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Travelling memories, the afterlife of feelings, and associative diffraction in oral histories of Northern Irish migrants to Britain during the Troubles Contemporary British History Pub Date : 2024-03-08 Graham Dawson, Jack Crangle, Liam Harte, Barry Hazley, Fearghus Roulston
This article proposes an innovative analytical framework for understanding memory work in oral history interviews with migrants who experienced the Troubles in Northern Ireland before migrating to ...
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The culture of male beauty in Britain: from the first photographs to David Beckham Contemporary British History Pub Date : 2024-01-30 Gil Engelstein
Published in Contemporary British History (Ahead of Print, 2024)
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‘I am almost the middle-class white man, aren’t I?’: elite women, education and occupational trajectories in late twentieth-century Britain Contemporary British History Pub Date : 2024-01-29 Eve Worth, Aaron Reeves
This paper makes a major intervention in the historiography of elites through analysis of the experience of women occupational elites born in post-war Britain. The paper draws on a new set of oral ...
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‘Dear Oxfam’: consumer-supporter-activism, NGO accountability and the boundaries of the political in the Barclays boycott, 1970-1991 Contemporary British History Pub Date : 2024-01-29 Anna Bocking-Welch
This article is about complaint-making as a form of political participation in the NGO sector. It focuses on public scrutiny of Oxfam’s use of Barclays Bank during the anti-apartheid boycott of the...
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Casual culture and football hooligan autobiographies: popular memory, working-class men and racialised masculinities in deindustrialising Britain, 1970s–1990s Contemporary British History Pub Date : 2024-01-29 Ben Jones
This article explores the development of an important subculture which has received scant academic attention: football’s casual movement of the 1980s. By analysing hooligan autobiographies, it inve...
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Spying (in)spires: The dwindling likelihood of an Oxford spy ring to rival the Cambridge Five Contemporary British History Pub Date : 2024-01-29 Berenice Burnett, Erica Forktus, David V. Gioe
This article asks why no comparable spy ring to the Cambridge Five developed concurrently at Oxford University and argues that, based on an updated and comprehensive review of primary and secondary...
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‘A different species’: the British Labour Party and the Militant ‘other’, 1979-1983 Contemporary British History Pub Date : 2024-01-24 Richard Jobson
This article assesses the efforts that were made within the British Labour Party to isolate and exclude the Militant Tendency, a Trotskyite entryist group, during the period 1979 to 1983. It argues...
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The brace of the Cabinet: the legacy of Clement Attlee as deputy prime minister Contemporary British History Pub Date : 2024-01-19 Stephen Thornton
The position of the UK deputy prime minister is clouded in mystery. The title suggests a minster of some seniority, one likely to step in for an absent premier to chair a cabinet meeting or perform...
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‘Implacable Enemies’? The Labour Party and the intelligence community in 1920s Britain Contemporary British History Pub Date : 2024-01-12 George Kassimeris, Oliver Price
The 1920s marked the first decade in which the Labour Party and the British intelligence community had to work closely together. Their relations during this period, which were often strained, have ...
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The making of anti-nuclear Scotland: activism, coalition building, energy politics and nationhood, c.1954-2008 Contemporary British History Pub Date : 2024-01-12 Linda Ross, Ewan Gibbs
This article contributes to understanding how civil nuclear power shaped post-war British history through studying opposition to nuclear energy in Scotland. Over the second half of the twentieth ce...
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The opportunity and desire to buy: owner-occupation in Scotland’s new towns, c. 1950-80 Contemporary British History Pub Date : 2024-01-08 Valerie Wright, Alistair Fair
This article explores the role of the post-war new towns in Scotland in providing people with the opportunity to own their own homes. Most importantly, it traces the development of this policy prio...
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Consolidating ‘traditional methods’ of public order policing: the response of the Home Office and the Metropolitan Police to mass demonstrations in 1968 Contemporary British History Pub Date : 2023-11-06 Jac St John
This article examines the response of the Home Office and the Metropolitan Police to mass demonstrations in 1968. Using a variety of contemporaneous sources, including underused archival material, ...
