Left Book Club Anthology
Left Book Club Anthology

Author: Paul Laity

Publisher: Orion Publishing Company

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 254

ISBN-13: 9780575072213

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The Left Book Club is something of a legend. Founded in 1936 to distribute cheap, radical books, it was a spectacular success, with nearly 60,000 members at its peak. Always controversial, its famous orange volumes told stories of life in Britain's industrial towns, rebellion in Hitler's Germany, and heroism in the Spanish Civil War. This anthology goes back to the monthly selections themselves and recaptures the fervor and idealism of the 1930s. It includes extracts from many of the Club's most popular books, including Orwell's The Road to Wigan Pier, Koestler's Spanish Testament, Edgar Snow's Red Star Over China, and Wilfred Macartney's Walls Have Mouths. Paul Laity introduces each extract and contributes an excellent general introduction explaining the political and cultural context of the Club.

Counter Culture Anthology
Counter Culture Anthology

Author: Patrick Harrington

Publisher: Lulu.com

Published: 2006-08-01

Total Pages: 194

ISBN-13: 1847281184

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First published in 1992 Counter Culture was conceived as part of a 'War of Position' against capitalism. It represents a vibrant alternative view of popular culture through reviews, debate and commentary. This anthology is an introduction to a radical new way of looking at our world. www.altculture.org

Burning Books
Burning Books

Author: M. Fishburn

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2008-05-21

Total Pages: 239

ISBN-13: 0230583660

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This provocative new work examines the years between the Nazi book fires and the publication of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 (1953), a period when book burning captured the popular imagination. It explores how embedded the myths of book burning have become in our cultural history, and illustrates the enduring appeal of a great cleansing bonfire.

Museum Representations of Maoist China
Museum Representations of Maoist China

Author: Amy Jane Barnes

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-04-15

Total Pages: 319

ISBN-13: 1317093003

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The collection, interpretation and display of art from the People’s Republic of China, and particularly the art of the Cultural Revolution, have been problematic for museums. These objects challenge our perception of ’Chineseness’ and their style, content and the means of their production question accepted notions of how we perceive art. This book links art history, museology and visual culture studies to examine how museums have attempted to reveal, discuss and resolve some of these issues. Amy Jane Barnes addresses a series of related issues associated with collection and display: how museums deal with difficult and controversial subjects; the role they play in mediating between the object and the audience; the role of the Other in the creation of Self and national identities; the nature, role and function of art in society; the museum as image-maker; the impact of communism (and Maoism) on the cultural history of the twentieth-century; and the appropriation of communist visual iconography. This book will be of interest to researchers and students of museology, visual and cultural studies as well as scholars of Chinese and revolutionary art.

Pamela Hansford Johnson
Pamela Hansford Johnson

Author: Deirdre David

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 349

ISBN-13: 0198729618

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Biography of the English writer and critic Pamela Hansford Johnson (1912 - 1981).

Colin Ward and the Art of Everyday Anarchy
Colin Ward and the Art of Everyday Anarchy

Author: Sophie Scott-Brown

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2022-07-22

Total Pages: 261

ISBN-13: 100062286X

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Colin Ward and the Art of Everyday Anarchy is the first full account of Ward’s life and work. Drawing on unseen archival sources, as well as oral interviews, it excavates the worlds and words of his anarchist thought, illuminating his methods and charting the legacies of his enduring influence. Colin Ward (1924–2010) was the most prominent British writer on anarchism in the 20th century. As a radical journalist, later author, he applied his distinctive anarchist principles to all aspects of community life including the built environment, education, and public policy. His thought was subtle, universal in aspiration, international in implication, but, at the same time, deeply rooted in the local and the everyday. Underlying the breadth of his interests was one simple principle: freedom was always a social activity. This book will be of interest to students, scholars, and general readers with an interest in anarchism, social movements, and the history of radical ideas in contemporary Britain.

These Poor Hands
These Poor Hands

Author: Bill Jones

Publisher: University of Wales Press

Published: 2002-11-09

Total Pages: 259

ISBN-13: 1783160853

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These Poor Hands: The Autobiography of a Miner Working in South Wales', was first published in June 1939. It was an instant bestseller, and its fame catapulted its author into the front rank of 'proletarian writers'. B. L. Coombes, an English-born migrant, had lived in the Vale of Neath since before the First World War, but only turned to writing in the 1930s as a way of communicating the plight of the miners and their communities to the wider world. "These Poor Hands" presents, in a documentary style, the working life of the miner as well as the author's experiences in the lock-outs of 1921 and 1926. It demonstrates Coombes' desire to offer an accurate account of the lives of miners and their families, and carries a sincere moral charge in its description of the waste of human potential that is industrial capitalism in decline. Long out of print, "These Poor Hands" has been recognised for over sixty years as the classic miner's autobiography.

London's Burning
London's Burning

Author: Antony Taylor

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2012-02-02

Total Pages: 274

ISBN-13: 144111887X

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Provides a reading of the popular fiction of London historicized in its political and cultural contexts.

Theatre with a Purpose
Theatre with a Purpose

Author: Don Watson

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2023-12-28

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 1350232068

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This study of British amateur theatre in the inter-war period examines five different but interwoven examples of the belief, common in theatrical and educational circles at the time, that amateur drama had a purpose beyond recreation. Amateur theatre was at the height of its popularity as a cultural practice between the wars, so that by 1939 more British people had practical experience of putting on plays than at any time before or since. Providing an original account of the use of drama in adult education projects in deprived areas, and of amateur theatre in government-funded centres for the unemployed in the 1930s, it discusses repertoires, participation by working- class people and pioneering techniques of play-making. Amateur drama festivals and competitions were intended to raise standards and educate audiences. This book assesses their effect on play-making, and the use of innovative one-act plays to express contentious material, as well as looking at the Left Book Club Theatre Guild as an attempt to align the amateur theatre movement with anti-fascist and anti-war movements. A chapter on the Second World War rectifies the neglect of amateur theatre in war-time cultural studies, arguing that it was present and important in every aspect of war-time life. Don Watson builds on current scholarship and makes use of archival sources, local newspapers, unpublished scripts and the records of organizations not usually associated with the theatre. His work explores the range and diversity of amateur drama between the wars and the contributions it made to British theatre.