Manchester University Press

The Island Book of Records brings the early years of this iconic record label to life.

A fifteen-year labour of love, the volumes will fully document the analogue era of Island. Offering a comprehensive archive of album cover design and photography, together with the voices of the musicians, designers, photographers, producers, studio engineers and record company personnel that worked on each project, the volumes show in unique depth the workings of the label, covering every LP.

Featuring material from recent interviews and from media interviews of the time, and each including a comprehensive discography of 45s, the books are lavishly illustrated with gig adverts (very many at venues which no longer exist), concert tickets, flyers, international LP variants, labels, LP and 45 adverts and other ephemera.

These LP-sized editions are a collector’s dream, offering a truly unparalleled resource for those interested in music history and a perfect gift for any music lover.

Many disenchanted Kashmiris continue to demand independence or freedom from India. Written by a leading authority on Kashmir’s troubled past, this book revisits the topic of independence for the region (also known as Jammu and Kashmir, or J&K), and explores exactly why this aspiration has never been fulfilled. In a rare India-Pakistan agreement, they concur that neither J&K, nor any part of it, can be independent.

Charting a complex history and intense geo-political rivalry from Maharaja Hari Singh’s leadership in the mid-1920s to the present, this book offers an essential insight into the disputes that have shaped the region. As tensions continue to rise following government-imposed COVID-19 lockdowns, Snedden asks a vital question: what might independence look like and just how realistic is this aspiration?

A thoughtful exploration of the work of this unique comedian and writer.

Caroline Aherne was one of the most influential and beloved of British comedians. In this book David Scott explores Aherne’s comedic artistry and creative legacy, focusing on her iconic characters and ground-breaking TV shows.

Scott dives into Aherne’s most beloved creations, from the sharp-tongued Mrs Merton to the quietly revolutionary The Royle Family. Drawing on the tales of collaborators and telling behind-the-scenes stories, he provides an intimate glimpse into the creative processes that brought these iconic works to life. At the same time, he examines the social and cultural influences that shaped Aherne’s work, from the rich traditions of Northern working-class humour to the experiences of Irish migrants.

Aherne’s work is celebrated for its sharp wit, warmth and ability to find comedy in adversity. This book offers an exploration and celebration of one of comedy’s most inventive minds, revealing how she reshaped the British comedy landscape.

A compelling tour of Shakespeare’s England that makes a powerful contribution to the 'authorship question'.

How do we know Shakespeare was Shakespeare? Could a glover’s son who left school at fifteen really be the author behind such masterpieces as Hamlet, King Lear and The Tempest?

Yes! says historian Susan Amussen. She transports readers back to early modern England, to travel the path that carried William Shakespeare from humble origins in Stratford to literary greatness on the London stage. This was a society undergoing rapid change. Grammar schools made education in Latin and Greek available to commoners, while touring players brought the latest dramatic productions to the masses. And in London, a metropolis filled with European visitors, ordinary people had the opportunity to see courtly life up close.

No serious historian doubts that Shakespeare was the author of the plays that bear his name. Susan Amussen shares what they know: that Shakespeare’s England was a complex and cosmopolitan place, with everything a talented young playwright needed to develop his craft and furnish his imagination.

From Manchester’s backstreets to global dancefloors – the untold story of a musical pioneer.

Beginning on the night in November 1963 when his mum took him to see the Beatles live at Manchester’s ABC Cinema, Mike Pickering takes the reader through sixty years of clubs, clothes, gigs, record labels, football matches and politics.

Pickering has lived through decades of rapid change in popular music. As an influential DJ he introduced house music into the legendary Haçienda. He signed Happy Mondays and James to Factory Records before working with Kasabian, Gossip and Calvin Harris at Sony. His Mercury Prize-winning, multi-million-selling group M People transformed the music industry's attitude to dance music. As he tells his remarkable story he introduces an array of friends and collaborators, many of whom would become important – and sometimes notorious – figures in music history.

Manchester must dance is a revelatory insider’s account that moves from the cramped back streets of 1950s north Manchester on a journey deep into music, the city and the wider world. It features forewords from some of those Pickering inspired: Martin Fry, Johnny Marr, Noel Gallagher and Calvin Harris.

