Product Description: The Reform Act of 1867 was highly controversial at the time and has remained so. Was it an inevitable step on the road to full democracy or an irresponsible gamble by a politician desperate to win a tactical victory?

Disraeli is a key figure for students of nineteenth-century Britain. He is indelibly identified with the unmaking of Peel's version of the Conservative Party, and with the re-creation of a durable and outstandingly successful new party which retained the loyalty of the squires and the shires while reaching out to newer forms of property ownership and cultivating the attachment of a significant proportion of the urban working class. John K. Walton here examines the major aspects of Disraeli's career and his legacy, asking how far his actions and policies were governed by principles and how far by expediency. He also enquires how far Disraeli set his own agenda and how far he was a rider of currents out of his control. Finally, Walton takes a careful look at his political, institutional and ideological legacy.

Book by Thorpe, Kay

Product Description: Spa resorts were a favoured destination for affluent seekers after health and comfortable leisure in opulent surroundings from the seventeenth to the twentieth century, although in the railway age they began to suffer from competition from new fashions in leisure and tourism, especially the seaside holiday...read more

Product Description: The proclamation by the United Nations that 2012 would be the International Year of Co-operatives represents a milestone in the history of the international co-operative movement. It reflects the growth and renewal of co-operatives globally during the past decade and a half, whether the focus is on financial co-operatives in Britain or producer co-operatives across Africa...read more

Product Description: Awarded 2013 PROSE Honorable Mention in Media & Cultural Studies With the resurgent interest in his work today, this is a timely reevaluation of this foundational figure in Cultural Studies, a critical but friendly review of both Hoggart's work and reputation...read more

Product Description: This book is an interdisciplinary collaboration between a literary critic and cultural historian, which examines and recovers a radical and still urgent challenge to the industrialisation of cultural tourism from the work of John Ruskin...read more

Product Description: Ideas about what it is to be British have recently become subject to change and discussion. The end of Empire, the loss of world power status, the collapse of old industrial communities, the decline of Protestantism, and the rise of nationalism in Wales and Scotland, have all served to change the perception of what it is to be British...read more

Product Description: The annual seaside holiday became a common experience in Britain in the 1950s and 1960s and it has a central place in popular memory. Its recent decline has prompted nostalgia and gloom across the media, with a spate of newspaper features every summer bemoaning its decline...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

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Product Description: Chartism is an essential introduction to the movement, and examines the controversial debates surrounding the topic. As well as providing a concise period background, the author includes discussion of:* the Chartists' economic, legislative and political goals* patterns of regional and local support* reasons for the Chartist decline* the success of Chartism in the light of its goals and its influence over the Poor Law, Corn Laws, trade unions and factory reform* the languages of Chartism - songs, gesture and propaganda...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: Gary Cross publishes the findings of this largely forgotten study by the Mass-Observers who followed the annual pilgrimage of labourers to Blackpool, hoping to discover what attracted workers to this centre of Victorian culture.

Product Description: English seaside resord