All Books

A ground-breaking biography of a cult British novelist.

The extraordinary twentieth-century writer Barbara Comyns led a life as captivating as the narratives she spun. This pioneering biography reveals the journey of a woman who experienced hardship and single-motherhood before the age of thirty but went on to publish a sequence of novels unique in the English language.

Comyns turned her hand to many jobs in order to survive, from artist’s model to piano restorer. Unpublished letters reveal an occasionally desperate but resourceful and witty woman whose life ranged from enduring poverty when young to mixing with spivs, spies and high society. While working as a housekeeper in her mid-thirties, Comyns began transforming the bleak episodes of her life into compelling fictions streaked with surrealism and deadpan humour. The Vet’s Daughter (1959), championed by Graham Greene, brought her fame, although her use of the gothic and macabre divided readers and reviewers.

This biography excavates Comyns’s life and reclaims her fiction, providing a timely reassessment of her literary contribution. It sheds new light on a remarkable author who deftly captured the complexities of human life.

The unsettling stories of how Egyptian mummies came to be held in British and French museums.

We all know what a mummy is – or do we? In Mummified, Angela Stienne explores the little-known stories behind the Ancient Egyptian remains displayed in British and French museums.

Taking the reader on a journey between Egypt, Paris and London, Stienne exposes a murky world of grave-robbing, theft and callously treated human remains. Mummies have been unrolled in public, dissected for race studies and even eaten for their supposed health-giving properties. But does the fact they are thousands of years old mean they can be treated as objects, or do we owe them the same respect we would any other human body?

Investigating matters of life and death and the ethics of collection and display, Mummified offers a fresh perspective on these ancient bodies, which have fascinated Europeans for centuries.

Featuring a foreword from Annie Mac

An inspiring memoir-manifesto from one of the UK’s leading DJs.

In Welcome to the club, Manchester legend DJ Paulette shares the highs, lows and lessons of her thirty-year music career, with insights from some famous friends.

As one of the Haçienda’s pioneering female DJs, Paulette has reached the pinnacle of the music industry, performing for crowds of thousands worldwide. She offers a remarkable perspective from a Black woman’s viewpoint, arguing that despite dance music’s core values of peace, love, unity and respect, it remains a world rife with exclusion, misogyny, racism and classism. Yet, as Paulette reveals, it is also a space teeming with powerful women.

Part personal memoir, part call to action, Welcome to the club exposes the exclusivity of the music industry while honouring the often invisible women who keep the rhythm alive.

A hard-hitting exposé that reveals how rich countries outsource the climate crisis to poor ones.

Around the world, leading economies are announcing significant success in the struggle against climate change. Heads of government proclaim their commitment to tackling the crisis, pointing to data that shows the progress they have made. Yet the atmosphere is still warming at a record rate. Are we being deceived?

In Carbon colonialism, Laurie Parsons exposes how rich countries cook the books on climate change – by outsourcing it to the global South. Conducting first-hand research across Asia, he reveals how exporting emissions and waste allows states and corporations to maintain a clean, green image. Meanwhile, landfills expand and droughts and floods intensify, with devastating effects on the world’s most vulnerable communities.

Technical fixes and creative accounting are a mirage. The real obstacles to effective action are deeply embedded in the political systems and structures of our society. Parsons calls on readers to wake up from the fairy tales of greenwashing and ethical consumerism and end carbon colonialism now.

Werner Conn, born in 1928, has fond memories of his early childhood in Berlin. Following Kristallnacht in 1938, Werner’s father was sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp, but his mother managed to get him released after six months. Life became very difficult, and Werner was sent to the UK on the Kindertransport. He spent his first two weeks in England at a Scout camp on the South Downs. He discovered after the war that his parents and younger brother had been deported to Theresienstadt in Czechoslovakia on his fifteenth birthday.

In 1945, Werner obtained a National Certificate in mechanical engineering and began his career at the English Electric Company. He married Elisabeth in 1958, and they settled down in Lytham St Annes with their daughter, Heather.

Werner’s book is part of the My Voice book collection, a stand-alone project of The Fed, the leading Jewish social care charity in Manchester, dedicated to preserving the life stories of Holocaust survivors and refugees from Nazi persecution who settled in the UK. The oral history, which is recorded and transcribed, captures their entire lives from before, during and after the war years. The books are written in the words of the survivor so that future generations can always hear their voice. The My Voice book collection is a valuable resource for Holocaust awareness and education.

Peter Mittler was born in Vienna in April 1930 and witnessed the Anschluss in 1938 when life changed overnight for Jews. He escaped to England on the Kindertransport in January 1939 and stayed with a sponsor family in London. Peter’s parents had also managed to get to England, but his father was sent to an internment camp on the Isle of Man for 9 months during the war.

Peter joined the British Army in 1949 and then studied Psychology at Cambridge. He went on to spend 14 years as Director of the Hester Adrian Research Centre (HARC) at the University of Manchester and Peter’s leadership in the development of policy and provision for adults and children with intellectual disabilities was recognised in the Queen’s Birthday Honours of 1981.

Peter’s book is part of the My Voice book collection, a stand-alone project of The Fed, the leading Jewish social care charity in Manchester, dedicated to preserving the life stories of Holocaust survivors and refugees from Nazi persecution who settled in the UK. The oral history, which is recorded and transcribed, captures their entire lives from before, during and after the war years. The books are written in the words of the survivor so that future generations can always hear their voice. The My Voice book collection is a valuable resource for Holocaust awareness and education.

Danny Herman was born in 1935 in Königsberg in East Prussia. As the Nazis were rounding up Jews, Danny’s father managed to escape to England in July 1939. He travelled to the Kitchener Camp in Kent, which helped refugees secure visas for safer places. Danny and his mother arrived in England just three days before war was declared in 1939, and his father was later sent to an internment camp on the Isle of Man.

Danny went on to become a successful runner, competing in many international athletics events and volunteering in many roles, including at the 2002 Commonwealth Games. Danny’s detailed memories of arriving in England, initially at the seaside in Kent and then moving to Manchester, create a vivid picture of life-changing events as experienced by a young child.

Danny’s book is part of the My Voice book collection, a stand-alone project of The Fed, the leading Jewish social care charity in Manchester, dedicated to preserving the life stories of Holocaust survivors and refugees from Nazi persecution who settled in the UK. The oral history, which is recorded and transcribed, captures their entire lives from before, during and after the war years. The books are written in the words of the survivor so that future generations can always hear their voice. The My Voice book collection is a valuable resource for Holocaust awareness and education.

Tomi Komoly, born in 1936 in Budapest, was the only child of a loving Jewish family. Tomi describes the ordeals endured by Hungarian Jews under the Horthy regime and Nazi occupation. He provides an account of his survival after he was forced to move to a constricted ‘yellow star house’ and eventually found shelter with a Hungarian family with his mother. Tomi’s father was forcefully conscripted into the Hungarian Labour Service and did not survive.