The irresistible story of a one-man cultural phenomenon.

Minister for the Counterculture, Mancunian mainstay and alternative national treasure John Robb has lived a life in music. In this book he charts his adventures on the cultural frontline, chronicling the making of a DIY icon.

Robb’s quest began in his hometown of Blackpool – where punk was a battle against the odds – and went international when he toured the world with his band. The first person to interview Nirvana, he also discovered The Stone Roses for weekly newspaper Sounds and did early interviews with The Jesus and Mary Chain and The Manics, before moving on to legends such as Mark E. Smith, Nick Cave and Patti Smith. Along the way, he became an on-screen commentator and author of bestselling books.

Robb’s memoir tells of deep friendships with figures from Poly Styrene to Chris Packham. Packed with riotous stories, it provides an alternative account of British musical and cultural history and a triumphant blueprint for a punk rock life.

A profound exploration of the connection between poetry and suicide.

‘Suicides have a special language’, Anne Sexton wrote in her 1964 poem ‘Wanting to Die’. But is it a language we can learn to read?

In The poetry of suicide, J. T. Welsch interweaves stories of poets who took their own lives with the long history of suicide in his own family, searching for a new way of understanding these difficult deaths. Beginning with Hamlet’s ‘To be or not to be?’, he delves into the work of Dante, Sylvia Plath, Vladimir Mayakovsky, and others, asking what it can teach us about suicide’s messy reality.

Suicide is more like poetry than we realise, Welsch argues. Both are filled with ambiguities, contradictions, and unknowable intentions. Both demand and resist interpretation. Recovering the personal dimension often lost in our medicalised public discourse, Welsch finds practical ways of confronting suicide’s poem-like difficulties.

A visionary exploration of what the city might be in a postcapitalist world.

In a world dominated by capitalism, where urban landscapes suffer from inequality, environmental degradation and social strife, a vision for what comes next is vital. Postcapitalist cities guides readers through contemporary urban life, presenting a transformative urban blueprint for a future of equity, sustainability and communal well-being.

Combining vivid case studies with historical analysis and theoretical exploration, the book reveals how capitalism has shaped our cities and uncovers the revolutionary post-capitalist potential within them. From the urban protests of 1968 and the fare strikes in Santiago to urban commoning and the solarpunk movement, this book reveals how communities are planting seeds of radical transformation.

Postcapitalist cities is a poignant critique but also a celebration of emerging urban practices that prioritise human dignity, democracy and social justice. It invites readers to dream, analyse and act. Whether you're an urban planner, activist, scholar or concerned citizen, this book provides the tools and inspiration to build cities where humanity can truly flourish.

A ground-breaking exploration of how art responds to democratic crisis.

Is democracy over? Did we ever really have it? Most people would agree that today democracy finds itself in crisis. As this crisis has intensified, art has emerged as an important means of experimenting with new democratic processes and possibilities.

In Model collapse, an incisive group of art historians and theorists investigate the relationship between art and democracy since the 1990s. Exploring a wide range of artistic responses, from interactive public sculptures to autonomous curatorial projects, critical engagement with electoral politics and creative street protest, they offer fresh insights into the limits of representation, the appeal of collaboration and the role of the nation-state in post-national frameworks.

‘Model collapse’ is what happens when large language models start learning from their own generated data and lose all connection to reality. This book examines the multiple, intersecting crises that shape the conditions for artistic practice and define its socio-political aims. It advances our understanding of how art can contribute to one of the most vital political issues of our time.

The films of Bigas Luna is the first comprehensive English-language study of the complete filmography of Spanish filmmaker Bigas Luna, spanning from Tatuaje (1976) to DiDi Hollywood (2010).

Engaging with theoretical frameworks such as haptic cinema, erotic cinema, auteur theory, and studies of gender, sexuality, and national identity, the book situates close readings of Bigas Luna’s films within broader discussions of production and marketing. Fouz Hernández draws on extensive archival research—including original screenplays, press materials, and interviews with industry professionals—while engaging with previous scholarship in multiple languages.