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Campaigning against workplace ‘sexual harassment’ in the UK: law, discourse and the news press c. 1975–2005 Contemporary British History Pub Date : 2023-10-12 Louise A. Jackson, Sophia Ayada, Ashlee Christoffersen, Hazel Conley, Frances C. Galt, Fiona Mackay, Colm O’Cinneide
This article examines how and in what ways workplace ‘sexual harassment’ achieved social and legal recognition in the UK news press following its importation from North America in the mid-1970s. It...
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Feelings and work in modern history: emotional labour and emotions about labour Contemporary British History Pub Date : 2023-10-06 Jack Saunders
Published in Contemporary British History (Ahead of Print, 2023)
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Who governs Britain? trade unions, the conservative party and the failure of the industrial relations act 1971 Contemporary British History Pub Date : 2023-09-30 Christopher Birks
Published in Contemporary British History (Ahead of Print, 2023)
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‘A state of almost surreal vice versa’: the devolution referendums in Wales, 1979 and 1997 Contemporary British History Pub Date : 2023-08-18 Leon Gooberman
ABSTRACT Referendums in 1979 and 1997 asked if an elected Assembly should be created in Wales to oversee some government responsibilities. The proportion of voters supporting devolution grew from 20.3% in 1979 to 50.3% in 1997. Growth was concentrated within Welsh identifying Labour voters, but the literature lacks a multicausal explanation of this shift. This article compares the circumstances surrounding
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Introduction. Diplomatic departures: negotiating Britain’s international outreach in the contemporary world Contemporary British History Pub Date : 2023-08-14 Lauriane Simony, Mélanie Torrent
Published in Contemporary British History (Vol. 37, No. 4, 2023)
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Failing to ‘do a de Gaulle’? The break in Anglo-Algerian relations (1965-1968) and the reassessment of British policy Contemporary British History Pub Date : 2023-08-11 Mélanie Torrent
On 18 December 1965, a little over a month after Rhodesia’s Unilateral Declaration of Independence, Algeria broke off diplomatic relations with the United Kingdom, in protest at the Labour Governme...
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Entente Cordiale Redux: the impact of Brexit on British and French foreign and security policy Contemporary British History Pub Date : 2023-08-02 Amelia Hadfield, Christian Turner
Brexit has been a game-changer for Britain, and its key partners. Strategic shifts as well as historic relations have impacted the UK’s relationship with France in a number of unexpected ways. This...
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Avoiding (unwanted) departures: British diplomacy and Soviet Bloc dissidents during the Cold War Contemporary British History Pub Date : 2023-08-01 Bent Boel
In the mid-1970s, no Western leader on an official visit to a Soviet Bloc country wasted any thoughts on whether or not to meet a dissident, even in countries where dissidents actually existed. By ...
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British Culture after Empire: race, decolonisation and migration since 1945 Contemporary British History Pub Date : 2023-07-26 Freddy Foks
Published in Contemporary British History (Ahead of Print, 2023)
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Penguin books and political change: Britain’s meritocratic moment, 1937-1988 Contemporary British History Pub Date : 2023-07-23 Emily Robinson
Published in Contemporary British History (Ahead of Print, 2023)
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The British Council and British cultural diplomacy 1934-1959: a new form of diplomacy? Contemporary British History Pub Date : 2023-07-21 Alice Byrne
There are grounds for considering the creation of the British Council in the interwar period as a manifestation of post-World War One internationalism and the search for a ‘new diplomacy’. Yet, as ...
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Cultural diplomacy in times of crisis: the British Council’s departure from Burma during the military dictatorship (1962-1966) Contemporary British History Pub Date : 2023-07-18 Lauriane Simony
In 1948, when Burma became independent, the British colonial administration left the country and was replaced by a British embassy and a British Council centre, in order to establish new diplomatic...
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British diplomatic re-engagement in the Pacific: more than just words? Contemporary British History Pub Date : 2023-07-17 Adrien Rodd
The United Kingdom’s trade policy of ‘Commonwealth Preference’, long treasured by Australians and New Zealanders, was phased out half a century ago as Britain shied from the expense of remaining a ...
