ABSTRACT There are some eighty-five county magazines across England, read by millions. This case study of 1930s Cheshire Life explains their appeal and demonstrates their value for twentieth-century social and cultural history. The birth of this middle-brow non-metropolitan publishing genre is outlined, using back copies, archival sources and interviews. Content analysis finds these magazines are the voice of ‘the county set’, a neglected subculture. Themes include county identities, attitudes to the countryside, the rise of the middle classes and decline of the gentry, sense of place and modernity. Cheshire Life’s 1930s countryside is modern and void of nostalgia.

ABSTRACT This paper examines the transcultural aspects of English conceptualisations of ‘public’ libraries in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. The article employs keyword-based approach. It discusses a proposal for a public library in New York by John Sharpe, the significance of holistic and connected approaches to the Bray library projects and the discourses surrounding libraries in early modern published travel accounts included by Bray in his suggested library curriculum. The article is informed by and contributes to literatures on the global dimension of the history of early modern Anglicanism and the role of libraries in early modern English travel and encounter narratives. Not only can the ‘global’ help us understand early modern English ideas of the ‘public library’, but ‘public libraries’ can help us rethink some of the ways in which England engaged with the ‘globe’.

ABSTRACT Cinema posters, which historically served as the primary tool for promoting films in Iran, gained significant importance during the 1960s and 1970s. This shift was largely due to the first serious and commercial presence of cinema media in Iran, as well as its adaptation to the prevailing social discourses. During this period, two major trends emerged within Iranian cinema: the so-called Filmfarsi, which became the mainstream cinematic genre of the time, and an alternative cinema that stood in contrast. The purpose of this article is to analyse the representation of women in Filmfarsi posters, using Norman Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis framework. Fairclough’s approach examines the interplay of various discourses within a shared socio-cultural context. This study involved the analysis of over one hundred commercial cinema posters to explore the representation of actresses. The findings, when contextualised within the social and historical conditions of the period, reveal that women’s presence in these posters was often governed by the dominant discourses of the time, with portrayals either emphasising sexual attraction and eroticism and marginalising women altogether in favour of male-centric or patriarchal narratives.

ABSTRACT This article examines the transformation of two English Midlands almshouse organisations from the late nineteenth century into the early twentieth century. Taking an understudied institution for the older poor, this article addresses the ‘softer’ side of what historians have referred to as Britain’s ‘carceral archipelago’ in a period when older people were increasingly unlikely to support themselves or rely on community or familial networks. Focusing on the Bournville Almshouse Trust and the Lench’s Trust enables the article to explore who was living in these almshouses and how they navigated the power and space within the institution. Placing genealogical records in conversation with institutional archives utilises both the possibilities of online genealogical databases and attends to the weakness of such material by following ‘inmates’ beyond the boundaries enforced by census, marriage and death records. This enables the article to probe the ways in which almshouse residents helped shape the changing definition of what old age meant as the welfare state emerged, understanding how and why almshouses responded to the demands of an ageing population and growing welfare state.