Structured into five thematic chapters, the book explores key concerns in Bigas Luna’s work, including genre, gender representation, Iberian and Mediterranean identities, and meta-cinematic narratives. It can be read as a cohesive study of his oeuvre or as a reference for specific films.

This book provides the first complete English translation of works by the Toledan archbishop Rodrigo Ximénez de Rada (1170–1247 CE). The Minor Histories, serving as supplements to Rodrigo’s much larger Gothic History, covered the Romans, Huns, Vandals, Alans, Suevi, Ostrogoths and Arabs, explaining how these peoples contributed to what he saw as Spain’s tragic history of calamities. The last work in the series – his History of the Arabs – can be regarded as the first surviving Western monograph on Arab and Islamic history, and as such is an essential source for topics of Christian–Muslim relations and Western depictions of Islam, Muslims and Arabs.

In addition to the translation of the Minor Histories, complete with annotations, this work includes a thorough and accessible introduction to the life and works of Rodrigo, who was an important figure in a crucial transition period of Spain’s history that saw the balance of power in the Iberian peninsula shift decisively to the Christian kingdoms. Besides his biography, the introduction provides an in-depth assessment of Rodrigo’s historiography and as such serves as a useful discussion of the use of sources by medieval historical writers.

Industrial memory in North-East England examines how the region’s industrial myth and memory have been articulated in the renegotiation of northernness. The book offers a critical contextualisation of the concept of northernness and the English North, and introduces the concept of the PopCultural Portfolio, a mixed-methods approach to conjunctural analysis in cultural and memory studies.

The book provides six richly illustrated case studies to demonstrate the practical application of cultural studies’ expansive and inclusive understanding of texts, bringing together materials from North East football, folk, indie and exhibition culture to establish how the North East’s industrial past continues to be remembered and functionalised as industrial memory. In turn, the conjunctural analysis demonstrates how industrial memory is articulated and mythologised as north(east)erness in contemporary popular culture.

Migration and social policy in a changing world bridges the generally separate fields of social policy and migration studies. This book traces social policy responses to migration from the Industrial Revolution to today’s era of globalisation and large-scale migration.

Through case studies from across the globe, the book explores key themes including rural-urban migration, social citizenship, welfare internationalism and diasporic care systems. It examines how migrants are included in or excluded from social citizenship in host societies, and how they become providers of welfare services such as health and social care.

Moving beyond a methodological nationalist focus, the book investigates migrant incorporation into welfare states through family networks, faith communities, and other informal welfare structures. It combines migrants' experiences with host societies' immigration politics, institutional perspectives and policies to present a comprehensive analysis of the migration-welfare relationship.

This volume fills a gap in academic literature and offers policymakers, practitioners and scholars a framework for understanding the interplay between migration and social policy in our changing world.

In 1971, the French government announced a massive extension of its military base on the Larzac plateau in southern France. Land was to be expropriated from 107 farms around the small town of La Cavalerie. Limited resistance was expected, but what happened next exceeded all expectations.

Local sheep farmers set up protest camps and occupied the land. They soon attracted an astonishing level of support, pioneering a form of regional radicalism with global implications. Drawing out the international dimensions of the protest, Make cheese not war explores a transnational resistance movement in the 1970s that challenged dominant visions of modernity and became a wellspring of radical alternatives. Exploring previously unconsulted archives in France and elsewhere, the book offers an in-depth analysis of the decade-long peasant movement and its aftermath.

Repositioning the Larzac struggle within a wider network of French and international solidarities, from the US to the UK, Germany, Burkina Faso, New Caledonia and Japan, the book retraces political networks of pacifist activism, as well as environmental movements and anti-nuclear protest. It shows how this French peasant campaign became both a platform and a model for popular engagement.

A bold analysis that exposes the racist policing of Black music.

The emergence of UK drill music made headline news, portraying it as a criminal enterprise instead of recognising it as an art form. This new rap subgenre, however, is neither the first nor the only Black music to be targeted this way.

Policing the beats rewinds the tape to demonstrate how music has been used as an instrument for policing Black people, from the era of colonial slavery to the present day, revealing the racist legal processes that make crimes out of rhymes.

This original and readable book offers the first in-depth account of the policing of Black music in Britain, highlighting the relationship between politics, culture and criminal (in)justice and inviting music lovers, scholars and activists to tune in.