Post-war, facing the oppression of the communist regime in Hungary, Tomi fled to Vienna, then moved to England having secured a scholarship to study engineering. He married Gill, built a successful career in engineering and settled in Manchester with his family. Tomi received the British Empire Medal for services to Holocaust education.

Tomi’s book is part of the My Voice book collection, a stand-alone project of The Fed, the leading Jewish social care charity in Manchester, dedicated to preserving the life stories of Holocaust survivors and refugees from Nazi persecution who settled in the UK. The oral history, which is recorded and transcribed, captures their entire lives from before, during and after the war years. The books are written in the words of the survivor so that future generations can always hear their voice. The My Voice book collection is a valuable resource for Holocaust awareness and education.

Gerda Rothberg was born in 1926 in Lötzen. She had a happy childhood, which was shattered by the Nazi rise to power. Following her father’s detention after Kristallnacht and the introduction of many anti-Jewish regulations, her family sought to flee. Gerda and her two sisters escaped to England via the Kindertransport in June 1939, while her parents waited for her father’s identity documentation to arrive.

Gerda lived in Liverpool for a few years and then moved to a hostel in Manchester. She found employment in dressmaking, following in the footsteps of her father who was a tailor, and started to enjoy life again. She married Nat in 1949 and together they had three children. Gerda later discovered that her parents perished in Theresienstadt.

Gerda’s book is part of the My Voice book collection, a stand-alone project of The Fed, the leading Jewish social care charity in Manchester, dedicated to preserving the life stories of Holocaust survivors and refugees from Nazi persecution who settled in the UK. The oral history, which is recorded and transcribed, captures their entire lives from before, during and after the war years. The books are written in the words of the survivor so that future generations can always hear their voice. The My Voice book collection is a valuable resource for Holocaust awareness and education.

Henry Monath was born in Kraków, Poland in 1925. He grew up in a family who ran the second-largest furrier business in the country. By 1938, his mother recognised the increasing dangers for Jewish people in Poland and travelled to London in January 1939. She managed to arrange for Henry and his sister Rezika to escape to England, where she was reunited with them.

Henry reflects on the challenges of settling in a new country, and recounts his experience being evacuated from Manchester to Blackpool in 1939 once war had broken out and later living through air raids in Manchester. After the war, Henry married Gloria, and they had two children. He built a successful company manufacturing lampshades. He visited Kraków several times in later life.

Henry’s book is part of the My Voice book collection, a stand-alone project of The Fed, the leading Jewish social care charity in Manchester, dedicated to preserving the life stories of Holocaust survivors and refugees from Nazi persecution who settled in the UK. The oral history, which is recorded and transcribed, captures their entire lives from before, during and after the war years. The books are written in the words of the survivor so that future generations can always hear their voice. The My Voice book collection is a valuable resource for Holocaust awareness and education.

Sonja Sternberg was born in Berlin in June 1926. Her father was taken away by Germans and deported to Poland in 1938 and after Kristallnacht, Sonja’s family were ordered to leave their apartment. To flee Germany, Sonja’s mother arranged for the family to travel to Cuba on the SS St Louis which set sail from Hamburg in May 1939. However, after crossing the Atlantic, the ship was refused entry to Cuba. After being stranded in Havana Port for seven days and then turned away from Florida, they were forced to return to Europe and were eventually given permission to come to England via Antwerp.

Sonja and her family settled in London where Sonja enrolled on a dressmaking course and later had a dressmaking business. Sonja married Ad in 1957 and they had two children.

Sonja’s book is part of the My Voice book collection, a stand-alone project of The Fed, the leading Jewish social care charity in Manchester, dedicated to preserving the life stories of Holocaust survivors and refugees from Nazi persecution who settled in the UK. The oral history, which is recorded and transcribed, captures their entire lives from before, during and after the war years. The books are written in the words of the survivor so that future generations can always hear their voice. The My Voice book collection is a valuable resource for Holocaust awareness and education.

Peter Kurer was born in 1931 in Austria. He had a happy childhood in Vienna, but everything changed with the Anschluss. His father narrowly missed being apprehended by the SS by feigning illness. Peter’s parents resolved within a week to leave Austria.

With the help of a Quaker couple, Peter’s family was guaranteed safe passage to England in 1938. The family settled in Manchester after the war where Peter’s father opened a dental practice whilst Peter and his brother attended a Quaker boarding school. Later, Peter married Heather in 1955, after which he completed his National Service. They settled in Cheadle and had four children. This book chronicles Peter’s successful career in dentistry, including extensive international travel to give lectures, and the instrumental part he played in establishing the Morris Feinmann Home in Manchester.

Peter’s book is part of the My Voice book collection, a stand-alone project of The Fed, the leading Jewish social care charity in Manchester, dedicated to preserving the life stories of Holocaust survivors and refugees from Nazi persecution who settled in the UK. The oral history, which is recorded and transcribed, captures their entire lives from before, during and after the war years. The books are written in the words of the survivor so that future generations can always hear their voice. The My Voice book collection is a valuable resource for Holocaust awareness and education.

Anne Super was born in 1938 in Warsaw. Her earliest memories are overshadowed by the Nazi persecution, which led her parents to arrange her rescue by a milk woman. After a traumatic separation, Anne never saw her parents again. As a hidden child raised Catholic, during the war Anne endured deprivation and survived illness.

After the war, Anne was adopted by her uncle in South Africa, reconnected with her Jewish roots, met her husband Maurice, qualified as an optician, and started a family. After exciting years in Namibia, the family settled in Manchester. Anne’s story includes reflections on her identity, traumatic childhood, and her lifelong commitment to honour her parents by living a fulfilling life, full of adventures and pursuing her many passions.

Anne’s book is part of the My Voice book collection, a stand-alone project of The Fed, the leading Jewish social care charity in Manchester, dedicated to preserving the life stories of Holocaust survivors and refugees from Nazi persecution who settled in the UK. The oral history, which is recorded and transcribed, captures their entire lives from before, during and after the war years. The books are written in the words of the survivor so that future generations can always hear their voice. The My Voice book collection is a valuable resource for Holocaust awareness and education.

Leo Stein was born in 1922 in the German town of Pforzheim. Growing up in a Jewish family in Germany, Leo witnessed first-hand the rise of the Nazi regime and the horrors of Kristallnacht. Thanks to a Jewish school in Liverpool who granted Leo the promise of a scholarship, he was able to get a visa and escape Germany just before the outbreak of war.

Leo describes the kindness of families in Liverpool who provided food and shelter for the new arrivals, as well as the support from entities like the Jewish Refugee Committee. Leo settled in Manchester and was later joined by his uncle and brother, with whom he grew a successful menswear clothing company in Salford. He married Helen and had two children.

