Seasons in the sun: the battle for Britain, 1974-1979

Seasons in the Sun is a lively and attractively written account of Britain in the mid to late 1970s, covering all the political and cultural highlights and low days that readers might expect. Paul Brighton notes that although it shouldn’t be taken as the last word on the era of Wilson and Callaghan, it is witty, wide-ranging and much more than a “book of the TV series”. Seasons in the Sun: The Battle for Britain, 1974-1979. Dominic Sandbrook. Allen Lane. April 2012

Gods, Heroes, & Kings: The Battle for Mythic Britain

The islands of Britain have been a crossroads of gods, heroes, and kings-those of flesh as well as those of myth-for thousands of years. Successive waves of invasion brought distinctive legends, rites, and beliefs. The ancient Celts displaced earlier indigenous peoples, only to find themselves displaced in turn by the Romans, who then abandoned the islands to Germanic tribes, a people themselves nearly overcome in time by an influx of Scandinavians. With each wave of invaders came a battle for the mythic mind of the Isles as the newcomer\u27s belief system met with the existing systems of gods, legends, and myths.In Gods, Heroes, and Kings, medievalist Christopher Fee and veteran myth scholar David Leeming unearth the layers of the British Isles\u27 unique folkloric tradition to discover how this body of seemingly disparate tales developed. The authors find a virtual battlefield of myths in which pagan and Judeo-Christian beliefs fought for dominance, and classical, Anglo-Saxon, Germanic, and Celtic narrative threads became tangled together. The resulting body of legends became a strange but coherent hybrid, so that by the time Chaucer wrote The Wife of Bath\u27s Tale in the fourteenth century, a Christian theme of redemption fought for prominence with a tripartite Celtic goddess and the Arthurian legends of Sir Gawain-itself a hybrid mythology.Without a guide, the corpus of British mythology can seem impenetrable. Taking advantage of the latest research, Fee and Leeming employ a unique comparative approach to map the origins and development of one of the richest folkloric traditions. Copiously illustrated with excerpts in translation from the original sources,Gods, Heroes, and Kings provides a fascinating and accessible new perspective on the history of British mythology. [From the publisher]https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/books/1066/thumbnail.jp

Power to the people: Murdoch Jnr on public service broadcasting

The public service broadcasting battle in Britain is about much more than the regulation of TV. It is a fight for the very nature of the news media in the UK and possibly beyond

9. The Second World War (1939-1945)

In the first year of war, while Poland succumbed to German armored columns, on the western front the contestants were stalemated. Then, in the spring of 1940, Germany struck through the neutral Netherlands and Belgium and overran France. Norway and Denmark were also captured. Scenting carrion, Mussolini acted the jackal and brought Italy into the war on Germany\u27s side at what he confidently expected was the moment of victory. For a year only Britain held out against the Axis, protected by her island position and the air umbrella provided by the Royal Air Force. Late in 1940, Mussolini invaded Greece, but when he ran into unexpected resistance he had to call on the Germans for help. To accommodate Mussolini, Hitler had to conquer Yugoslavia. Then, frustrated by Britain\u27s resistance, he turned on Russia in the summer of 1941. Back and forth the battle line swayed across the plains of eastern Europe as the two giants slugged it out. [excerpt

An Analysis of Factors Affecting the Royal Air Force Contribution to the Raid on Dieppe, 1942

This paper seeks to explain the limited options available to Air Marshal Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory when planning the Royal Air Force (RAF) portion of the combined operation raid on Dieppe in 1942. It proposes that a number of constraining influences, some self-imposed, reduced the air support options, so that only an air umbrella over the attacking forces could be provided. It argues that these influences were a consequence of the RAF’s cultural and conceptual environment, which perpetuated Trenchardian notions of offensive spirit in RAF doctrine, together with the refusal to consider options to extend the range of its fighter aircraft. The paper rejects claims that the RAF’s effort at Dieppe was the natural evolution of combined operations doctrine and demonstrates that preemptive bombing of Dieppe was politically unacceptable

Songs of War: Anglo-Canadian Popular Songs on the Home Front, 1914-1918

This article explores the production, content, and reception of Anglo-Canadian popular songs composed during the First World War. It argues that popular songs reflected the changing attitudes of Anglo-Canadians, as composers and publishers created music to fulfill different purposes for those on the home front at various stages of the war. In the beginning, the majority of songs were patriotic marches composed to gather support for Britain and the Empire. As the war continued, there was an increase in the number of patriotic songs that expressed a growing sense of wartime Canadian nationalism to enlist recruits. Throughout the war, music was significant to the First World War experience on Canada’s home front

The battle for rubber in Benin

Nigerian rubber exports expanded rapidly during the Second World War ‘battle for rubber’. This was achieved by overcoming obstacles to greater exploitation of both wild and planted rubber. This article outlines Nigeria's wartime experience, focusing on the Benin region that dominated smallholder production after the war. British policies initially restricted rubber planting. After Japan occupied South-East Asia, Britain encouraged maximum production. Late in the war, officials struggled with the planting boom that had occurred. The war was a period of both continuity and change for Benin, and exposed the limited capacity of the colonial state