Justifying (in)justice reveals how processes of ignorance are vital to legitimising punitive and discriminatory criminal justice policy and practices. Focusing on the state’s startlingly harsh response to the English ‘riots’ of 2011, the book draws together unique insights from interviews with prosecutors, sentencers, defence lawyers and policymakers at the heart of the response, alongside analysis of media and political debates. Peacock explores the forms of unknowing that were mobilised to justify and normalise the harsh and inequitable punishment of the ‘rioters’, from amnesia about police racism and Britain’s long history of unrest, to widespread denial about the violence of the prison system.
Looking to recent events in Britain and beyond, the book offers timely insight into the cultural processes underpinning the punitive systems that disproportionately harm marginalised and racially minoritised communities.

Drawing on rich archival sources from Europe, Nigeria and the United States, this book retraces the international responses to the Nigeria-Biafra war (1967-1970). It brings to life the organizations on the ground and the individuals who shaped their missions, while examining their often complex relations with governments.
From the dramatic images of starving children to the heated debates about the perverse effects of aid and the emergence of sans-frontiérisme, the Nigeria-Biafra war marked a turning point in the history of humanitarian aid. Colonial practices and representations were adapted to a postcolonial world, and humanitarian aid became a central element in the West’s relationship with Africa.
By revisiting the Biafra moment, this book sheds new light on the contradictions and enduring dilemmas of today’s humanitarian system.

This smart, provocative book reveals how Useful Art is changing the world.

Does art have to be beautiful? What if it can be useful instead? In this cutting-edge book, John Byrne shows how the concept of ‘Useful Art’ is helping artists and communities fight back against the neoliberal takeover of our spaces, services and lives.

Byrne demonstrates that networks of artist-led activism and community-based direct action can provide a collaborative playbook of impactful and inclusive alternatives. From Turner Prize-winning urban regeneration projects to bakeries, vegetable gardens and multi-use arts spaces, Useful Art has enormous potential for bringing people together, recovering and preserving local skills and knowledge and reclaiming artistic endeavour for real-world good.

Exploring an international selection of projects, exhibitions and activism, this important new work champions the shift from aesthetics to use value, challenging traditional ways of seeing the world symbolically through art. Reaching beyond the financial logic of the art world, Byrne shows how Useful Art can offer an artistic toolkit for implementing radical change.

From author:
This is a cutting-edge exploration of black urban politics in Parisian racialized working class and working poor districts, the formation of abolition geography, and the possibilities of new forms of political blackness.

In Black Socialities. Urban resistance and the struggle beyond recognition in Paris, Vanessa E. Thompson argues that black urban politics in the French banlieues are multi-racial and spatially grounded towards abolition. Based on a close engagement with urban black activist practices against racial imagery in the city, policing and state racism, and housing insecurity, she shows how radical anti-racism goes beyond struggles for recognition and unfolds alongside new formations of political blackness that is based on urban conviviality.
This form of black politics has much to teach us in this current conjuncture of liberal anti-racism and state recognition politics.

Despite his professed disdain for actors, this book argues that Hitchcock’s films show a fascination with acting, and also contain many exceptional performances.

In this collection, the first on this subject, a group of distinguished film scholars analyse some key performances in Hitchcock’s work, covering his career from the British silent era to the last years of the Hollywood studio system. The actors covered range from Ivor Novello to Tippi Hedren, with classic, and less well-known films discussed including Notorious, Stage Fright, Strangers on a Train and The Man Who Knew Too Much.

This book reflects the growing academic interest in film performance, and opens new perspectives on the films of Alfred Hitchcock.

A cutting-edge history of wind power in Britain.

There are turbines on the horizon. The blades whirl with metronomic rhythm. With each rotation, wind is transformed into electricity. An energy revolution is underway.

Electric wind rewinds to the beginning to explore the rise of wind energy in modern Britain. From the industrial revolution to the aftermath of war, through energy crises and the changing politics of the late twentieth century, we see how energy has shaped a nation – and how a nation is reflected and refracted through energy. Boldly charting Britain through its wildest, windiest places, this book takes us to the edges of land and beyond to think deeply about the role of nature in politics, science and technology. Visionaries and hippies join engineers and entrepreneurs. Traditions and local cultures meet infrastructure and industry in this captivating history.