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The diplomatic departure from limbo: three valedictory despatches by British consuls in Hanoi during the period of the Vietnam War Contemporary British History Pub Date : 2023-07-17 Lori Maguire
The British maintained a consulate in Hanoi throughout the Vietnam War, even though neither government officially recognised the other. Although these representatives were extremely restricted in t...
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‘Westralia shall be free!’: the secession of Western Australia and the state of the British Empire, 1933-1935 Contemporary British History Pub Date : 2023-07-03 Robert S.G. Fletcher, Benjamin Mountford
ABSTRACT In 1935, a Joint Parliamentary Committee at Westminster reported on ‘The Petition from the State of Western Australia in Relation to Secession’. The culmination of a process triggered by a 1933 referendum, when two-thirds of West Australians voted to secede from the Australian Commonwealth, the Joint Committee famously resolved that Western Australia’s petition was ‘not proper to be received’
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Me Too? Re-encountering youth experiences of sexual violence in post-war England from the vantage point of later life Contemporary British History Pub Date : 2023-07-02 Laura Fenton, Penny Tinkler
ABSTRACT Cultural understandings of sexual abuse, sexual harassment and sexual assault have shifted considerably since the 1960s in the United Kingdom and more widely. This article investigates how changing discourses around sexual abuse, harassment and assault are navigated by British women in later life when they narrate experiences that occurred in their youth in the 1960s and early 1970s. It identifies
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‘The Wild Women of the West (Midlands)’: how LesBeWell imagined queer women’s health and its obstacles in the 1990s through the pages of Dykenosis Contemporary British History Pub Date : 2023-06-26 Hannah J. Elizabeth
ABSTRACT In 1994, the Birmingham based lesbian health activism group LesBeWell began to produce a newsletter titled Dykenosis. Variously describing itself as ‘for women who have sex with women’, ‘health information for dykes’ and ‘the national bi-monthly newsletter about lesbian health’, the newsletter offers a window into how one activist group imagined the health and ill health of women who had sex
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Britain’s contested history: lessons for patriots Contemporary British History Pub Date : 2023-06-25 Dane Kennedy
Published in Contemporary British History (Ahead of Print, 2023)
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The British Conservative Party, the Scandinavian Conservative Parties, and Inter-Party Cooperation in Europe, 1949-78 Contemporary British History Pub Date : 2023-06-22 Gary Love
ABSTRACT This article explores the links between the British and Scandinavian Conservative parties in Europe between the late-1940s and the late-1970s. Its findings show that these parties were closer to each other than has been assumed. The British and Scandinavian Conservative parties built up significant relationships with each other at the organisational level throughout the 1950s, which led to
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Mass observers making meaning: religion, spirituality and atheism in late 20th-century Britain Contemporary British History Pub Date : 2023-06-21 Alana Harris
Published in Contemporary British History (Ahead of Print, 2023)
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‘Rethinking camaraderie as emotional practices: deindustrialisation and deskilling in South Yorkshire coalfields, 1980s-2000s’ Contemporary British History Pub Date : 2023-06-21 Lee Waddington
ABSTRACT Historical and sociological scholarship on the British coalfields has been driven by a sustained interest in community and class. Consequently, however, a focus on community can subsume camaraderie/comradeship as a category of historical analysis and its potential value as a framework for understanding change and continuity in practice, experience, and identity. Drawing on methodological tools
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‘Women Against the Common Market’ Contemporary British History Pub Date : 2023-06-20 Richard Johnson
This article explores women’s activism in the early 1970s through the organisation ‘Women Against the Common Market’ (WACM), founded by the former left-wing Labour MP Anne Kerr. WACM carved out a d...
