There is a strong but unreliable view that immigration is a marginal and recent phenomenon. In fact, immigrants and refugees have come to Britain throughout its recorded history. In this book, first published in 1988, Colin Holmes looks at this period in depth and asks: who were the newcomers and why were they coming? What were the distinctive features of their economic and social lives in Britain? How did British society respond to their presence? The resulting book is a major historical survey of immigration which synthesises and evaluates existing work and weaves in new material on a wide range of immigrant minorities.
"John Bull's Other Island" by George Bernard Shaw is a satirical comedy that offers a sharp critique of British imperialism and Irish identity. Set in Ireland, the play follows the character of Tom Broadbent, a British engineer who arrives in the country with plans to exploit its resources for profit. Through Tom's interactions with the locals, including his childhood friend Larry Doyle, Shaw explores the tensions between British colonialism and Irish nationalism. The play's witty dialogue and clever wordplay highlight the absurdities of imperialism and the clash of cultures between England and Ireland. "John Bull's Other Island" is a thought-provoking and entertaining work that challenges conventional attitudes towards colonialism and national identity, showcasing Shaw's skill as a playwright and social commentator.
"John Bull's Other Island" is an entertaining comedy about Ireland. It revolves around Larry Doyle, originally from Ireland, who has adopted English cultural customs and manners to fit in in England. Moreover, it has another engaging character Tom Broadbent, who is Doyle's English business partner. They are civil engineers who run a firm in London. The adventure begins when the pair goes to Roscullen, where Doyle was born, to acquire some land.
Nobel Laureate George Bernard Shaw remains one of the world's most important and popular writers. His plays are regularly performed around the world, from the boards of Broadway and the West End to regional, community, and college stages.The three plays selected here are widely considered to be three of the most important in the canon of modern British theatre:Man and Superman: a four-act comedy for serious people, staged in part at Royal court in 1905, it is one of the early works of Modernism to take an ancient myth and restage it in contemporary mode (and its influence extends across world literature, palpable in writings from Mann to Joyce). Its storyof how a sensitive woman compels a superman-figure to adjust to her needs and those of the real world provides an updated commentary on Nietzsche's still-fashionable notions of ubermensch; and its famous third act introduces a persistent Shavian theme, which goes back as far as earliest religiousliterature-that the truly damned are those who are happy in hell.John Bull's Other Island takes up that idea: to the visionary, hell may be the ultimate modern dream of efficiency and rational administration, as manifested in a colonial Ireland run by liberal exploiters. Commissioned by WB Yeats to mark the opening of Ireland's National Theatre, the Abbey, theplay was promptly refused by its Directors (who disliked its mechanical mockeries of mechanism but may have missed its visionary qualities). It was performed to huge acclaim in London in November 1904 and it made Shaw famous, the supreme example of the Playwright as Thinker and, ever afterwards,one of the most valued commentators on Anglo-Irish relations.Major Barbara: a three-act drama which in classic Shavian style unmasks the motivation of puritan idealists and dedicated industrialists, this work (like the previous two) pits a strong woman against a sardonic, practical man. Having exposed the mendacity of apostles of efficiency, Shaw seems thento submit to their doctrine, arguing that a pure private charity towards the destitute is no adequate substitute. Like the previous two works, this is a problem play, in the course of which the audience sympathy is aroused and then repelled in all directions. The suggestion that it may be acceptableto take money from tainted sources, such as arms manufacturers, caused much debate in 1905 - and even more after the carnage wrought by mechanized guns in World War One.
This reading of Bernard Shaw focuses on his habit of seeing the world in terms of contraries, a habit related to his basic rejection of absolutes, his distaste for finality. The author examines nine of Shaw's finest plays: Man and Superman, Major Barbara, John Bull's Other Island, The Doctor's Dilemma, Pygmalion, Misalliance, Heartbreak House, Saint Joan, and Back to Methuselah. The book takes seriously Shaw's claim that all of his characters are "right from their several points of view." We are compelled to respect the qualities and values of opposing and very different characters in these plays, and we also have a sense of their complementary defects. J. L. Wisenthal's commentary sheds light on Shaw's techniques of portrayal as well as his dialectical habit of mind. This finely written essay is for all lovers of Shaw and the theater.