At a time when action on carbon emissions is urgent, Electric wind offers examples, ideas and stories to fuel change going forwards. This book is an essential read for anyone interested in nature, climate change, landscape and the making of modern Britain.

An indispensable survey of methods in ecocritical art history.

Ecocriticism is one of the most important and exciting developments in current art history. This is the first book to provide a survey of its methods, showing what they can offer art historians. It also indicates what the interdisciplinary project of ecocriticism stands to gain from art historians, their methods and practices.

The book assembles twenty-three essays written by international scholars that span a wide range of methodological approaches, including ecofeminism, planetary ecologies, material ecocriticism, ecopolitics, and indigenous ecopoetics. The essays are framed by a series of editorial introductions that provide orientation within a disciplinary territory that is still in a state of flux. Written in clear, jargon-free language, they are accompanied by thematically arranged lists of bibliographies to facilitate further study and empower readers to approach the study of art enriched with ecocritical tools.

This book is an indispensable resource for art history in the twenty-first century.

For Spring Summer 2020, Gucci showed a collection questioning identity politics and capitalism. Rather than the usual explanation of the material, shapes or inspirations behind the collection, the press release handed out at the show quoted the philosopher Michel Foucault and questioned the very nature of fashion itself.

Gucci’s press release reflects the popularization of critical theory in public discourse and fashion in particular. Philosophers, activists and academics are increasingly recruited to collaborate with luxury brands, and main-stream fashion brands have begun to adopt a discourse about politics and critical thinking using, in their communication, concepts such as “resistance”, “gender fluidity”, “national identity” or “cultural heritage” without accompanying these discourses with any form of political engagement or activism.

Based on this intellectualization of the fashion industry and the recent proliferation of critical theory in fashion education, this book stresses the importance of rethinking the relationship between fashion and theory. Drawing together eleven chapters and four conversations by and with philosophers, cultural theorists, historians, anthropologists, activists, performers and designers, the book investigates both the theorization of fashion and the ways in which fashion offers a useful landscape in understanding the current state of critical theory today.

The first book to tell the shocking story of the AIDS crisis in Soviet Russia.

Throughout the 1980s, as the world was grappling with the escalating crisis of AIDS, Soviet Russia continued to deny there was a problem. Arguing that the disease was limited to foreigners and ‘immoral’ groups, the government failed to take meaningful action, long past the point other countries had begun to recognise the full scale of the threat.

In this ground-breaking book, Rustam Alexander tells the story of AIDS in Soviet Russia. Fixated on disinformation, censorship and the persecution of marginalised communities, the Soviet authorities wasted precious time, allowing the epidemic to strike at the very heart of the nation: its children. Yet, despite the government’s failure, a number of brave journalists, doctors and nascent gay groups decided to take matters into their own hands and engage in full-fledged AIDS activism.

Tracing the political and social response to AIDS in the final years of the Soviet era, Alexander sheds light on the devastating consequences of government inaction. He draws on personal stories, media reports and archival materials to provide a riveting account of the Russian people’s fight against AIDS amid the tumultuous transformations of Gorbachev’s perestroika.

Whether it’s dealing with regional economic disparities, global geopolitical upheaval, climate change, or the impact of new technologies such as artificial intelligence, we are living in pivotal times.

To mark its 60th anniversary in 2025, this accessible book from Alliance Manchester Business School outlines in detail how business schools can play a significant role in confronting these huge challenges, and equip the next generation of business leaders with the skills they need to embrace them.

Informing public and political debate on the role of business in both the causes and solutions to our biggest challenges the book offers a rethinking of the role of business in society. It will also discuss specific examples of how collaborations with business are leading to impact and change in society.

Featuring a range of thought-provoking essays co-authored by eminent academics and business leaders, this collection will challenge the status quo and outline how business and management research is helping address grand challenges, generate economic growth, inform policy development, and define business thinking over the next generation.