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The Official History of Criminal Justice in England and Wales Volume III: The Rise and Fall of Penal Hope DAVID DOWNES London and New York, Routledge, 2021 xii+277 pp., ISBN 978 0 367 65395 8 (hbk) (£130), 978 1 003 12927 1 (ebk) (£33.29) Contemporary British History Pub Date : 2023-04-28 Victor Bailey
Published in Contemporary British History (Ahead of Print, 2023)
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Resist, organize, build: feminist and queer activism in Britain and the United States during the long 1980s Contemporary British History Pub Date : 2023-04-24 Fleur MacInnes
Published in Contemporary British History (Ahead of Print, 2023)
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Why no population register in peacetime? Explaining Britain’s difficult decisions, 1943-1969 Contemporary British History Pub Date : 2023-04-24 Christine A. Bellamy
Although some influential officials saw value in it during peacetime, 1950s British governments decided to allow the national register and identity card wartime scheme to lapse without replacement....
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One movement, three clusters: the national parks movement in England and Wales, 1929-1949 Contemporary British History Pub Date : 2023-04-20 Kristian Martinus Mennen
ABSTRACT The history of the national parks movement in England and Wales culminated in the passing of the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act in 1949. Many constituent bodies were, however, dissatisfied with the administrative arrangements in the new National Parks. To explain this inconsistency, this article seeks to understand the national parks movement as a heterogenous network of
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Are We Rich Yet? The Rise of Mass Investment Culture in Contemporary Britain Contemporary British History Pub Date : 2023-03-31 Glen O’Hara
Published in Contemporary British History (Ahead of Print, 2023)
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Period politics and policy change: the taxation of menstrual products in the United Kingdom, 1996–2021 Contemporary British History Pub Date : 2023-03-15 Matthew Flinders, Gary Lowery
ABSTRACT How, when and why do policies change? This article engages with this question through a focus on the taxation of menstrual products in the United Kingdom from its initial emergence as an issue in 1996 through to the eventual abolition of the ‘tampon tax’ on 1 January 2021. Despite the significance of this topic for broader debates concerning gender inequality, political efficacy and social
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The West and the Birth of Bangladesh: Foreign Policy in the Face of Mass Atrocity Contemporary British History Pub Date : 2023-02-07 Simon Smith
Published in Contemporary British History (Ahead of Print, 2023)
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‘Keep the party Labour’: the Grassroots Alliance and activist opposition to New Labour, 1994-2007 Contemporary British History Pub Date : 2023-02-02 Alfie Steer
ABSTRACT In October 1998, Tony Blair suffered an embarrassing electoral defeat when four activists from the Centre-Left Grassroots Alliance (CLGA) were elected to the Labour Party’s National Executive Committee. Despite Blair’s attempts to ‘modernise’ the Labour Party and abandon the ideological baggage of ‘Old Labour’, the election demonstrated the continued electoral competitiveness of the Labour
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Murder on Waterloo Bridge: placing the assassination of Georgi Markov in past and present context, 1970 - 2018 Contemporary British History Pub Date : 2023-01-18 Daniel Salisbury, Karl Dewey
ABSTRACT In 1978, Bulgarian dissident writer Georgi Markov was murdered on Waterloo Bridge by an unknown assassin. The brazen attack in central London, Markov’s public profile and the alleged use of an exotic spy gadget (a poison umbrella) made the murder one of the Cold War’s most infamous cases of political assassination. However, despite wide-spread suspicions the case formally remains open, with
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Birth pangs or a honeymoon from hell? The long annus horribilis for Welsh devolution, 1998–2000 Contemporary British History Pub Date : 2023-01-10 Adam Evans
ABSTRACT 2024 marks twenty-five years since the first elections to, and meeting of, the National Assembly for Wales. The Assembly had been established by the narrowest of margins at a referendum in 1997. However, supporters of devolution would have no honeymoon period. Instead, the period from Autumn 1998 to February 2000 marked what might almost be seen as a long annus horribilis for Welsh devolution
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Cooperative rule: community development in Britain’s late empire Contemporary British History Pub Date : 2022-11-29 Mo Moulton
Published in Contemporary British History (Ahead of Print, 2022)
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The Life and Death of the Shopping City: Public Planning and Private Redevelopment in Britain since 1945 Contemporary British History Pub Date : 2022-11-25 Dan O’Neill
