Amy Tooth Murphy
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'I conformed; I got married. It seemed like a good idea at the time'
Domesticity in postwar lesbian oral history
in British queer history
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. This chapter aims to open a small window on to the obscured area of postwar lesbian domesticity. It draws a distinction between what can usefully be termed hetero-domesticity and homo-domesticity. Analysis of case studies from across the range of experience reveals the impact of available models of hetero-domesticity on the ways in which narrators envisioned and created domestic spaces to foster and live out lesbian relationships. Penelope and Nina speak evocatively about the restrictiveness they imagined would come with hetero-domesticity. In both Laura's and Mira's cases former hetero-domesticity poses a threat to the continuity of their narrative trajectories and their presentation of themselves as out and 'composed' lesbian women.
British queer history
New approaches and perspectives
British art history; British queer history; British tabloid press; Film Censorship; gay pornography; gossip writing; homophile internationalism; homosexual law reform; John Everett Millais; postwar Britain; self-identified lesbians; Sexual Offences Act; social practice; transnational solidarity
Chapter 1: Politics and the reporting of sex between men in the 1820s
Chapter 2: Naturalism, labour and homoerotic desire
Chapter 3: Bricks and Flowers
Chapter 4: 'A peculiarly obscure subject'
Chapter 5: 'These young men who come down from Oxford and write gossip'
Chapter 6: Thinking queer
Chapter 7: 'I conformed; I got married. It seemed like a good idea at the time'
Chapter 8: The homosexual as a social being in Britain, 1945–1968
Chapter 9: Mr Grey goes to Washington
Chapter 10: Films and Filming
Chapter 11: The cultural politics of gay pornography in 1970s Britain
Disability in industrial Britain
A cultural and literary history of impairment in the coal industry, 1880–1948
Kirsti Bohata
Alexandra Jones
Mike Mantin
Steven Thompson
Coalmining was a notoriously dangerous industry and many of its workers experienced injury and disease. However, the experiences of the many disabled people within Britain's most dangerous industry have gone largely unrecognised by historians. This book examines the British coal industry through the lens of disability, using an interdisciplinary approach to examine the lives of disabled miners and their families.
The book considers the coal industry at a time when it was one of Britain's most important industries, and follows it through a period of growth up to the First World War, through strikes, depression and wartime, and into an era of decline. During this time, the statutory provision for disabled people changed considerably, most notably with the first programme of state compensation for workplace injury. And yet disabled people remained a constant presence in the industry as many disabled miners continued their jobs or took up 'light work'. The burgeoning coalfields literature used images of disability on a frequent basis and disabled characters were used to represent the human toll of the industry.
A diverse range of sources are used to examine the economic, social, political and cultural impact of disability in the coal industry, looking beyond formal coal company and union records to include autobiographies, novels and oral testimony. It argues that, far from being excluded entirely from British industry, disability and disabled people were central to its development. The book will appeal to students and academics interested in disability history, disability studies, social and cultural history, and representations of disability in literature.
Royal tourists, colonial subjects and the making of a British world, 1860–1911
Charles V. Reed
Royal Tourists, Colonial Subjects, and the Making of a British World, 1860-1911 examines the ritual space of nineteenth-century royal tours of empire and the diverse array of historical actors who participated in them. The book is a tale of royals who were ambivalent and bored partners in the project of empire; colonial administrators who used royal ceremonies to pursue a multiplicity of projects and interests or to imagine themselves as African chiefs or heirs to the Mughal emperors; local princes and chiefs who were bullied and bruised by the politics of the royal tour, even as some of them used the tour to symbolically appropriate or resist British cultural power; and settlers of European descent and people of colour in the empire who made claims on the rights and responsibilities of imperial citizenship and as co-owners of Britain's global empire. Royal Tourists, Colonial Subjects, and the Making of a British World suggests that the diverse responses to the royal tours of the nineteenth century demonstrate how a multi-centred British-imperial culture was forged in the empire and was constantly made and remade, appropriated and contested. In this context, subjects of empire provincialized the British Isles, centring the colonies in their political and cultural constructions of empire, Britishness, citizenship, and loyalty.
Civilising rural Ireland
The co-operative movement, development and the nation-state, 1889–1939
Civilising Rural Ireland examines how modern Ireland emerged out of the social and economic transformation prompted by the rural co-operative movement. The movement emerged in response to systemic economic problems that arose throughout the nineteenth century and coincided with a wide-ranging project of cultural nationalism. Within a short space of time the co-operative movement established a swathe of creameries, agricultural societies and credit societies, leading to a radical reorganisation of rural Ireland and helping to create a distinctive Irish political economy. The work of overlooked co-operative experts is critically examined for the first time and reinserted into the process of state development. The interventions of these organisers, intellectuals and farmers built up key institutions that shaped everyday life across rural communities. The movement weathered war and revolution, to become an indispensable part of an Irish state infrastructure after independence in 1922. The strained relationship and economic rivalry that developed between Irish and British co-operators is also explored in order to illuminate the changing relationship between Ireland and the United Kingdom from an economic perspective. Civilising Rural Ireland will appeal to a wide audience interested in modern Irish history and readers are introduced to an eclectic range of personalities who shared an interest in co-operation and whose actions possessed important consequences for the way Ireland developed. The creative use of local and national sources, many of which are examined for the first time, mean the book offers a new perspective on an important period in the making of modern Ireland.