The Aphrodysial is one of six plays written by William Percy (c. 1570-1648), brother of the Ninth Earl of Northumberland (1564-1632). This edition reproduces the copy of the text preserved in Huntington Library MS HM4, with a substantial collation of variants between it and the other extant version preserved in Alnwick Castle Library MS 509.

This ‘Marinall’ is set at the underwater court of Oceanus. The action is concerned with piscatory and amatory pursuits that take place during Cytheræa’s Aphrodysial feast-day. The play offers a retelling of the Hero and Leander story, Jupiter and Neptune’s quest for Thetis’s lost magic bracelet, and the comical attempts of some fishermen, led by Proteus, to capture a talking whale. The play is notable for its extensive stage directions, which envisage performance by boy actors and adult actors respectively.

Of all the tales to be found in Boccaccio’s Decameron, the tragic story of King Tancred’s efforts to frustrate the love of his daughter Gismond for Guiscardo, was probably the best known and most popular in Renaissance England. This Collections volume brings together the earliest texts of the first and last pre-1642 plays to deal with the lovers’ story: the Inner Temple tragedy, Gismond of Salern (1568), and a much-revised play probably by amateur Warwickshire dramatist John Newdigate (1620s). It presents the first modern transcription of the Hargrave MS of Gismond of Salern and the first ever printed edition of Newdigate’s untitled play, here named Glausamond and Fidelia.

Together, the plays offer fresh proof of the important influence of Boccaccio, and Italian literature on English Renaissance drama. They are also fascinating examples of the period’s amateur drama, of interest to all scholars and students of early modern English theatre.

This edition of Two lamentable tragedies, a quarto printed in 1601 by Richard Read for Matthew Law, and ascribed on the title-page to Robert Yarington, is the first to be published since 1913. It offers a photographic facsimile of the copy in the British Library (C.34.e.23), one of only five to have survived. The play combines a plot based on a real-life London murder case of 1594 with one deriving from an Italian tale of an evil father and his son.

The introduction contains an up-to-date consideration of many aspects of the text, including a detailed bibliographical analysis of types, page dimensions, headlines, watermarks and paper; an analysis of compositorial divisions, and of a range of books printed and published by Read and Law; and the nature of the copy-text, which can be deduced from the visualised stage directions and other indications of imaginative staging. There has long been controversy surrounding the authorship of the play, and a full discussion of the issues is provided, including possible identifications of Yarington in contemporary documents, and the question of collaboration. The volume will be essential reading for students of Renaissance drama, book history, and bibliography.

Soliman and Perseda, written c. 1588 and first published in 1592 or 1593, is a late Elizabethan romantic tragedy by Thomas Kyd, author of The Spanish Tragedy. It dramatises the triangular relationship of the Turkish emperor Soliman, his captive Perseda and her beloved Erastus, and the fortunes of the comic servant Piston and the braggart knight Basilisco, against the fictionalised backdrop of the Turkish invasion of Rhodes in the early sixteenth century.

The introduction to this facsimile edition contains the fullest analysis of the text to date. It also provides an account of the play's editorial history, a detailed analysis of its original printing, and lists of all erroneous readings in the first quarto, together with significant differences between the first and second quartos.

This edition provides the best access we have to an important play by one of Shakespeare's leading early contemporaries.

Thomas May's The Tragedy of Antigone (1631), edited by Matteo Pangallo, is the first English treatment of the story made famous by Sophocles. This edition contains a facsimile of the copy held at the Beinecke Library of Yale University, making the play commercially available for the first time since its original publication.

The extensive introduction discusses, among other things, the ownership history of existing copies and their marginal annotations, and of the play's topical political implications in the light of May's wavering between royalist and republican sympathies. Writing during the contentious early years of Charles I's reign, May used Sophocles' Antigone to explore the problems of just rule and justified rebellion. He also went beyond the scope of the original, adding content from a wide range of other classical and contemporary plays, poems and other sources, including Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth.

This volume will be essential reading for advanced students, researchers and teachers of early English drama and seventeenth-century political history.

This edition of The Trial of Treasure will be a photographic facsimile of one of the five extant copies of this apparently anonymous play which was printed in 1567 by Thomas Purfoote. It will reproduce the copy at the Harry Ransome Library, Austin, Texas which has an anomaly in the printing not found in the other copies.

