Changing Approaches to Local History: Warwickshire History and Its Historians


Book Description

Develops an understanding of Warwickshire's past for outsiders and those already engaged with the subject, and to explore questions which apply in other regions, including those outside the United Kingdom.




George Dawson and His Circle: the Civic Gospel in Victorian


Book Description

This book recovers the stories a group of men of vision behind the elevation and civilising of Birmingham's citizens, men who have not received their due: the architect J.H. Chamberlain, the Shakespeare scholar Sam: Timmins, the reforming lawyer Arthur Ryland, the newspaper proprietor J.T. Bunce, the ministers R.W. Dale and Henry Crosskey and others in seeking to nurture intellectual development and aesthetic taste with art and technical education, free libraries and fine civic architecture.




Birmingham


Book Description

This is a detailed, authoritative, and easy-to-use guide to the architectural wealth of England's second city, the "workshop of the world." Birmingham's major buildings include its splendid English Baroque cathedral, pioneering Neo-Roman town hall, and still controversial Central Library of the 1970s. Streets of rich and varied Victorian and Edwardian architecture bear witness to an earlier era when Birmingham's civic initiatives were the admiration of the country. More recently, the city has been rejuvenated with architecture on a giant scale, including the iconoclastic Selfridges and the canalside precinct of Brindleyplace, where Modernism and Classical Revival are excitingly juxtaposed. The guide also explores a variety of outer districts and suburbs, among them the famous Jewellery Quarter, the stucco villas of Edgbaston, and Cadbury's celebrated Garden Suburb at Bournville. A connecting theme is provided by the local Arts and Crafts school, which flourished well into the twentieth century.




Welfare and Social Policy in Britain Since 1870


Book Description

This collection of twelve essays reviews the history of welfare in Britain over the past 150 years. It focuses on the ideas that have shaped the development of British social policy, and on the thinkers who have inspired and also contested the welfare state. It thereby constructs an intellectual history of British welfare since the concept first emerged at the end of the nineteenth century. The essays divide into four sections. The first considers the transition from laissez-faire to social liberalism from the 1870s, and the enduring impact of late-Victorian philosophical idealism on the development of the welfare state. It focuses on the moral philosophy of T. H. Green and his influence on key figures in the history of British social policy like William Beveridge, R. H. Tawney, and William Temple. The second section is devoted to the concept of 'planning' which was once, in the mid-twentieth century, at the heart of social policy and its implementation, but which has subsequently fallen out of favour. A third section examines the intellectual debate over the welfare state since its creation in the 1940s. Though a consensus seemed to have emerged during the Second World War over the desirability and scope of a welfare state extending 'from the cradle to the grave', libertarian and conservative critiques endured and re-emerged a generation later. A final section examines social policy and its implementation more recently, both at grass roots level in a study of community action in West London in the districts made infamous by the fire at Grenfell Tower in 2017, and at a systemic level where different models of welfare provision are shown to be in uneasy co-existence today. The collection is a tribute to Jose Harris, emeritus professor of history in the University of Oxford and a pioneer of the intellectual history of social policy. Taken together, these essays conduct the reader through the key phases and debates in the history of British welfare.




The Story of Leicester


Book Description

The Story of Leicester traces the evolution of this remarkable city. When the Romans arrived they developed an existing settlement into Ratae, an administrative capital. During the Tudor, Stuart and Georgian periods the town lost status, but remained an important market town. Industrialisation and population growth radically changed Leicester during Victorian times and it became prosperous, its economy underpinned by the hosiery, boot and shoe and engineering industries – the basis of modern Leicester. This popular history brings the story of the city up to date and provides new insights that will delight both residents and visitors.




Bad Religion


Book Description

Traces the decline of Christianity in America since the 1950s, posing controversial arguments about the role of heresy in the nation's downfall while calling for a revival of traditional Christian practices.




The Victorian Age in Literature


Book Description

The Victorian Age in Literature, a classical book, has been considered important throughout the human history, and so that this work is never forgotten we at Alpha Editions have made efforts in its preservation by republishing this book in a modern format for present and future generations. This whole book has been reformatted, retyped and designed. These books are not made of scanned copies of their original work and hence the text is clear and readable.




Dilettanti


Book Description

Bruce Redford re-creates the vibrant culture of connoisseurship in Enlightenment England by investigating the multifaceted activities and achievements of the Society of Dilettani. Elegantly and wittily he dissects the British connoisseurs whose expeditions, collections, and publications laid the groundwork for the Neoclassical revival and for the scholarly study of Graeco-Roman antiquity. After the foundation of the society in 1732, the Dilettani commissioned portraits of the members. Including a striking group of mock-classical and mock-religious representations, these portraits were painted by George Knapton, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and Sir Thomas Lawrence. During the second half of the century, the society’s expeditions to the Levant yielded a series of pioneering architectural folios, beginning with the first volume The Antiquities of Athens in 1762. These monumental volumes aspired to empirical exactitude in text and image alike. They prepared the way for Specimens of Antient Sculpture (1809), which combines the didactic (detailed investigations into technique, condition, restoration, and provenance) with the connoisseurial (plates that bring the illustration of ancient sculpture to new artistic heights). The Society of Dilettanti’s projects and publications exemplify the Enlightenment ideal of the gentleman amateur, which is linked in turn to a culture of wide-ranging curiosity.




More Than Munich


Book Description