Leo’s book is part of the My Voice book collection, a stand-alone project of The Fed, the leading Jewish social care charity in Manchester, dedicated to preserving the life stories of Holocaust survivors and refugees from Nazi persecution who settled in the UK. The oral history, which is recorded and transcribed, captures their entire lives from before, during and after the war years. The books are written in the words of the survivor so that future generations can always hear their voice. The My Voice book collection is a valuable resource for Holocaust awareness and education.

Werner Lachs was born in Cologne, Germany in 1926 and had a happy childhood. However, by 1938, there were many laws restricting Jews, and after Kristallnacht, the family planned to emigrate. In June 1939, Werner escaped to England with his parents and older sister. Unbeknown to the family, they had been helped by a spy, Frank Foley, who had signed and issued their visas without financial guarantees.

After arriving in England, Werner was separated from his family at first and placed with different families. He worked in clothing manufacturing for over 50 years. In 1953, he married Claire, and they had a daughter, but Claire died tragically before their daughter turned two. Werner married Ruth in 1962, a fellow Holocaust survivor, and they had two children.

Werner’s book is part of the My Voice book collection, a stand-alone project of The Fed, the leading Jewish social care charity in Manchester, dedicated to preserving the life stories of Holocaust survivors and refugees from Nazi persecution who settled in the UK. The oral history, which is recorded and transcribed, captures their entire lives from before, during and after the war years. The books are written in the words of the survivor so that future generations can always hear their voice. The My Voice book collection is a valuable resource for Holocaust awareness and education.

Hans Rose was born in 1928 in Münster. His happy childhood with his parents and sister Eva was shattered by the rise of the Nazi regime. After the devastating impact of Kristallnacht and his father’s imprisonment in Buchenwald, the family emigrated to England in August 1939, a month before the outbreak of war. Settling in Glossop posed challenges, notably his father’s internment as an ‘enemy alien’ on the Isle of Man.

The book depicts Hans’s education, successful career in Manchester’s textile sector, and a content family life with his wife Adele and three daughters. Hans’s passion for sailing and outdoor pursuits, love of travel and optimism shine throughout his post-war narrative. Hans also reflects on his complex relationship with Germany and the tragic fate of Münster’s Jewish community.

Hans’s book is part of the My Voice book collection, a stand-alone project of The Fed, the leading Jewish social care charity in Manchester, dedicated to preserving the life stories of Holocaust survivors and refugees from Nazi persecution who settled in the UK. The oral history, which is recorded and transcribed, captures their entire lives from before, during and after the war years. The books are written in the words of the survivor so that future generations can always hear their voice. The My Voice book collection is a valuable resource for Holocaust awareness and education.

Renée Mosbacher was born in 1929 in Vienna. Renée’s parents had both died before the Anschluss, the annexation of Austria into Germany in 1938, and she was living with her auntie and uncle. Renée witnessed the growth of antisemitism and anti-Jewish laws. After the horrors of Kristallnacht, Renée and her brothers made a dangerous journey to England with her auntie in December 1938, where they were reunited with Renée’s uncle.

Renée recounts her arrival in London, the musical success of her brother Norbert, a talented violinist, and moving to Manchester. Over the next decades, Renée lived a busy life, became a parent to seven children, experienced happy marriages, and describes the joy and success of working, travelling and being part of a loving family.

Renée’s book is part of the My Voice book collection, a stand-alone project of The Fed, the leading Jewish social care charity in Manchester, dedicated to preserving the life stories of Holocaust survivors and refugees from Nazi persecution who settled in the UK. The oral history, which is recorded and transcribed, captures their entire lives from before, during and after the war years. The books are written in the words of the survivor so that future generations can always hear their voice. The My Voice book collection is a valuable resource for Holocaust awareness and education.

Adash Bulwa was born in Poland in 1926. After the outbreak of war, he recalls the Germans entering his home city of Piotrków Trybunalsk and the establishment of the Jewish ghetto, which had terrible living conditions. Adash recounts his harrowing ordeals in the concentration camps of Belzec and Buchenwald. Most of his family were killed in Treblinka, and he worked and suffered in factories and labour camps, all while he was still a teenager.

Following liberation, Adash returned briefly to Poland and then emigrated to England, eventually settling in Manchester. He made a living as a tailor, married his wife Zena, and they had two daughters. Post-war, Adash searched for his brother David, who had been smuggled out of Poland before the war, and they were reunited in the 1950s.

Adash’s book is part of the My Voice book collection, a stand-alone project of The Fed, the leading Jewish social care charity in Manchester, dedicated to preserving the life stories of Holocaust survivors and refugees from Nazi persecution who settled in the UK. The oral history, which is recorded and transcribed, captures their entire lives from before, during and after the war years. The books are written in the words of the survivor so that future generations can always hear their voice. The My Voice book collection is a valuable resource for Holocaust awareness and education.

Sam Laskier was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1927 into a traditional Jewish family. He recounts the Germans entering Warsaw in September 1939 and the formation of the Warsaw ghetto, where Jewish people were forced to live in appalling conditions. Although Sam was smuggled out of Warsaw to Ostrowiec, he was eventually transported to Bozochoff labour camp and then to Blizyn where he worked in a quarry. He was sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau in Spring 1944 and was finally liberated by the Russian Army on 8 May 1945.

Sam was one of around 300 Jewish orphans who were brought to Windermere in England for rehabilitation. He later moved to Manchester and became an entrepreneur. He met and married his wife in 1956, and they had four children and five grandchildren.

Sam’s book is part of the My Voice book collection, a stand-alone project of The Fed, the leading Jewish social care charity in Manchester, dedicated to preserving the life stories of Holocaust survivors and refugees from Nazi persecution who settled in the UK. The oral history, which is recorded and transcribed, captures their entire lives from before, during and after the war years. The books are written in the words of the survivor so that future generations can always hear their voice. The My Voice book collection is a valuable resource for Holocaust awareness and education.

Jeannine Scher was born in Paris in February 1935. She was the second of seven children in a religious Orthodox family. At the outbreak of war, her family moved to Laprugne in the Allier department of Vichy. When Nazis rounded up foreign Jews in the Vichy Zone, the family moved to Broût-Vernet, where her father became director of a home for refugee children, and eventually escaped to Switzerland.

Post-war, the family moved back to Paris, where Jeannine attended a lycée and went on to study Maths at university, after which she taught Maths and Jewish Studies at a secondary school. Jeannine married Naftoli Scher (Tuli) and moved to England in 1958. They had eight children and later moved to Manchester, enjoying being surrounded by many grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Jeannine’s book is part of the My Voice book collection, a stand-alone project of The Fed, the leading Jewish social care charity in Manchester, dedicated to preserving the life stories of Holocaust survivors and refugees from Nazi persecution who settled in the UK. The oral history, which is recorded and transcribed, captures their entire lives from before, during and after the war years. The books are written in the words of the survivor so that future generations can always hear their voice. The My Voice book collection is a valuable resource for Holocaust awareness and education.

