This collection of essays addresses research trends in the history of British leisure while also presenting a wide range of articles on cultural conflict and leisure in the twentieth century. It includes innovative research on a number of topics, including television, cinema, the circus, women's leisure, dance, football and drug culture. It provides an excellent entry to leisure studies and history, while addressing the contributions of other disciplines and exploring key historiographical trends. Three broad topics structure the collection; cultural contestation and social conflict in leisure; regulation and standardisation; and national identity embodied in leisure and popular culture. The book will be useful to students and educators of twentieth-century and British history, as it offers accessible and topical studies that pique historical curiosity. In addition, historians, sociologists and cultural analysts of the twentieth century will find it essential for understanding pleasure and recreation in twentieth-century British society.

The long-term development of public green spaces such as parks, public gardens, and recreation grounds in London during the twentieth century is a curiously neglected subject, despite the fact that various kinds of green spaces cover huge areas in cities in the UK today. This book explores how and why public green spaces have been created and used in London, and what actors have been involved in their evolution, during the course of the twentieth century. Building on case studies of the contemporary boroughs of Camden and Southwark and making use of a wealth of archival material, the author takes us through the planning and creation stages, to the intended (and actual) uses and ongoing management of the spaces. By highlighting the rise and fall of municipal authorities and the impact of neo-liberalism after the 1970s, the book also deepens our understanding of how London has been governed, planned and ruled during the twentieth century. It makes a crucial contribution to academic as well as political discourse on the history and present role of green space in sustainable cities.

Therapy and Emotions in Film and Television explores, from an interdisciplinary perspective, the shifts in our emotional preferences, styles, and 'emotional regimes' in western societies from the 1920s to today, as viewed through the lens of film and television.

Given recent media coverage of women’s drinking habits, it is surprising that a topic of such interest has not produced a comprehensive examination. This book provides not just a survey spanning a century of momentous change, but integrates diverse sources with concepts to offer a new understanding of the changing nature of women’s drinking patterns. It challenges traditional assumptions and offers original interpretations about the diverse factors influencing women’s consumption of alcohol, including advertising, moral panics, sexism, legislative initiatives, employment, age, ethnicity, technology, new drinking venues and marketing strategies. What most influenced how women transformed their consumption of alcohol? What beverages did they drink? To what extent did women themselves act as agents of change? These and other questions serve as the basis for analysing women’s drinking patterns from a social and cultural perspective. Close attention is also paid to the image of drinking projected in advertising, the mass media and films.

This collection of essays examines the history of urban leisure cultures in Europe in the transition from the early modern to the modern period. The volume brings together research on a wide variety of leisure activities which are usually studied in isolation, from theatre and music culture, art exhibitions, spas and seaside resorts to sports and games, walking and cafes and restaurants. The book develops a new research agenda for the history of leisure by focusing on the complex processes of cultural transfer that were fundamental in transforming urban leisure culture from the British Isles to France, Spain, Italy, Sweden, Austria and the Ottoman Empire. How did new models of organising and experiencing urban leisure pastimes 'travel' from one European region to another? Who were the main agents of cultural innovation and appropriation? How did entrepreneurs, citizens and urban authorities mediate and adapt foreign influences to local contexts? How did the increasingly 'entangled' character of European urban leisure culture impact upon the ways men and women from various classes identified with their social, cultural or (proto)national communities? Accessible and wide-ranging, this volume offers students and scholars a broad overview of the history of urban leisure culture in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe. The agenda-setting focus on transnational cultural transfer will stimulate new questions and contribute to a more integrated study of the rise of modern urban culture.

'London Calling Italy offers an expertly researched, thought-provoking analysis of BBC propaganda for Italy during the Second World War, exploring how programmes were put together and what listeners made of them. It will surely become the key work on this topic.' Simon Potter, Professor of Modern History at the University of Bristol London calling Italy is a book about Radio Londra, as the BBC Italian Service was known in Italy, and the company’s development as a global leader in the broadcasting industry, starting from the Second World War. Drawing on unexplored archive material collected in Italy and the United Kingdom, it aims to understand how the BBC programmes engaged with ordinary Italians, while concurrently conducting political warfare against fascist Italy. The book also focuses on the relationship between the BBC Italian anti-fascist broadcasters, the British Foreign Office, and Labour Party. Key sources analysed in the book are, among others, the Foreign Office’s records, the programmes broadcast by the BBC Italian Service during the Allied campaign, the memoirs of Italian anti-fascist broadcasters, the BBC surveys on the audience and the letters sent by listeners of the Italian Service.

Cinema-going was the most popular commercial leisure activity in the first half of the twentieth century, peaking in 1946 with 1.6 billion recorded admissions. Though ‘going to the pictures’ remained a popular pastime, the transition to peacetime altered citizens’ leisure habits. During the 1950s increased affluence, the growth of television ownership and the diversification of leisure led to rapid declines in attendance. Cinema attendances fell in all regions, but the speed, nature and extent of decline varied widely across the United Kingdom. By linking national developments to detailed case studies of Belfast and Sheffield, this book adds nuance to our understanding of regional variations in film exhibition, audience habits and cinema-going experiences during a period of profound social and cultural change. Drawing on a wide range of quantitative and qualitative sources, Cinema and Cinema-Going conveys the diverse nature of this important industry, and the significance of place as a determinant of film attendance in post-war Britain.