work examines two aspects of financial collapse during the industrial revolution: the legal and institutional framework which defined and regulated it, and bankruptcy itself. This title will be of interest to students of history, law and economics.
An epic motorbike ride from the UK through Europe, Asia and Mongolia to the outer reaches of Siberia. A book about the healing power of travel and motorcycling through an unknown landscape. Fully illustrated with the photographs the author took while on the journey. When his wife died tragically, Ian Rogers decided that to ride from London to Magadan, in Russia, would be his road to healing and recovery. Completing the Road of Bones on a motorcycle would be an escape route from the helplessness he had felt as he had nursed his wife through the cancer that he would in the end lose her to. It took him away from his work, his family, his normal life and gave him the time to grieve and put his world in perspective. No windows, no automatic transmission, no metal box protection and absolutely no safety belt, motorcycling fills your senses. Wind, rain, sunshine, smells and with your eyes always on the prize be it the idiot road users in built up areas or mile upon mile of breath-taking Monglian wilderness. Join the author for a journey of discovery through 15 countries, 11 time zones and 30,000 kilometres of Europe, Central Asia and the Far East. An adventure story as well as a homage to the author’s wife, this is diary of a journey to places people do not normally think of visiting, or know anything about. ‘It’s good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters in the end.’ Ursula Le Guin, author.
What if Victorian London were an amusement park where the inhabitants were actors hired to entertain visitors from the twenty-first century? Now imagine if Jack the Ripper was a planned attraction gone horribly wrong. Life inside the park, Pastworld, is all Eve has ever known. But then she meets a tourist in terrible trouble. Their adventure through this dark and dangerous theme park is sure to grab teens.
The technical problems confronting different societies in different periods and the measures taken to solve them form the concern of this annual collection of essays. Dealing with the history of technical discovery and change, the volumes in this series explore the relationship of technology to other aspects of life-social, cultural and economic-and show how technological development has shaped, and been shaped by, the society in which it has occurred.
When it comes to being bombed, London is unique. Although it cannot claim to be the most bombed capital city in terms of the weight of explosive detonated it has endured the most varied and unrelenting attack since the discovery of explosives. From the first Irish Republican bomb in 1867, London and its population have been under almost constant assault. Terrorism features in virtually every decade from the 1860s to the present and has caused much damage, particularly during the late 1980s and early 1990s. However, by far the greatest destruction was from the air. The Zeppelin and Gotha bomber raids in the First World War being but a foretaste of what would happen in the Second. Then the capital was devastated, firstly by the LuftwaffeÕs aeroplanes and then HitlerÕs ÔvengeanceÕ weapons, the V-1s and V-2s. After the Second World War the bombers returned, in the form of the IRA and then the homegrown terrorists of 2005. Written by a former Explosives Officer who worked for the Counter Terrorism Command of the Metropolitan Police, this is the most comprehensive record of BritainÕs capital under attack that has ever been compiled.
This title presents the findings of the Policing for London project, an independent investigation into policing in London in the wake of the death of Stephen Lawrence and the subsequent MacPherson Report. The main aim of the project was to identify the factors the police in London needed to consider in order to deliver an equitable and effective service to the people of London in the 21st century. The book sets out the findings of this project in terms of what Londoners wanted and needed for their policing, whether the Metropolitan Police was aware of the public's expectations, whether they met these expectations, and to examine how policing in London could be improved in the future. It also identifies a number of key policy issues in the light of its findings - for example in relation to the centralisation or devolution of decision making, specialisation of function, performance management, policing philosophies and partnership, and the need to regain the confidence of ethnic minority groups. In identifying the key issues facing policing in London this book provides a vital blueprint for addressing the question of police reform in the country as a whole - at a time of intense debate and concern about the future role of the police.
Another adventure in the Heidi Fuchs series. May 1941 - the German invasion of Russia is about to begin - but first there's a death to arrange in England. Deputy Fuhrer, Rudolf Hess, flies secretly to Britain - supposedly for peace talks, but carrying in his head full details of the forthcoming German invasion of Russia. Hitler, spitting fury at this betrayal orders his death, and a top agent is dispatched in pursuit. Meanwhile in London, the happily retired Sir Freddy Villiers and his partner, female Gendarmerie officer Martine Dumont, have decided to reject any further suggestions of dangerous secret missions in occupied Europe. They have escaped unharmed from their last two excursions but think that any more would be tempting fate. Unfortunately, on this occasion they don't need to cross the Channel to find trouble. Trouble, in the shapely form of Heidi Fuchs, has just parachuted in - to find them. But surely they can expect the full support and cooperation of the British security services - after all, whose side are MI6 supposed to be on? "Utterly realistic with superb research - you live the action with the characters.
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