Suzanne Harris was born in Paris in 1919. When World War II broke out, her father signed up for the Foreign Legion and later became a prisoner of war. Suzanne, her sister and mother stayed in Paris for 2 years during the war, but it became too difficult and risky for Jews there. In 1943, they fled to Argenty in the countryside to join their extended family, only reaching it safely with the help of brave strangers.

After liberation, Suzanne and her family returned to Paris, to find that her grandparents’ flat had been given to French collaborators by the Germans. After moving to England in 1947, Suzanne married, settled down and started a family. She was very active in Manchester’s Jewish community and was closely connected with many charities and her local synagogue.

Suzanne’s book is part of the My Voice book collection, a stand-alone project of The Fed, the leading Jewish social care charity in Manchester, dedicated to preserving the life stories of Holocaust survivors and refugees from Nazi persecution who settled in the UK. The oral history, which is recorded and transcribed, captures their entire lives from before, during and after the war years. The books are written in the words of the survivor so that future generations can always hear their voice. The My Voice book collection is a valuable resource for Holocaust awareness and education.

Ruth Edwards was born in 1926 in Vienna. She experienced life in Austria as Hitler came to power, with new laws that increasingly restricted everyday life for Jews. In November 1938, in the horror of Kristallnacht, Ruth’s father was taken away to Dachau concentration camp. Even though it meant separation from her mother, Ruth’s family arranged for her to join her great-uncle and his family in England in 1939.

Ruth describes her experience of being evacuated during the war and the many letters she wrote to keep in touch with her parents, who unfortunately perished. After the war, she worked in a factory and met her husband Sidney, also a refugee from Vienna. They settled in Manchester, raising their three children and working together in the handbag trade.

Ruth’s book is part of the My Voice book collection, a stand-alone project of The Fed, the leading Jewish social care charity in Manchester, dedicated to preserving the life stories of Holocaust survivors and refugees from Nazi persecution who settled in the UK. The oral history, which is recorded and transcribed, captures their entire lives from before, during and after the war years. The books are written in the words of the survivor so that future generations can always hear their voice. The My Voice book collection is a valuable resource for Holocaust awareness and education.

Fay Phillips was born in Gilly in Belgium in 1932. After the German invasion of Belgium, Fay recalls her family’s escape to France in a little van as part of a large movement of refugees, then later being sent back to Belgium, where she had to be hidden by the Resistance and moved around to several different places, including an unhappy time in an orphanage.

After the war, Fay spent time in London working as a nurse, and eventually settled there working for local government when she married Len and had two children, David and Ruth. After many years, they moved to Whitefield in Manchester to be near their grandchildren.

Fay’s book is part of the My Voice book collection, a stand-alone project of The Fed, the leading Jewish social care charity in Manchester, dedicated to preserving the life stories of Holocaust survivors and refugees from Nazi persecution who settled in the UK. The oral history, which is recorded and transcribed, captures their entire lives from before, during and after the war years. The books are written in the words of the survivor so that future generations can always hear their voice. The My Voice book collection is a valuable resource for Holocaust awareness and education.

Ursula Rosenfeld was born in 1925 in Quakenbrück, Germany to a Liberal Jewish family. Following Hitler’s rise to power in 1933, they were ostracised and thrown out of their home. On Kristallnacht, the Quakenbrück synagogue was burned down, and her father was arrested and beaten by the Nazis. He was transported to Buchenwald and died there.

Ursula and her sister escaped to England on the Kindertransport in 1938, leaving their mother and infirm grandmother behind. In 1940, Ursula was apprenticed to a dressmaker in London and then trained as a nurse. She married her husband Peter in 1946. After moving to Manchester in 1958, Ursula worked as a theatre nurse, went on to become a health visitor and was appointed a magistrate on the Manchester bench.

Ursula’s book is part of the My Voice book collection, a stand-alone project of The Fed, the leading Jewish social care charity in Manchester, dedicated to preserving the life stories of Holocaust survivors and refugees from Nazi persecution who settled in the UK. The oral history, which is recorded and transcribed, captures their entire lives from before, during and after the war years. The books are written in the words of the survivor so that future generations can always hear their voice. The My Voice book collection is a valuable resource for Holocaust awareness and education.

Gisela Feldman was born in Berlin in 1923. Gisela recounts the Nazi rise to power and witnessing a terrifying night when her father was taken away by the Nazis. After Kristallnacht, Gisela’s mother knew they had to leave Germany. She managed to arrange visas for Cuba and passage there on a liner, the SS St Louis, for herself and her two daughters. However, Cuba, the USA and Canada all refused entry to the ship, and they were eventually given permission to come to England via Antwerp.

After working as an au pair and a machinist in London, Gisela went on to have a long career as a teacher. She married Oscar and they had three children. She moved to Manchester in 1995 to be near her son and grandchildren.

Gisela’s book is part of the My Voice book collection, a stand-alone project of The Fed, the leading Jewish social care charity in Manchester, dedicated to preserving the life stories of Holocaust survivors and refugees from Nazi persecution who settled in the UK. The oral history, which is recorded and transcribed, captures their entire lives from before, during and after the war years. The books are written in the words of the survivor so that future generations can always hear their voice. The My Voice book collection is a valuable resource for Holocaust awareness and education.

Ernest Hirsch was born in April 1925 in Neidenburg, East Prussia. When Hitler came to power in 1933, East Prussia was taken over by Nazis and his family’s business was boycotted.

After moving to Berlin, Ernest witnessed the horrors of Kristallnacht in 1938 when his synagogue was set on fire. Ernest and his siblings left for England on the Kindertransport and were placed with different families. Unfortunately, his mother never managed to escape.

After the war, Ernest served as an officer in the Royal Scots Fusiliers and had a successful career in the textile industry after studying at Leeds University. Ernest and his first wife settled in Manchester in 1970, where they had three children. His wife sadly passed away in 1992 and Ernest later remarried.

Ernest’s book is part of the My Voice book collection, a stand-alone project of The Fed, the leading Jewish social care charity in Manchester, dedicated to preserving the life stories of Holocaust survivors and refugees from Nazi persecution who settled in the UK. The oral history, which is recorded and transcribed, captures their entire lives from before, during and after the war years. The books are written in the words of the survivor so that future generations can always hear their voice. The My Voice book collection is a valuable resource for Holocaust awareness and education.

Peter Adler was born in April 1933 in Berlin. When Hitler came to power, his father lost his job for being Jewish, and in 1936 he moved to England, where he had to requalify as a doctor. By June 1938, Peter, his mother and sisters had joined his father in London and during the Blitz, Peter was evacuated to the countryside.

After studying medicine at London University, Peter met his wife Eve, a nurse. They moved to Zambia for two years, lived in Israel for a short period, and settled in Luton where Peter worked as a doctor in a general practice. They have three daughters, Keren, Tami and Mandy. Peter and Eve now live in Derby and enjoy spending time with their children and grandchildren.

