Product Description: This book traces the history of the relationship between work and leisure, from the 'leisure preference' of male workers in the eighteenth century, through the increase in working hours in the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, to their progressive decline from 1830 to 1970...read more

Product Description: First published in 1980. This book is a study of what different classes of society understood by leisure and how they enjoyed it. It argues that many of the assumptions which have underlain the history of leisure are misleading, and in particular the notions that there was a vacuum in popular leisure in the early Industrial Revolution; that with industrialisation there was sharp discontinuity with the past; that cultural forms diffuse themselves only down the social scale, and that leisure helped ease class distinctions...read more

 This authoritative and thought-provoking history takes a fresh view of what was a period of unprecedented and rapid change. Assuming no prior knowledge of the subject, Hugh Cunningham provides a clear narrative of political events, and an analysis of change and continuity in ideas and in economic and social structure. Britain is set firmly in the context of world power and the possession of empire. An overarching theme is the challenge presented by democracy in a period framed by the First and Fourth Reform Acts. ‘Democracy’ had no stable meaning, and its opponents were just as vocal as its advocates. The book explores its implications for the role of the state, for the governance of empire, and for the relationship between the different nations within the United Kingdom.

Product Description: The apparations of Our Lady in Medjugorje have resulted in pilgrims in their millions visiting this small village in the former Yugoslavia. This book describes the personal experiences of visiting and the blessings I have received there.

Product Description: In the early morning of 7 September 1838, Grace Darling, the daughter of the keeper of the Longstone Light on the Farne Islands, rowed with her father to rescue survivors from the wrecked steamer Forfarshire. Her heroism caused a sensation...read more

Presented by award-winning children's writer, this history of British childhood from the year 1000 explores, through a colourful range of primary sources, how the idea of childhood has been constantly reinvented down the centuries and why the role of children in society continues to obsess us.

Product Description: This book investigates the relationship between ideas about childhood and the actual experience of being a child, and assesses how it has changed over the span of five hundred years.  Hugh Cunningham tells an engaging story of the development of ideas about childhood from the Renaissance to the present, taking in Locke, Rosseau, Wordsworth and Freud, revealing considerable differences in the way western societites have understood and valued childhood over time...read more

Product Description: The essays in this book explore continuities and changes in Europe and North America in the period which straddles the French Revolution. They have been written with the aim of making connections between the substantial historiographies of the early modern and late modern periods; in so doing, they emphasize the new role for voluntary organizations which emerged in the late eighteenth century and draw out the implications of this for received accounts of the development of welfare states...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: "The Children of the Poor" traces the development of ideas of childhood in England over 300 years, from the 17th to the 20th century, and explores the ways in which an ideal of childhood as protected and prolonged came to the thought desirable for all children...read more

Product Description: First published in 1980. This book is a study of what different classes of society understood by leisure and how they enjoyed it. It argues that many of the assumptions which have underlain the history of leisure are misleading, and in particular the notions that there was a vacuum in popular leisure in the early Industrial Revolution; that with industrialisation there was sharp discontinuity with the past; that cultural forms diffuse themselves only down the social scale, and that leisure helped ease class distinctions...read more