In considering typographical characteristics of the text the Introduction discusses the place of this play in Purfoote’s extensive output. It also addresses the relationship with William Wager’s Enough is as Good as a Feast with which it shares some seventy lines, and considers the possibility of common authorship. The text is rich in stage directions and aspects of performance are discussed including the doubling scheme for five players and the role of the Vice which is exemplified here.

This is an edition of Christopher Marlowe’s play Dr Faustus as it was first printed in 1604. This is one of the most celebrated of all Elizabethan plays, famous for its treatment of the damnation of Faustus and his struggles with his divided conscience. It combines spectacular visual effects with sophisticated theological discussion.

The edition reproduces the only surviving copy, held in the Bodelian Library, Oxford, in photofacsimile. The introduction offers up-to-date analysis of the authorship, sources, staging and printing of the play. The edition will be invaluable for advanced students and established scholars working on Marlowe, Elizabethan drama generally, demonology, and early modern book production.

An edition of the revised text of 1616 will be published by the Malone Society in early 2019.

Collections XVII is the latest volume in the Malone Society’s pioneering series of editions of miscellaneous documents relating to English theatre and drama before 1642. It is likely to be of special interest not only to early theatre historians but to those working on Tudor and Stuart court and civic culture, manuscript writing, household drama and early modern women’s writing, as it publishes new material in each of these fields. The book includes items such as Revels Office accounts, a playscript fragment, entertainments, poems and civic shows. Many of these documents are previously unpublished, and have been freshly edited and transcribed; each has an introduction giving details of its date, authorship and historical importance.

The volume will be essential reading for postgraduates and university teachers in early modern drama, theatre history and women’s writing.

This volume is a photographic facsimile from the copy of the play by George Wapull in the Harry Ransom Centre.It was originally printed in 1576 by Hugh Jackson, and is one of only five extant copies. The introduction discusses the place of this play in Jackson’s output, including two other interludes printed by him shortly afterwards. Besides compositorial practice and some irregularities, it addresses the identity of the author, historical detail about the surviving copies, and the editorial contribution of John Payne Collier.

The text is rich in stage directions and aspects of performance are discussed including the doubling scheme for four players and the active role of the Vice. The play was written at a time when interludes designed for small acting troupes were popular and exhibited remarkable theatrical expertise. The intellectual context is considered, and in particular the place of this play among the considerable number of surviving interludes from London which focus upon wealth and its abuses and other matters of economic importance at the time.

The Twice-Chang’d Friar is one of four early seventeenth-century plays preserved in a manuscript miscellany in the library of the Newdigate family of Arbury Hall, Nuneaton (Arbury Hall MS A414). The play, which appears to have been written by family member and drama lover John Newdigate III, is thought to be unique to this manuscript. This edition makes the play available in print for the first time.

The Twice Chang’d Friar is an Italianate city comedy based on a tale from Boccaccio’s Decameron. It tells the story of Albert, a friar who seduces Lisetta, a beautiful Venetian merchant’s wife by persuading her that he is the incarnation of Cupid. Albert’s plot is eventually uncovered by Lisetta’s brothers, whom he escapes by disguising himself in a bear’s skin. The play is a fascinating example of an amateur manuscript drama, of interest to all scholars and students of early modern drama.

This is an edition of Christopher Marlowe’s play Dr Faustus as it was printed in its revised and augmented form in 1616. It follows the publication of the Malone Society edition of the 1604 text in 2018.

This is one of the most celebrated of all Elizabethan plays, famous for its treatment of the damnation of Faustus and his struggles with his divided conscience. It combines spectacular visual effects with sophisticated theological discussion.

The edition reproduces in facsimile the only surviving copy of the play, which is held in the British Library. The differences from the 1604 text, including revisions and additional passages, are fully described and analysed, and placed in the context of changing theatre practices at the time. A major feature of the edition is that it identifies the printer of the 1616 text, whose name has been hitherto unknown.

A bold and balanced re-appraisal of New Labour in power.

Rewriting the story of New Labour, Glen O’Hara challenges the prevailing narrative to present a more balanced and positive assessment. New Labour, New Britain? is the first book to examine both the intentions behind New Labour’s domestic policies and their real-world effects, moving beyond the entrenched left-right debates that have dominated the party’s legacy.