Peter’s book is part of the My Voice book collection, a stand-alone project of The Fed, the leading Jewish social care charity in Manchester, dedicated to preserving the life stories of Holocaust survivors and refugees from Nazi persecution who settled in the UK. The oral history, which is recorded and transcribed, captures their entire lives from before, during and after the war years. The books are written in the words of the survivor so that future generations can always hear their voice. The My Voice book collection is a valuable resource for Holocaust awareness and education.

Ruth Lachs was born in Hamburg in 1936. Following the devastating impact of Kristallnacht, her family decided that they should move to Holland. At the age of six, she narrowly escaped deportation. To hide her Jewish identity, Ruth assumed a new name. Under the pretence of being an orphan, she was taken to a gathering place and hidden overnight in a sand pit to avoid being listed by the Germans to be taken away.

Ruth married Werner Lachs in August 1962. They met in Holland and settled in Manchester, where they had three children, Joanne, Sharon, and Martin. Ruth went on to work in healthcare at The Christie Hospital and Tameside General. Ruth has spoken to many schoolchildren over the years about her experiences of the Holocaust.

Ruth’s book is part of the My Voice book collection, a stand-alone project of The Fed, the leading Jewish social care charity in Manchester, dedicated to preserving the life stories of Holocaust survivors and refugees from Nazi persecution who settled in the UK. The oral history, which is recorded and transcribed, captures their entire lives from before, during and after the war years. The books are written in the words of the survivor so that future generations can always hear their voice. The My Voice book collection is a valuable resource for Holocaust awareness and education.

Leonard Kaufmann was born in Germany in April 1935. With the threat of war looming, his uncle Arthur managed to secure sponsorship for Leonard to escape to England on the Kindertransport. Alice and Ronald Argles sponsored 30 children in total, and Leonard lived in their home in Staffordshire with them almost until the end of the war.

When Leonard finished school, he went into the family business, manufacturing egg slicers, which later developed into a wholesale business. In 1961, Leonard married Ruth and moved to Gatley, Manchester. They had two daughters, Sarah and Debra. Leonard worked as a clothing manufacturer for a short time and later spent many years as the administrator for the Yeshurun Synagogue. He does not remember his family who all perished during the Holocaust.

Leonard’s book is part of the My Voice book collection, a stand-alone project of The Fed, the leading Jewish social care charity in Manchester, dedicated to preserving the life stories of Holocaust survivors and refugees from Nazi persecution who settled in the UK. The oral history, which is recorded and transcribed, captures their entire lives from before, during and after the war years. The books are written in the words of the survivor so that future generations can always hear their voice. The My Voice book collection is a valuable resource for Holocaust awareness and education.

Ike Alterman was born in 1928 in Ozarów in Poland. In telling his story, he recounts his happy Orthodox Jewish upbringing, the tragic loss of his immediate family in Treblinka and Auschwitz, his ordeal through concentration camps including Auschwitz-Birkenau, surviving multiple death marches, and his liberation in Theresienstadt in 1945.

Ike is one of ‘The Boys’, brought to Windermere in England, as part of a British governmental scheme granting asylum to Holocaust child survivors. Ike describes his rehabilitation, and new life in Manchester, where he started a family and established a jewellery business. Later in life, Ike pursued closure by revisiting his hometown in Poland and undertaking a difficult trip to Treblinka. He reflects on his life after immeasurable loss, and what it means to endure and bear witness.

Ike’s book is part of the My Voice book collection, a stand-alone project of The Fed, the leading Jewish social care charity in Manchester, dedicated to preserving the life stories of Holocaust survivors and refugees from Nazi persecution who settled in the UK. The oral history, which is recorded and transcribed, captures their entire lives from before, during and after the war years. The books are written in the words of the survivor so that future generations can always hear their voice. The My Voice book collection is a valuable resource for Holocaust awareness and education.

Marianne Phillips was born in 1924 in Berlin. Following the Nazi rise to power, and her mother’s sudden death, Marianne’s father temporarily placed Marianne and her younger brother in a Jewish orphanage. This is where she met Harry, her future husband. Having experienced the aftermath of Kristallnacht, and following a brief family reunion, her aunt arranged for Marianne to come to England on the Kindertransport in 1939.

After initially living in Somerset, where she worked as a domestic and nanny, Marianne moved to London. She was reunited with Harry, and they married in 1943 and settled in Maidenhead, raising two children there. In later life, Marianne relocated to Manchester and immersed herself in her new community. Marianne’s resilience and strength shine through her narrative.

Marianne’s book is part of the My Voice book collection, a stand-alone project of The Fed, the leading Jewish social care charity in Manchester, dedicated to preserving the life stories of Holocaust survivors and refugees from Nazi persecution who settled in the UK. The oral history, which is recorded and transcribed, captures their entire lives from before, during and after the war years. The books are written in the words of the survivor so that future generations can always hear their voice. The My Voice book collection is a valuable resource for Holocaust awareness and education.

Elena Grosskopf was born in June 1924 and grew up in Merano on the Austrian-Italian border. Following a happy childhood in the Italian Tyrol and later on in Milan, the rise of antisemitism in Mussolini’s regime in the late 1930s caused Elena’s parents to arrange for her to escape to England with her brother Josie. Elena recounts their experiences of life with foster families and in hostels in Manchester, and as evacuees in Blackpool.

After the war, Elena married Leo. They settled in Manchester and had three children, regularly travelling to Italy to spend time with Elena’s parents who had miraculously survived the war and found one another again there.

Elena’s book is part of the My Voice book collection, a stand-alone project of The Fed, the leading Jewish social care charity in Manchester, dedicated to preserving the life stories of Holocaust survivors and refugees from Nazi persecution who settled in the UK. The oral history, which is recorded and transcribed, captures their entire lives from before, during and after the war years. The books are written in the words of the survivor so that future generations can always hear their voice. The My Voice book collection is a valuable resource for Holocaust awareness and education.

Chaim Ferster was born in Sosnowiec, Poland. He lived with his parents and three sisters above the brush factory owned by his father. They were religious Jews and only spoke Yiddish. He was 17 when war broke out and German soldiers arrived in his town.

After surviving a harrowing selection process, Chaim was sent to one camp after another and set to work. Then, in September 1944, he was sent to Auschwitz. In April 1945, he was forced onto a death march to Buchenwald. After liberation, Chaim was reunited with his sister and one of their cousins and they came to Manchester, where he found work as a sewing machine repairer and eventually became a toy manufacturer. He married Nan and they had three sons, and several grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Chaim’s book is part of the My Voice book collection, a stand-alone project of The Fed, the leading Jewish social care charity in Manchester, dedicated to preserving the life stories of Holocaust survivors and refugees from Nazi persecution who settled in the UK. The oral history, which is recorded and transcribed, captures their entire lives from before, during and after the war years. The books are written in the words of the survivor so that future generations can always hear their voice. The My Voice book collection is a valuable resource for Holocaust awareness and education.

