Vinta Ramani's debut fiction collection is a kaleidoscopic jolt to the senses. A foreign talent barricades himself in his rented condo as he gradually loses his grip on reality. A wife explores a series of affairs in order to exert control over her sexual autonomy. A retiree descends into silence when he refuses to wear a hearing aid. An artist takes a road trip to unearth why the mores of her community have led to her sexually stunted adulthood. These stories unearth the truths often hidden by polite society.
Is a famous queen of Britain really bured beneath platform 10 at King's Cross station in London? What is the telephone number of the National Theatre? what is the best place to eat in Worcester? Where is the National Bagpipe Museum? (Hint: not in Scotland) Was Pointius Pilate born in Pitlochry? The answers to these questions and literally thousands more are to be found in David Kemp's fascinating guidebook, The Pleasures and Treasures of Britain. Nowhere else will the discerning traveller find so much diverse and essential information about British culture gathered together in one volume. With the author as your witty and knowledgeable guide, take a tour through nearly fifty cities, from Penzance to Perth, from London to Cardiff and Belfast. Each city section begins with a concise, readable history and a guided walk around the town, planned to take in as many of the significant local sights as can comfortably be included. Next are exhaustive listings, including telephone numbers and addresses, of everything a culturally curious visitor might want to seek out: theatre, art galleries, museums, antique markets, antiquarian and other bookstores, restaurants, lcoal fairs and festivals and more. Finally, under the headings of Artistic Associations and Ephemera, each section concludes with an entertaining collection of local lore, gossip, legend and anecdote.
This richly documented and illustrated tale takes readers on a journey along the edges of the country to 12 of its most famous beach towns to reveal the vitality of the American boardwalk as an idea, rather than just a place.
Aston challenges and reshapes the on-going debate concerning social status, economic opportunity, and gender roles in nineteenth-century society. Sources including trade directories, census returns, probate records, newspapers, advertisements, and photographs are analysed and linked to demonstrate conclusively that women in nineteenth-century England were far more prevalent in business than previously acknowledged. Moreover, women were able to establish and expand their businesses far beyond the scope of inter-generational caretakers in sectors of the economy traditionally viewed as unfeminine, and acquire the assets and possessions that were necessary to secure middle-class status. These women serve as a powerful reminder that the middle-class woman’s retreat from economic activity during the nineteenth-century, so often accepted as axiomatic, was not the case. In fact, women continued to act as autonomous and independent entrepreneurs, and used business ownership as a platform to participate in the economic, philanthropic, and political public sphere.
Table of contents: Leeds is a city with a rich commercial tradition and fine buildings to match. Its prosperity, founded on the wool trade, is reflected in the seventeenth-century church of St John, with its magnificent Jacobean woodcarving and furnishings, while the town's eighteenth-century expansion produced elegant Georgian parades and squares with homes for wealthy merchants. They now stand cheek-by-jowl with solid, proud warehouses and offices of the railway age in a wonderful variety of styles ranging from elegant neo-Grecian to Gothic, Moorish and Egyptian.
