United Kingdom Books

I am not well-versed in the history of the Royal Navy but found this book to be quite interesting. The author's willingness to take an unsparing look at the professional and personal motivations behind naval policy-making during this time is refreshing. Would recommend it to colleagues and naval buffs, definitely.

So much impressed with this superb study, I have now got the strong desire to introduce it to the Japanese reader who know little about the whole range of history of the British New Left movement and their struggle for the humane socialism under the cold-war period. As a part of the long history of the emancipation of mankind, the New Left movemnt deserves to be carefully studied and this book has done it quite successfully. As a Japanese leftist, I strongly recommend this book to all those dismayed by the recent total retreat of leftism in Japan.

Howard Robinson wrote this 467-paged comprehensive history of British postal development in 1947 at Oberlin, Ohio. This volume was published in 1948 by Princeton University Press. It contains 30 chapters, a Preface, an Appendix, a Bibliography, and an Index. It is amply illustrated with portraits, prints, maps, and photocopies of letters, envelopes, and stamps.

Robinson wrote in his Preface that "the carriage of letters in the British Isles, as in other European countries, grew out of the use of royal messengers, and everywhere this evolved into a government monopoly rendering public service" (p vii). He added "From the start government was obsessed by the desire to monopolize and control and even limit the communication of the people" (p vii). This is not surprising since England was ruled by 3% of the population until 1867, while the other 97% could not vote and had no say in lawmaking. The same fear amongst the ruling elites over the prospect of the masses finding out that they were getting screwed steered the development of postal practices just as it also steered the development of schooling. After all, the elites did not want to lose their heads as had happened in France.

From the days when horsemen raced dispatches marked "Hast post hast lyfe lyfe lyfe" to the Tudor court to the modern air-mail delivery, the public's demand for better service generated the growth of the slow-moving postal service. Robinson did a nice job of tracing the constant evolution of this pervasive institution, with an eye to its effect on socio-cultural relations. The prominent figures in this story are noted postal reformers, such as Joseph Allen of Bath, John Palmer (he introduced the mail coach), Rowland Hill (he came up with penny postage), and Sir Adrian Henniker Heaton (who promoted better service). Changing forms of transporation, including the postboy, the mail coach, the railway, and airplanes are noted as well as the evolving character of the mail, its postal markings, and the eventual introduction of the adhesive stamp.

This volume should sit on the historian's shelf accompanied by Hemmeon's "History of the British Post Office", Joyce's "History of the British Post Office . . . to 1836", and Marshall's "History of the British Post Office".

To know what antique pottery looks like when you see it you need to have studied an excellent guide that has pictures as clear and fine in detail as you can get. You need the items cataloged, to be presented in chronological order and grouped according to type. The information contained must be accurate and concise. This is as close as you will come aside from working for a museum, fine antique dealer or auction house. This is why this reference was created and why it is considered the best of its kind.

Truly, a brilliant work by one of the leading minds of our era. Concise, witty and subtle, and only a tad too far "out there", the author brings to light a wealth of insight concerning British missteps leading up to the outbreak of WWII. A scholarly work to be treasured.

This is a very smooth and well-written account of British political events during the years indicated in the sub-title. I found it exceptionally well done and a really enjoyable read. Anyone who wants to study the momentous years covered by this book could not help but be fascinated and informed by this very excellent study. I admit I read it in 1985 but the memory of it has lingered all these years since.

A beautiful little trade paperback from Britain: square-bound, 96 pp, over 40 b&w and color illustrations. Chapter titles include: "Early Samplers," "Utility and Ornament," "The Work of Children," "Evolution of the Sampler," "Inscriptions," "Stitches," "Pattern Books," and "Map Samplers."

I've never read anything by John Harris before, but after reading the superbly detailed and imaginatively researched BRITPOP!, I picture him as a kind of Theodore K. White of music journalism. He is careful to place the phenomenon inside a political and social context which included the passing of the Thatcher kingdom and the birth of "New Labor" as exemplified by the triumph of the young, music loving prime minister, Tony Blair. And paralleling also the rise of the Young British artists llike Damien Hirst and or Tracey Emin.

Against this changing backdrop of society and expectations, a new breed of British bands appeared all at once to world consciousness. Oasis, Blur, Pulp and more seemed poised to take over the world the way that the Beatles, Stones and Kinks has once dominated rock 30 years before. And yet within a few years, all this excitement had dried up, and the Gallagher Brothers were now seen only as a pair of drunken louts who slagged everyone they could, even their own wives and girlfriends. Harris is good at depicting not only the appropriation strategies of these bands but the way they knew how to play themselves in the media against their American or Australian counterparts for maximum effect, culminating in the episode where Jarvis Cocker showed up at a Michael Jackson TV taping to denounce the black R&B singer, or the way that Noel Gallagher assailed Kylie Minogue for being a "lesbian," or so he said.

The Koran says, "In our beginning are our ends," and this book Britpop! proves it over and over and over and over.

Well done, John Harris.

Quite a remarkable book that was much better than I expected. Of the essays contained in this book quite a few of them were from a conference held in Cambridge in 1999 titled "Place and Space in the in the British Bronze Age".
The conference itself was a much needed one as it brought together many researchers on the Bronze Age who had each been working on their own separate "part of the elephant" so to speak. The conference and this volume that followed was quite fruitful in drawing many specialties together to give us a clearer picture of Bronze Age Britain.
The essays contained in this volume touch on a wide variety of subjects: Scottish settlements, rituals in the days of the Bronze Age, growth of agriculture in the Bronze Age, theoretical reconstruction of wooden structures, mining and other topics. It is also nicely illustrated.
Necessary reading for anyone interested in the British Isles in the Bronze Age period.

If you haven't read many of the individual histories and biographies of the Royal Family, this book will give you the real stories from Queen Victoria to the present Queen. These are strange people and it is only by accident of birth that they are where they are. Some parts will make you laugh and others will make you cry. The author doesn't give us much hope that history won't repeat itself. It may all be over upon the passing of Queen Elizabeth II.