Shakespeare’s tutor: The influence of Thomas Kyd adds to the critical and scholarly discussion that seeks to establish the early modern playwright Thomas Kyd’s dramatic canon, and indicates where and how Kyd contributed to the development of Shakespeare’s drama through influence, collaboration, revision and adaptation. A further, complementary aim of the book is to demonstrate various ways in which it is possible to combine statistical analysis with reading plays as literary and performative works.

The book summarises, extends, and corrects all of the scholarship on Kyd’s authorship of anonymous plays, and reveals the remarkable extent to which Shakespeare was influenced by his dramatic predecessor. The book represents a significant intervention in the field of early modern authorship studies and aims to revolutionise our understanding of Shakespeare’s dramatic development.

Challenging nuclearism explores how a deliberate ‘normalisation’ of nuclear weapons has been constructed, why it has prevailed in international politics for over seventy years and why it is only now being questioned seriously. The book identifies how certain practices have enabled a small group of states to hold vast arsenals of these weapons of mass destruction and how the close control over nuclear decisions by a select group has meant that the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons have been disregarded for decades.

The recent UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons will not bring about quick disarmament. It has been decried by the nuclear weapon states. But by rejecting nuclearism and providing a clear denunciation of nuclear weapons, it will challenge nuclear states in a way that has until now not been possible. Challenging nuclearism analyses the origins and repercussions of this pivotal moment in nuclear politics.

Advertised in its Prologue as a prequel to Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra, Fletcher and Massinger’s The False One is the first literary work completely to revolve around the affair between Caesar and Cleopatra. In its deployment of their liaison as a venue for the exploration and criticism of contemporary political manoeuvring and its high-spirited and pungent appropriation of Roman history, the play proves to be one of the most compelling Jacobean dramatizations of the classical past.

This Revels Plays edition offers the first fully annotated, single-volume critical edition of The False One, with a thorough introduction that provides new insights on the date and the theatre of the play’s first performance, examines the playwrights’ reworking of their sources and explores the theatrical potential of a play that has hitherto regrettably been lost to the dramatic repertory.

This book provides a new analytical framework that investigates the way in which the EU changes its foreign policy after crisis. Adapting existing theorising of foreign policy change to a single framework applicable to the EU context, Ikani provides a toolbox to explain the process of change and measure the policy change that follows. The framework is developed through an examination of two important EU foreign policy change episodes (post-Arab uprisings and post-Ukraine invasion), and test-driven in three recent cases of EU foreign policy change after crisis.
The volume presents a novel typology of EU foreign policy change, advancing the fields of foreign policy analysis, public policy studies and International Relations. It explains both the decision-making process leading to policy change, and the variation in change outcomes following this process.

This volume presents a modernised edition of Christopher Marlowe’s critical engagement with one of the bloodiest and traumatic episodes of the French Wars of Religion, the wholesale massacre of French Huguenots in Paris in August, 1572. Sensorily shocking and intellectually gripping, the play’s dramatic action spans a tumultuous two decades in French history to unfold for its audience the tragic consequences of religious fanaticism, power politics, and dynastic rivalry.

Comprehensively introduced and containing full commentary notes, this edition opens up this frequently neglected but historically significant and dramatically powerful play to student and scholar alike. The introduction examines such topics as the history of the massacre, the play’s treatment of its sources, the play’s dramatisation of trauma, and the play’s exploration of notions of religious toleration.

This book explores how the concept of colonialism can help to understand the past and present of Antarctica, and how Antarctica may illuminate the limits of colonialism as an analytic concept. Despite lacking an indigenous population, the continent has been shaped by many of the same political and economic forces that have defined the rest of the world – notwithstanding its unique governance arrangement, the Antarctic Treaty System. The book provides a fresh and timely set of contributions that critically explore different practices, attitudes and logics that suggest that colonialism may have been and may still be present in Antarctica, ranging from religion to material culture to the treatment of animals. The chapters also explore the connection between colonialism and cognate terms like capitalism, socialism, nationalism, and environmentalism.

An electronic edition of this book is freely available under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND) licence.

From the United Nations to the International Bureau of Weights and Measures, the principles of international organizations affect all of our lives. The principles these organizations live by represent, at least in part, the principles all of us live by. This book quantifies international organizations’ affiliation with particular principles in their constitutions, like cooperation, peace and equality.

Offering a sophisticated statistical and legal analysis of these principles, the authors reveal the values contained in international organizations’ constitutions and their relationship with one another. When these organizations are divided into groups, like regional versus universal organizations, many new, seemingly contradictory, interpretations of international organizations law emerge. Through elaborate network representations, radar charters, k-clusters analyses and scatter plots, this book offers an unprecedented insight into the principles and values of international organizations.

This book analyses the international phenomenon of private peace entrepreneurs. These are private citizens with no official authority who initiate channels of communication with official representatives from the other side of a conflict in order to promote a conflict resolution process. It combines theoretical discussion with historical analysis, examining four cases from different conflicts: Norman Cousins and Suzanne Massie in the Cold War, Brendan Duddy in the Northern Ireland conflict and Uri Avnery in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The book defines the phenomenon, examines the resources and activities of private peace entrepreneurs and their impact on the official diplomacy, and examines the conditions under which they can play an effective role in peace-making processes.
This book is relevant to United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 16, Peace, justice and strong institutions.

Ireland, slavery and the Caribbean is a complex and ground-breaking collection of essays. Grounded in history, it integrates perspectives from art historians, architectural and landscape historians, and literary scholars to produce a genuinely interdisciplinary collection that spans from 1620-1830: the high point of European colonialism. By exploring imperial, national and familial relationships from their building blocks of plantation, migration, property and trade, it finds new ways to re-create and question how slavery made the Atlantic world.

This book is an oral history of the punk scene in Belfast from the mid-1970s to the mid-80s. It explores what it was like to be a punk in a city shaped by the violence of the Troubles, and how this differed from being a punk elsewhere. It also asks what it means to have been a punk – how punk unravels as a thread throughout the lives of the people interviewed, and what that unravelling means in the context of post-peace-process Northern Ireland. In doing so, it suggests a critical understanding of sectarianism, subjectivity and memory politics in the North, and argues for the importance of placing punk within the segregated structures of everyday life described by the interviewees.

Belfast punk and the Troubles is an intervention in Northern Irish historiography stressing the importance of history from below, and will be compelling reading for historians of Ireland and of punk, as well as those interested in innovative approaches to oral history.

