Penultimate Adventures with Britannia: Personalities, Politics and Culture in Britain

by Roger Louis

Overview

A rich and varied collection from leading scholars and writers, edited with skill and sensitivity by one of the greatest historians of empire. It provides a vivid vignette of modern cultural, literary, intellectual and political life. Penultimate Adventures with Britannia takes the reader on an engaging and fascinating journey through British society and its interaction with other cultures. It covers the cultural and literary themes but also the political, and while the collection does not shrink from conflict, there are always fascinating by-ways.

The First World War is a massive theme but with glances behind the scenes, for example with Susan Pedersen's "Frances Stevenson" and Martin Gilbert's "Tolkien." The British Empire is enlivened with Bernard Porter's "The British Empire and British Culture" while Priaya Satia's "The Cultural Foundation of British Power in Iraq" brings in current international concerns, as do Geoffrey Wheatcroft's "The Partitions of India and Ireland" and Dane Kennedy's "The New American Empire." Literary and artistic themes are important and have political and historical relevance. These include Hilary Spurling's "Reassessing Paul Scott," Larry Carver on "Felix Topolski" and Martin Francis on "Cecil Beaton" while Felipe Fernandez Armesto’s original and stimulating essay "An Accidental Criminal" rounds off this remarkably rich and rewarding volume.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781845117115
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	10/24/2007
Series:	Adventures with Britannia
Pages:	380
Product dimensions:	6.37(w) x 9.36(h) x 1.31(d)

About the Author

Wm. Roger Louis is Kerr Professor of English History and Culture at the University of Texas at Austin and Fellow of St. Antony's College, Oxford. His books include Imperialism at Bay, The British Empire in the Middle East and, most recently, Ends of British Imperialism (I.B.Tauris). He is Editor-in-Chief of The Oxford History of the British Empire.

Table of Contents

*‘Lloyd George, the Germans, and the French’--Kenneth O. Morgan
• ‘Frances Stevenson’--Susan Pedersen
• ‘The Changing Shape of Historical Interpretation’--Keith Thomas *, ‘Kipling in South Africa’--Dan Jacobson
• ‘Tolkien in the First World War’--Martin Gilbert
• ‘The British Empire and British Culture’--Bernard Porter
• ‘Arthur Marder and British Sea Power’--Barry Gough
• ‘A Great Englishman Nonetheless: Edward Evans-Pritchard’--John Davis *‘C. Wright Mills in England’--John Summers *, ‘The Cultural Foundations of British Power in Iraq’--Priaya Satia
• ‘The New American Empire and its British Antecedents’--Dane Kennedy
• ‘Reassessing Paul Scott’--Hilary Spurling
• ‘Felix Topolski: Caricaturist or Artist?’--Larry Carver
• ‘Cecil Beaton and the Second World War’--Martin Francis
• ‘The Partitions of Ireland and India’--Geoffrey Wheatcroft
• ‘England and India’--Indivar Kamtekar
• ‘Oxford and Suez’--Wm. Roger Louis
• ‘Britannia’s Mau Mau’--John Lonsdale
• ‘An Accidental Criminal’--Felipe Fernandez Armesto
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