British Life Research Articles

Do heads of government age more quickly? Observational study comparing mortality between elected leaders and runners-up in national elections of 17 countries

Objectives To determine whether being elected to head of government is associated with accelerated mortality by studying survival differences between people elected to office and unelected runner-up candidates who never...

J M Barrie and the Ballets Russes

Barrie’s playlet The Truth about the Russian Dancers (written as a direct response to the impact upon British cultural life of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes) has been hardly discussed in the literary scholarship dedicated to his writings. By placing the playlet in the social and political context of the age, as well as focusing on close analysis of the textual variants of the manuscript, the paper discusses Barrie’s exploration of the impressionistic notion of the unfamiliar and the exotic. It is shown that as a searching piece of dramatic criticism, the work provides a penetrating reflection on cultural dialogism produced within the framework of a modernist, rather than Edwardian platform, and thus puts into new perspective certain aspects of the British perception of what was notoriously categorised as the Russian myth.

Banglaphone Fiction:

Around the time the Raj was disintegrating, Bengalis, many of them from Sylhet, were coming to Britain in large numbers. Settling in areas such as London’s Spitalfields, these Sylhetis pioneered Britain’s emerging curry restaurant trade, labored for long hours and with few rights in the garment industry, and worked as mechanics. Sylhetis’ inestimable contribution to the fabric of British life is recognized, for example, in their association with Brick Lane, a popular road of curry houses in East London. However, too often their contribution to literature is reduced to one novel, Brick Lane, Monica Ali’s novel about the famous street and its denizens. This paper seeks to broaden the debate about English-language literature from Londoni writers across the Bengaliyat. In 1793, Sake Dean Mahomed published his The Travels of Dean Mahomet. What is unique about this text is that it was originally written in English to give European readers a glimpse of India. Its creation was probably part of the author’s attempt to integrate in Ireland, where he was living. Two centuries later, we are witnessing an efflorescence of Anglophone writing from the two Bengals about Britain. I discuss Amitav Ghosh’s portrayals of Brick Lane in his 1988 novel The Shadow Lines as an early precursor to fellow Indian novelists Neel Mukherjee’s A Life Apart (2010) and Amit Chaudhuri’s Odysseus Abroad (2014), which also demonstrate a fascination with Sylhetis in London and their material culture. From Bangladesh and its diaspora, Manzu Islam’s Burrow (2004) and Zia Haider Rahman’s novel In the Light of What We Know (2013) come under the spotlight. What we might call “Banglaphone fiction” is, I argue, currently experiencing a boom, and portrayals of Sylhetis in London, their cuisine, and other aspects of popular culture form an enduring fascination among the male writers of this fiction, at least.

Never Forget

The loss of David Cesarani at the tragically young age of 58 deprives British academic life of a distinctive voice, and British Jewry of an interpreter of unusual candour and originality. He variou...

The Defiant Ringmaster: Lessons in Christian Leadership from William Stringfellow

It is unusual, in my experience, for students to leave the London School Economics (LSE) less ambitious and career-oriented than when they arrived. But this was clearly the experience a young American who spent a year graduate study at the School from 1949 to 1950. William Stringfellow went on to lead an extraordinary and inspirational life as a practicing lawyer and political activist, all the while speaking and writing as a theologian who was praised by Karl Barth in 1962 as the man America should listen to.1 His year at the LSE appears to have been a critical turning point, to which he would refer back almost as his moment conversion. This paper will explore the nature that transition in Stringfellows understanding himself and his leadership aspirations. We will then see how this is reflected in later writings about the leadership both the church and the secular world to glean three lessons in church leadership that may be relevance to todays debates on this issue.When he arrived in London, William Stringfellow was an industrious high achiever who was already a leader. He was on the council the Student Christian Movement in America and president the United Student Christian Council, which he represented at the World Conference Christian Youth in Oslo in 1947. He also attended the inaugural assembly the World Council Churches in Amsterdam in 1948, aged twenty. In his reference to the LSE, the dean Bates College (where he had completed undergraduate studies) wrote, continue to be amazed that Mr. Stringfellow is able to be a straight A student and do so many other things, and do them well, while at the same time he is now and then away from the campus on his church youth movements for days at a time.2Stringfellow came to the LSE to study the impact Christianity on British political life. This was near the end the postwar Labour Government, when the influence Christian Socialism, through Archbishop Temple and others, was having its greatest impact on British society. have become aware, wrote Stringfellow in his LSE application statement, of the impact which Christians have had upon contemporary British political life.... influence William Temple and the Malvern Conference is also a special concern I hold.3 While he already had the intention going on to study law,4 his own aspiration to a political career was clearly being explored at this time.Yet he took the decision in the course this year to abandon such ambitions, expressed in the gospel language dying to self. He would write in A Simplicity Faith in 1982, was politically ambitious in my student days. But I had died to that during the time that I was a research fellow in England at the London School Economics. It was then that I determined not to pursue politics as a career.5 This was part a wider rejection career in favor the concept vocation:[While at the LSE] I had elected then to pursue no career. To put it theologically, I died to the idea career and to the whole typical array mundane calculations, grandiose goals, and appropriate schemes to reach them. I renounced, simultaneously, the embellishments-like money, power, success-associated with careers in American culture, along with the ethics requisite to obtaining such condiments. I do not say this haughtily; this was an aspect my conversion to the gospel, so, in fact, I say it humbly.6Given its impact on his later life, I am naturally curious about what happened during this period in London. Frustratingly, the William Stringfellow archive at Cornell University contains little material from this period and the LSE itself has no record any completed dissertation. In his end-of-year report form Stringfellow writes, The intention is, upon my return to the United States, to complete this assignment in manuscript form so that it may be published for use by groups Christian Students in the United States. …