Settlers at the end of empire traces the development of racialised migration regimes in South Africa, Rhodesia (present-day Zimbabwe) and the United Kingdom from the Second World War to the end of apartheid in 1994. While South Africa and Rhodesia, like other settler colonies, had a long history of restricting the entry of migrants of colour, in the 1960s under existential threat and after abandoning formal ties with the Commonwealth they began to actively recruit white migrants, the majority of whom were British. At the same time, with the 1962 Commonwealth Immigrants Act, the British government began to implement restrictions aimed at slowing the migration of British subjects of colour. In all three nations, these policies were aimed at the preservation of nations imagined as white, revealing the persistence of the racial ideologies of empire across the era of decolonisation.

The first comprehensive account of the public and cultural diplomacy campaigns carried out by the US in Yugoslavia during the height of the Cold War, this book examines the political role of culture in US-Yugoslav bilateral relations and the fluid links between information and propaganda. Tito allowed the US Information Agency and the State Department’s cultural programmes to enter Yugoslavia, liberated from Soviet control. The exchange of intellectual and political personnel helped foster the US-Yugoslav relationship, yet it posed severe ideological challenges for both sides.

By providing new insights into porous borders between freedom and coercion in Tito’s regime, this book shows how public diplomacy acted as an external input for Yugoslav liberalisation and dissident movements. Using extensive archival research and interviews, Konta analyses the links between information and propaganda, and the unintended effects of propaganda beyond the control of producers and receivers.

How might literary scholarship engage with the sustainability debate? Aimed at research scholars and advanced students in literary and environmental studies, this collection brings together twelve essays by leading and up-coming scholars on the theme of literature and sustainability. In today’s sociopolitical world, sustainability has become a ubiquitous term, yet one potentially driven to near meaninglessness by the extent of its usage. While much has been written on sustainability in various domains, this volume sets out to foreground the contributions literary scholarship might make to notions of sustainability, both as an idea with a particular history and as an attempt to reconceptualise the way we live. Essays in this volume take a range of approaches, using the tools of literary analysis to interrogate sustainability’s various paradoxes and to examine how literature in its various forms might envisage notions of sustainability.

An electronic edition of this book is freely available under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND) licence.

The revised and updated edition of this popular title shines a light on the precarious situation of art workers today.

Culture keeps you fit and healthy. Culture brings communities together. Culture improves your education. This is the message endlessly repeated by the government and arts organisations. But as this ground-breaking book explains, we need to be cautious about culture.

Culture is bad for you presents an unflinching portrait of the cultural landscape in the UK today. It reveals how women, people of colour and those from working-class backgrounds are systematically excluded, despite the claims of cultural institutions and businesses. Updated to provide a report on the situation after COVID, this edition reveals that despite grand promises from those at the top, exclusion and precarity remain the norm.

While inequalities of workforce and audience remain unaddressed, the positive contribution culture makes to society can never be fully realised. This book offers a powerful call to transform cultural and creative industries.

A rich and revealing examination of the legendary pop duo Soft Cell.

Soft Cell are not your average pop band. Marc Almond and Dave Ball may be best known for the string of hits they released in 1981, but the powerful first phase of their collaboration embraced a staggering array of sounds, influences and innovations that would change the face of music to come.

In Bedsit land, Patrick Clarke plunges into the archives and interviews more than sixty contributors, including the band members themselves, to follow Soft Cell through the many strange and sprawling worlds that shaped their extraordinary career. They lead him from the faded camp glamour of the British seaside to the dizzying thrills of the New York club scene. From transgressive student performance art to the sleaze and squalor of pre-gentrified Soho. From the glitz of British showbiz to the drug-addled chaos of post-Franco Spain.

What is it like to live next door to a British Army base? England's military heartland provides an eye-opening account of the sprawling military presence on Salisbury Plain, drawing on a wide range of voices from both sides of the divide.

Targeted for expansion under government plans to reorganise the UK’s global defence estate, the Salisbury ‘super garrison’ offers a unique opportunity to explore the impact of the military footprint in a particular place. But this is no ordinary environment: as well as being the world-famous site of Stonehenge, the grasslands of Salisbury Plain are home to rare plants and wildlife.

How does the army take responsibility for conserving this unique landscape as it trains young men and women to use lethal weapons? Are its claims that its presence is a positive for the environment anything more than propaganda? This book investigates these questions against the backdrop of a historic landscape inscribed with the legacy of perpetual war.

A revealing account of what we feed our citizens in schools, hospitals and prisons.

Access to good food is the litmus test of a society’s commitment to social justice and sustainable development. This book explores the ‘good food revolution’ in public institutions, asking what broader lessons can be learned.

In schools the book examines the challenge of the whole school approach, where the message of the classroom is being aligned with the offer of the dining room. In hospitals it looks at the struggle to put nutrition on a par with medicine and shape a health service worthy of the name. And in prisons it shows how good food can bring hope and dignity to prisoners, helping them to rehabilitate themselves.

Drawing on evidence from the UK, US and Sweden, Serving the public highlights how public institutions are harnessing the power of purchase to secure public health, social justice and ecological integrity. The quest for good food in these institutions is an important part of the struggle to redeem the public sphere and repair the damage wrought by forty years of neoliberalism.

As featured on Suranne Jones: Investigating Witch Trials

In 1487, the zealous inquisitor Heinrich Kramer wrote a treatise that would have a remarkable influence on European history. Blaming women for his own lust, and frustrated by official complacency before what he saw as a monstrous spiritual menace, Kramer penned a practical guide to aid law officers in the identification and prosecution of witches.

Fusing theology, lurid anecdotes and advice for those engaged in combating sorcery, The Malleus Maleficarum transports the reader into the dark heart of medieval belief – where fear and the supernatural converged in a gripping struggle for understanding and control. The book led to the burning of numerous heretics and ‘witches’ and had a lasting impact on the popular image of witchcraft.

This edition offers a clear, readable translation and an introduction that lays out the context of late-medieval Europe, a time of spiritual paranoia when powerful men suspected women’s sexuality was a tool of the Devil.

An intimate history of the pornographic publisher behind some of the greatest works of the twentieth-century avant-garde.

From the 1930s to the 1970s, in New York and in Paris, daring publishers and writers were producing banned pornographic literature.

The authors of the books were young, impecunious writers, poets and artists. Most of them wrote to survive, but some relished the freedom to experiment that anonymity provided - men writing as women, women writing as men - and some, such as Anaïs Nin and Henry Miller, went on to become influential figures in modernist literature.

Dirty books tells the stories of these writers and their remarkable publishers: Jack Kahane of Obelisk Press and his son Maurice Girodias of Olympia Press, whose catalogue and repertoire anticipated that of the more famous US publisher Grove Press.

A poignant and deeply researched history of gay oppression in the USSR.

In 1934, Joseph Stalin enacted sodomy laws, unleashing a wave of brutal detentions of homosexual men in large Soviet cities.

Red closet recounts the compelling stories of people whose lives were affected by those laws, including a naïve Scottish journalist who dared to write to Stalin in an attempt to save his lover from prosecution and a homosexual theatre student who came to Moscow in pursuit of a career amid Stalin’s harsh repressions and mass arrests. We also meet a fearless doctor in Siberia who provided medical treatment for gay men at his own peril and a much-loved Soviet singer who hid his homosexuality from the secret police.