Published in Contemporary British History (Ahead of Print, 2022)
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Scottish Nationalism: History, Ideology and the Question of Independence Contemporary British History Pub Date : 2022-11-11 Ben Jackson
Published in Contemporary British History (Ahead of Print, 2022)
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A World Away: The British Package Holiday Boom, 1950–1974 MICHAEL JOHN LAW Montreal, McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2022 xv+232 pp., ISBN 978 0 2280 0858 3 (hbk) (£93), 978 0 2280 0908 5 (pbk) (£24.99) Contemporary British History Pub Date : 2022-11-11 Sina Fabian
Published in Contemporary British History (Vol. 38, No. 1, 2024)
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Photography, Reconstruction and the Cultural History of the Postwar European City Contemporary British History Pub Date : 2022-11-05 Xavier Guégan
Published in Contemporary British History (Ahead of Print, 2022)
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What about the workers? The Conservative Party and the organised working class in British politics Contemporary British History Pub Date : 2022-10-22 Mark Garnett
Published in Contemporary British History (Vol. 37, No. 1, 2023)
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It’s your world too, you can do what you want”: the role of subcultural activism in Stop The City protests (1983-1984) and its implications for political protest in Britain’ Contemporary British History Pub Date : 2022-10-14 Rebecca Binns
ABSTRACT This article explores the role of subcultural activism in the Stop the City Protests (STC), 1983-1984. It shows how protestors broke with the consensual approach of overarching political organisations, chiefly the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), using direct action tactics to shut down the City of London, which was emerging as a strategic centre for globalised capitalism. STC is shown
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‘The age-old struggle’ Irish republicanism from the battle of the Bogside to the Belfast agreement, 1969–1998 Contemporary British History Pub Date : 2022-09-16 Conor Morrissey
Published in Contemporary British History (Ahead of Print, 2022)
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Pride in Prejudice: Understanding Britain’s Extreme Right Contemporary British History Pub Date : 2022-09-05 Alexander Henry
Published in Contemporary British History (Ahead of Print, 2022)
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Transition of power: the problems of Britain’s post-imperial relationship with Malta, 1964-1971 Contemporary British History Pub Date : 2022-09-01 Simon C. Smith
ABSTRACT There is growing recognition that the end of formal empire did not equate with the ending of ties between the imperial power and its erstwhile dependencies. This was especially so of the ‘fortress colony’ of Malta which following constitutional separation from Britain in September 1964 remained firmly linked to Britain economically and militarily. The existing historiography suggests that
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Probation and the Policing of the Private Sphere in Britain, 1907-1962 Contemporary British History Pub Date : 2022-09-01 Janet Weston
Published in Contemporary British History (Vol. 38, No. 1, 2024)
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The Neoliberal Age? Britain since the 1970sAled Davies, Ben Jackson and Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite (eds.) London, UCL Press, 2021xvii+377 pp., ISBN 978 1 78735 687 0 (hbk) (£45), 978 1 78735 686 3 (pbk) (£25), 978 1 78735 685 6 (ePDF) (Open Access) Contemporary British History Pub Date : 2022-08-21 Dean Blackburn
Published in Contemporary British History (Ahead of Print, 2022)
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‘In trust for the three nations’? The India Office Library & Records dispute, 1947–72 Contemporary British History Pub Date : 2022-08-12 Rakesh Ankit
ABSTRACT Between 1947 and 1972, governments of India and Pakistan laid claims to ownership, management and share of the India Office Library & Records. These attempts and the British government’s responses to them have been bypassed by scholars of decolonisation. This article traces the trajectory of that dispute’s three distinct phases, wherein different proposals were mooted to wrest and retain,
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Windrush (1948) and Rivers of Blood (1968): Legacy and Assessment Contemporary British History Pub Date : 2022-08-11 Kieran Connell
Published in Contemporary British History (Vol. 38, No. 1, 2024)
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Youth on Screen: Representing Young People in Film and Television Contemporary British History Pub Date : 2022-08-06 Sarah Kenny
Published in Contemporary British History (Vol. 37, No. 1, 2023)
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Working-Class Writing and Publishing in the Late Twentieth Century: Literature, Culture and Community Contemporary British History Pub Date : 2022-08-02 Ben Jones
Published in Contemporary British History (Ahead of Print, 2022)