Ireland on a Plate: Curating the 2011 State Banquet for Queen Elizabeth II

Ireland on a Plate: Curating the 2011 State Banquet for Queen Elizabeth II

British Family Life, 1780–1914, ed. Claudia Nelson (general editor) (5 volumes). Volume 1: Growing Up, ed. Claudia Nelson; Volume 2: Husbands and Fathers, ed. Julie-Marie Strange; Volume 3: Wives and Mothers, ed. Susan B. Egenolf; Volume 4: Extended Families, ed. Susan B. Egenolf; Volume 5: Substitute Families, ed. Julie-Marie Strange

These volumes, which present a wide range of contemporary documents and sources, trace with great intricacy the immense variety of British family life across the long nineteenth century. There are many delightful gems to be discovered, including archival material and rare printed matter. The volumes also give a voice to a number of authors who have long deserved a wider audience for their contemporary significance, such as the Church of Scotland minister William Duff (1732–1815), and the Baptist author Esther Copley (1786–1851). The collection opens with a volume dedicated to ‘Growing Up’, edited by Claudia Nelson, who is also the general editor. Here, there is a stimulating diversity of texts, and some highly unusual extracts—such as the diary of an Argentinian-born British teenager, Emily Krabbé, visiting London for the first time in 1869. In another interesting move, Nelson reprints extracts of young Louisa Gurney’s diary from the 1790s, as well as the fictional Work-House Boy (1825), written by Louisa (now Hoare) many years later as an adult. Working-class children are less well served, emerging as victims of cruelty and as labouring ‘slaves’, rather than situated within the complex obligations of the family economy and affective ties. Nonetheless, this remains one of the strongest volumes in the collection.

Ethnocultural Concepts of Family Life on the Material of Texts of Wedding Wishes

The family can be studied as an ethnic phenomenon, as a constant interaction of family members inevitably affected by ethnic norms and behavioral patterns. The purpose of the article was to determine the ethnic and cultural features in the concept of family life in the Western European, Russian and Kazakh mentality. Cross-cultural analysis that supplemented by component and contextual methods was carried out on a material of English and French texts of wishes (as an example of Western European world view), Kazakh wishes, Russian wedding wishes. Presentation of early family life as a new way was turned out universal. However, understanding of family life in terms of the way gives the same epistemic characteristics to stereotypical ideas about the family which has the concept of WAY in the corresponding culture. In English and French world views family life is an exciting adventure of the two partners where they feel comfortable and interesting. In the Russian mentality family life is a tough road of two opposing personalities. In Kazakh culture family life is a continuation of a long journey of each of a newly wedded couple.

Optimal Taxation When People Do Not Maximize Well-Being

I derive the optimal nonlinear income tax when individuals do not necessarily maximize their own well-being. This generates a corrective argument for taxation: optimal marginal taxes are higher (lower) if individuals work too much (too little) from a well-being point of view. I allow for multi-dimensional heterogeneity and derive the optimal tax schedule in terms of measurable sufficient statistics. One of these statistics measures the degree to which individuals fail to optimize their labor supply. I empirically estimate this by using British life satisfaction data as a measure of well-being. I find that low-income workers tend to work 'too little' and high-income workers 'too much,' providing a motive for lower marginal tax rates at the bottom and higher marginal tax rates at the top of the income distribution.