The period from 1997 to 2007 marked a pivotal moment in modern British history, as New Labour sought to reshape Britain into a more cohesive and forward-thinking society. It saw the rise of socially liberal attitudes and flourishing public services under a government committed to rebuilding and investing in them. Yet New Labour’s track record was far from flawless and its legacy remains complicated and contested.

Through interviews with key players and rigorous archival research, O'Hara offers a new perspective on Tony Blair’s years in power. Painting a fuller picture of New Labour’s successes and challenges, he highlights its lasting impact on Britain and offers a thoughtful reassessment of its place in history.

What is England? What is England’s place in the United Kingdom – or indeed outside it? How should England be governed? What constitutional foundations are needed to secure English democracy?

In this ground-breaking book, Dr W. Elliot Bulmer makes the case for a written constitution for England. Informed by comparative constitutional scholarship and by practical experience of constitution-making around the world, the book ties together debates on English national identity with discussion on the constitutional future of England. It offers an English solution to the problem of the United Kingdom’s constitutional disrepair and a constitutional solution to the problem of England’s identity crisis.

Demonstrating that a written constitution both practical in the English context and compatible with the English constitutional tradition, the book includes an example draft constitution inspired by Westminster Model democracies in the Commonwealth.

What do #MeToo and Jane Austen have in common? More than you might think.

Ever since the novel was invented, women have used it as a platform for sharing ideas about sexual consent. Dr Zoë McGee reveals how Jane Austen, Frances Burney and their now-overlooked contemporaries used their stories to try to change society’s mind about rape culture – and to reassure survivors they were not alone.

Courting Disaster takes a timely deep-dive into a series of classic novels, comparing them with both historic court records and current events to show that our arguments about consent are not a new phenomenon. With the wit and wryness of a courtship novel, McGee reads between the lines to unveil a quiet feminist movement that still resonates today. Because every novel about marriage is also a novel about consent.

In an era that’s clamouring for a return to the values of the past, Courting Disaster asks what that would really mean, and whether anyone actually liked it back then anyway…

A powerful guide for dealing with traumatised communities in the wake of conflict and disaster.

What are the human consequences of conflict, and how should healthcare and social services respond? In this book, David Bolton provides an answer to these urgent questions, drawing on more than twenty-five years of service experience in Northern Ireland and elsewhere.

Focusing on the work he undertook with colleagues following the devastating Omagh bombing in 1998, Bolton reveals how needs were assessed and how evidence-based services were put in place. He describes the training and education programmes that were developed to assist first those communities directly affected by the bombing and later the wider population traumatised by the years of conflict. Crucially, he places the mental-health needs of affected communities at the heart of the political and peace processes that follow.

The second edition of this clear and practical book includes new chapters on the challenges of promoting justice and reconciliation in a post-conflict situation. It is essential reading for those planning for and responding to conflict-related disasters, policy makers, service commissioners and providers, politicians, civil servants and peace makers.

Hospital aesthetics: Disability, medicine, activism argues that contemporary disabled artists are offering a new hospital aesthetics, where health and care are being taken into their own hands and body-minds. Hospital aesthetics is defined as artwork that explores the ever-subjective experience of illness, set apart from and outside of a clinical or therapeutic setting, and in opposition to the medical model of disability. The author examines the work of nine contemporary disabled artists and four care collectives from the United States, Canada, and Europe across five chapters, utilising a range of mediums including drawing, sculpture, installation, painting, performance, video, and socially engaged art practice to illustrate “hospital aesthetics.”

The visual culture of medicine typically undermines and controls disabled bodies, often resulting in unfavourable physical and psychological outcomes. It is therefore imperative that disabled artists establish a hospital aesthetics to rescript medical images of disability, both past and present, particularly in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. In doing so, contemporary disabled artists contribute to a form of disability activism that seeks to improve mainstream bioethics as well as ableist museum and gallery culture. Hospital aesthetics presents a different perspective on disabled bodies, aiming to undo the social and cultural impacts hospitals have had on disabled patients, both historically and today.