Each story helps paint the hitherto unknown picture of how Soviet oppression of gay people originated and was perpetuated from Stalin’s rule until the demise of the USSR.

A daring investigation into how women are recruited by the far right online.

As the far right has gained popularity and acceptance around the world, its ranks have swelled with an unlikely category of members: women.

Women play significant roles in far-right movements, acting as propagandists, prizes to be won and mother-warriors of the nation. But up to now their activities have been largely overlooked. In Pink-pilled, journalist Lois Shearing interviews leading experts and infiltrates communities of tradwives and femtrolls to provide a cutting-edge account of how the far right uses the internet to recruit women. Shining a light on women’s experiences within these movements, Shearing reveals horrifying examples of misogyny and violence.

Understanding how and why women join movements that explicitly aim to restrict their autonomy is essential if we want to fight back. Pink-pilled offers key insights for countering women’s radicalisation and building communities resistant to far-right thought.

An inspiring manifesto offering a radical vision for our political future.

We live in an age of crisis and decline. The right presents ‘solutions’ that only worsen the situation, driving a downward cycle in which desperation leads to despair. But the left is also to blame: progressive politicians have consistently failed to recognise both the urgency of people’s need and their receptiveness to new solutions.

In Act now, a team of leading researchers presents a compelling and achievable vision for a progressive future. They outline clear policies for welfare, health and social care, education, housing and more. Arguing for a rolling forwards of the state, they call for a new era of active citizenship and economic democracy, grounded in robust and resilient institutions.

Only a comprehensive and integrated approach, based on clear evidence of feasibility and popularity, can provide a pathway to the secure, democratic and prosperous Britain of tomorrow. This book is the blueprint. It calls on politicians, pundits and the British people to act now.

A cutting-edge exploration of how Marx’s ideas have been adopted and adapted by revolutionary thinkers in the Global South.

For much of the twentieth century, the ideas of Karl Marx provided the backbone for social justice around the world. But today the legacy of Marxism is contested, with some seeing it as Eurocentric and irrelevant to the wider global struggle.

In Global Marxism, Simin Fadaee argues that Marxism remains a living tradition and the cornerstone of revolutionary theory and practice in the Global South. She explores the lives, ideas and legacies of a group of revolutionaries who played an exceptional role in contributing to counter-hegemonic change. Figures such as Ho Chi Minh, Kwame Nkrumah, Ali Shariati and Subcomandante Marcos did not simply accept the version of Marxism that was given to them – they adapted it to local conditions and contexts. In doing this they demonstrated that Marxism is not a rigid set of propositions but an evolving force whose transformative potential remains enormous.

This global Marxism has much to teach us in the never-ending task of grasping the changing historical conditions of capitalism and the complex world in which we live.

An essential biography of a cricketing great, exploring his achievements as a player, manager and political activist.

This ground-breaking biography of Sir Clyde Walcott explores the extraordinary life and achievements of a man who was both an important activist and one of the greatest cricketers of all time.

In the 1950s Walcott was part of the legendary ‘three Ws’ batting triumvirate with Everton Weekes and Frank Worrell that helped give West Indies cricket a new identity distinct from its colonial past. After test cricket he became a prominent administrator and advocate of Black consciousness, managing the great West Indies teams that dominated the sport in the 1980s. A vocal supporter of using cricket to apply pressure to the South African apartheid regime, in 1992 he became chairman of the International Cricket Council – the first Black man in that influential role.

Shining a light on Walcott’s largely ignored part in effecting change through the vehicle of cricket, this book also shows how he contributed to dramatic social transformation in Guyana as cricket and social organiser for the country’s sugar estates from 1954 to 1970, bringing about improvements in the living conditions and self-esteem of plantation workers while promoting the emergence of several world-class cricketers from a previously neglected corner of the Caribbean.

A hundred years after the tragic 1924 British Everest expedition, this collection explores the wider social and cultural history of the mountain.

Mount Everest looms large in the popular imagination. Since the deaths of mountaineers George Mallory and Andrew Irvine in 1924, histories of the mountain have overwhelmingly focused on the mythologies of western male adventure and conquest. But there are many more stories waiting to be told.

Other Everests brings together new voices and perspectives on the historical and cultural significance of Everest in the modern world. The book shines a light on the overlooked role of local people and high-altitude workers, while also revealing the significant contributions women have made to climbing the mountain and writing its history. It explores the depiction of Everest in a range of media and investigates how the forces of nationalism and commercialism have shaped many different ‘Everests’.

After years of exploitation, Indigenous people are now reclaiming Mount Everest in the twenty-first century. Other Everests re-examines the past and present of the world’s highest peak, presenting an exciting vision of what Everest might become in the future.

With a foreword by Andrew McMillan

An alternative celebration of LGBTQ history in Britain, offering tales of queer life from four cities.

When it comes to queer British history, London has stolen the limelight. But what about the millions of queer lives lived elsewhere?

In Queer beyond London, two leading LGBTQ historians take you on a journey through four English cities from the sixties to the noughties, exploring the northern post-industrial heartlands and taking in the salty air of the seaside cities of the south.

Covering the bohemian, artsy world of Brighton, the semi-hidden queer life of military Plymouth, the lesbian activism of Leeds and the cutting-edge dance and drag scenes of Manchester, they show how local people, places and politics shaped LGBTQ life in each city, forging vibrant and distinctive queer cultures of their own.

Pandemic culture: The impacts of Covid-19 on the UK cultural sector and implications for the future provides a summary of the local, regional and national policy responses to the Covid-19 crisis within the cultural sector, based on the findings of a 15-month research project led by the Centre for Cultural Value. It offers a rigorous statistical analysis of the impacts of these policy responses and of the pandemic itself on the cultural workforce across the UK and a mixed-methods analysis of audiences’ responses to the pandemic. The book identifies and critically reflects on the core, recurrent themes that have emerged from the research whilst highlighting implications for the sector’s future direction and for research in the fields of arts management and cultural policy.
An electronic edition of this book is freely available under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND) licence.

The business of time explores the evolution of the global watch industry from the mid-nineteenth century to the present, offering a comprehensive history of the sector.

Watch production today is concentrated in three countries: Switzerland for luxury products, Japan for mid-range and China for mass-produced. The industry is dominated by a dozen large companies, most of them organised on a global scale. But a hundred years ago the picture was quite different. Throughout the twentieth century, countries such as Great Britain, France and the United States saw the industrial manufacture of watches disappear from their territory, while Hong Kong went from being a subcontractor to an intermediary between China and the world market.

Highlighting the conditions that enabled watch production to spread around the globe, The business of time explains how multinationals came to dominate the industry and how Swiss companies established themselves as the undisputed leader in luxury watches.