Time–geography, gentlemen, please: chronotopes of publand in Patrick Hamilton’s London trilogy

This paper considers the time and the place of drinking in modern British life, as represented in Patrick Hamilton’s trilogy of novels set in the publand of London’s West End in the interwar years, through Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of the chronotope and with critical nods to Hagerstrand’s time–geography corpus. The chronotopes of pubs and their neighbourhoods, which we term ‘publand’, are discussed initially in their novelistic presentation in Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky (1935), and then in relation to the ‘character zones’ of the novels’ principal protagonists. The key themes, defined in the paper, are the asynchronicity of personal and social relations, the dialogic construction of heterochronicity, and the presentation of a prosaic chronotope. Though the paper is a contribution to literary geography, we aim to contribute to the cultural geographic understanding of the time–space rhythms and routines of everyday leisure drinking, making claims for the wider significance of chronotopic analysis.

Constructing a Narrative of Time and Place: Anne Clifford’sGreat Books of Record

Anne Clifford’s Great Books of Record provides a compelling portrait of social change between the years 1088 to 1734. The bases for the Great Books were the documents secured by Clifford’s mother, Margaret Russell Countess of Cumberland, during her legal battles to secure George Clifford’s estates for Anne Clifford. Additional documents were collected by Anne Clifford during her widowhood through her association with a wide circle of seventeenth-century antiquarians and lawyers, access to the Clifford muniments at Skipton, and her own research. Upon this scaffolding of transcribed documents, covering over 600 years of Veteripont and Clifford engagement in Britain and beyond, Anne Clifford created a narrative of Clifford dynastic power. At the same time she left a portrait of social interactions and cultural change through several centuries. She made use of annotated indexing, headings, chronological ordering, illustrations, and narrative summaries to transform her extensive collection of material into a creative and accessible work that informed antiquarian scholarship for centuries and can contribute to a greater understanding today of English life and culture over six centuries.

VOLUNTARY SERVICE AND STATE HONOURS IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY BRITAIN

AbstractThe importance of the honours system as an institution in British politics and public life has frequently been underestimated. At the end of the First World War, the British government prioritized voluntary service to the state as an area which the honours system should reward more than others through the newly created Order of the British Empire. However, after the war the Order changed to focus more on civil servants, soldiers, and the broad category of ‘local service’. The latter could include volunteers, but more often did not. Various attempts to democratize honours through reforms from the 1960s focused on rewarding a wider range of service. The most successful of these was John Major's honours reform programme in 1993, which returned volunteer service to the forefront of the public image of honours. While these reforms were not as egalitarian as they seemed, they were successful because they integrated an ideology of crown honours with the other functions of the modern monarchy and opened up the honours system to a wider potential set of recipients. At the same time, they maintained a hierarchical structure that meant that elites who had traditionally enjoyed the exclusivity of high honours continued to do so.

Kingship and Masculinity in Late Medieval England, by Katherine J. Lewis

Whereas English political life in the later middle ages was once mainly interpreted in terms of the pursuit of patronage and self-interest, a number of historians, including Christine Carpenter, Michael Hicks, Edward Powell and John F. Watts, have more recently emphasised the importance of values and principles in motivating political involvement and alignment. Yet, despite this revival of interest in the role of ideas in medieval political life, there has been relatively little discussion of either kingship as an office or the lives of individual kings in terms of contemporary ideas about gender. The fact that men are often seen as the unmarked case, as an ‘unexamined default’, means that while gender issues have loomed large in the study of medieval queenship, only now are historians beginning to respond to Mark Ormrod’s 2004 call for a ‘gendered reading’ of kings and kingship. Christopher Fletcher’s study of Richard II was pioneering in this regard (rev. ante, cxxv [2010], 686–8) and it is now followed by Katherine J. Lewis’s important account of the reigns of Henry V and Henry VI, which looks at the kings’ success or failure in terms of their ability to perform and project the mature masculinity expected of medieval rulers.

The Sexual Life of English: Languages of Caste and Desire in Colonial India. By Shefali Chandra. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2012. 275 pp. $89.95 (cloth); $24.95 (paper).

The Sexual Life of English: Languages of Caste and Desire in Colonial India. By Shefali Chandra. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2012. 275 pp. $89.95 (cloth); $24.95 (paper).

J. A. Hobson and the Machinery Question

AbstractThe effects of industrialization on British life were the subject of a broad and intelligible set of debates during the early nineteenth century, often described as the “machinery question.” This question, concerning what today is called “technology,” was framed to include its effects on the whole of human life—an approach rarely seen by the late nineteenth century, a period marked instead by disciplinary specialization. An exception to this trend can be found in the work of the social critic and heterodox economist J. A. Hobson (1858–1940), better known for his critique of imperialism. From the 1890s, Hobson reopened the machinery question by offering anethicalanalysis of mechanization which was both holistic and sustained. In addition to proposing this new lens for viewing Hobson, this article explores the challenges—as well as the opportunities—facing those returning to the machinery question more generally.

Mathematicians and the early English life insurance industry

Motivated by a manuscript find in the Macclesfield Collection held by Cambridge University Library, the role of mathematicians in the emerging life insurance industry in eighteenth-century England is examined. Two early life insurance societies are examined here in detail. In one, a prominent mathematician's arguments were ignored thus confirming the generally accepted view among historians of insurance that the role of mathematicians at this time was minor or non-existent. For the other case, the promoter of two insurance schemes used his mathematical knowledge to design the operation of his insurance plans thus showing that mathematical activity was at least not non-existent. The manuscript find still leaves the question of what the motivation and impact was of the major writers on life annuities during the first half of the eighteenth century. This is addressed by considering the major economic background of early eighteenth-century England—land and property.

Legacies of British slave-ownership: colonial slavery and the formation of Victorian Britain

© Catherine Hall, Nicholas Draper, Keith McClelland, Katie Donington and Rachel Lang 2014. This book re-examines the relationship between Britain and colonial slavery in a crucial period in the birth of modern Britain. Drawing on a comprehensive analysis of British slave-owners and mortgagees who received compensation from the state for the end of slavery, and tracing their trajectories in British life, the volume explores the commercial, political, cultural, social, intellectual, physical and imperial legacies of slave-ownership. It transcends conventional divisions in history-writing to provide an integrated account of one powerful way in which Empire came home to Victorian Britain, and to reassess narratives of West Indian 'decline'. It will be of value to scholars not only of British economic and social history, but also of the histories of the Atlantic world, of the Caribbean and of slavery, as well as to those concerned with the evolution of ideas of race and difference and with the relationship between past and present.

Sports Gambling during the Second World War: A British Entertainment for Critical Times or a National Evil?

The catastrophe of the Second World War had a significant effect on British social and economic life, with less leisure and more time and energy spent on the war effort, yet sports betting survived. The paper begins by examining the arguments strongly advanced by vociferous anti-betting groups in the first years after the outbreak of war, and assesses their limited success. Assessments of betting turnover suggest an initial decline in betting, largely perhaps because of the brief curtailment of horse racing, dog racing, and football, the three principal betting media. The paper explores some of the reasons why it then once more increased, according to the surveys of the Churches Committee on Gambling or Mass Observation. The argument focuses on provision and betting organization: the continued legal opportunities within Britain, including new ‘unity’ football pools, the reopening of some English racecourses and dog-tracks, and the new opportunities created by illegal ready-money bookmakers, such as Irish horse-racing results, which were unaffected by the war. The national government took the view that the betting sports were ‘entertainments’ and ‘in the public interest’, and also helped by providing scarce petrol to assist with the movement of horses and dogs to meetings.

1381: the year of the Peasants' Revolt

Written with the fluency readers have come to expect from Juliet Barker, 1381: The Year of the Peasants provides an account of the first great popular uprising in England and its background, and paints on a broad canvas a picture of English life in medieval times. Skeptical of contemporary chroniclers accounts of events, Barker draws on the judicial sources of the indictments and court proceedings that followed the rebellion. This emphasis offers a fresh perspective on the so-called Peasants Revolt and gives depth and texture to the historical narrative. Among the book s arguments are that the rebels believed they were the loyal subjects of the king acting in his interests, and that the boy-king Richard II sympathized with their grievances.Barker tells how and why a diverse and unlikely group of ordinary men and women from every corner of England from servants and laborers living off wages, through the village elite who served as bailiffs, constables, and stewards, to the ranks of the gentry united in armed rebellion against church and state to demand a radical political agenda. Had it been implemented, this agenda would have transformed English society and anticipated the French Revolution by four hundred years. 1381: The Year of the Peasants is an important reassessment of the uprising and a fascinating, original study of medieval life in England s towns and countryside.

Punk Rock, Thatcher, and the Elsewhere of Northern Ireland: Rethinking the Politics of Popular Music

This essay focuses on the political efficacy of popular music to critique dominant ideologies concerning nationhood and personal identity. During Margaret Thatcher’s tenure as prime minister of Britain, punk rock and post-punk music flourished as a mode of expression to challenge the ways in which Thatcher’s conservative agenda affected British social life. This study examines the theoretical possibility that punk rock can serve as a mode of critique and addresses how punk rock music in Northern Ireland attempted to disrupt the Thatcherite position on the conflict in Northern Ireland (also known as The Troubles).