Mad Dogs and Englishness connects English popular music with questions about English national identities, featuring essays that range across Bowie and Burial, PJ Harvey, Bishi and Tricky. The later years of the 20th century saw a resurgence of interest in cultural and political meanings of Englishness in ways that continue to resonate now. Pop music is simultaneously on the outside and inside of the ensuing debates. It can be used as a mode of commentary about how meanings of Englishness circulate socially. But it also produces those meanings, often underwriting claims about English national cultural distinctiveness and superiority. This book's expert contributors use trans-national and trans-disciplinary perspectives to provide historical and contemporary commentaries about pop's complex relationships with Englishness. Each chapter is based on original research, and the essays comprise the best single volume available on pop and the English imaginary.

This is a story of Spanish life at the time of Franco as seen through the eyes of a naïve young girl. Based on the author's personal experience, it is often amusing, sometimes tragic but always surprising, painting a picture of a way of life that has now gone for ever.

From scoring a century at Lord's and raising millions of pounds for charity, to writing songs with the Bee Gees, Eric Clapton, Elton John and George Harrison, to being the official court jester of the Prince of Brunei - David English is a man with a story and more than a few jokes to tell.

A seasonal snapshot of things to do in England at any time of the year, come rain or shine (or more likely just rain!). Beautifully illustrated with bitesize entries, this is the perfect gift for anyone wanting to discover all of the gems England has to offer... 'Excellent and unusual book - a wonderful way of discovering and planning things to do and places to visit you would never have thought of' -- ***** Reader review 'A travel guide with humour' -- ***** Reader review 'Good fun and interesting' -- ***** Reader review 'A great gift for all ages' -- ***** Reader review 'Must have book for anyone who's interesting in a staycation or any fans of weekend mini-breaks' -- ***** Reader review 'Takes you on a journey to places you never knew existed...' -- ***** Reader review ***************************************************************************************** Using a mixture of unique seasonal events and interesting places to visit (all presented in attractive bite-sized entries), Mad Dogs and Englishmen is a browsable gift book aimed at those who are interested in getting to know their home country better as well as tourists seeking to make the most of their stay in England. In more than 220 pages, divided into months, Tom Jones demonstrates the diversity of England as a country; presenting interesting, unusual and thought-provoking things to do which also enlighten the reader, and convey the message that England is a great place to live and explore all year round. Go to a tree cathedral, collect glass on the beach, pretend to be a spy, visit a pub with no beer, go curling and canoeing, walk in the footsteps of dinosaurs - the possibilities are endless! 'England is a country which requires more than a second look, an amazingly diverse place, offering almost-unlimited landscapes, culture and history, and a diversity of opportunities which is unrivalled anywhere else in the world.'

Words, Music, and the Popular: Global Perspectives on Intermedial Relations opens up the notion of the popular, drawing useful links between wide-ranging aspects of popular culture, through the lens of the interaction between words and music. This collection of essays explores the relation of words and music to issues of the popular. It asks: What is popularity or ‘the’ popular and what role(s) does music play in it? What is the function of the popular, and is ‘pop’ a system? How can popularity be explained in certain historical and political contexts? How do class, gender, race, and ethnicity contribute to and complicate an understanding of the ‘popular’? What of the popularity of verbal art forms? How do they interact with music at particular times and throughout different media?

Beasts of the Forest: Denizens of the Dark Woods offers its readers an in-depth and interdisciplinary engagement with the forest and its monstrous inhabitants; through critical readings of folklore, fiction, film, music video and animation. Within the text there are a multitude of convergent critical perspectives used to engage and explore fictional and real monsters of the forest in media and folklore. The collection features chapters from a variety of academic perspectives: film and media studies, cultural studies, queer theory, Tolkien studies, mythology and popular music are featured. Under examination are a wide range of narratives and media forms that represent, reimagine and create the werewolves, witches and weird apparitions that inhabit the forest, along with the forest as a monstrous entity in itself. Whether they be our shelter and safe-haven or the domain of malevolent spirits and sprites, forests have the capacity to horrify and threaten those that venture into them without permission. Human interference has continually threatened forests across the world, yet this threat is reversed in myth, folklore and more recent cultural forms. This collection ranges widely to analyse how forests figure in contemporary culture, as well as the wider contexts in which such representations are inserted.

Mad Dogs and Englishmen is a visually arresting and richly informative tour of the British Empire at its height, when its boundaries stretched from Cairo to Cape Town and from Winnipeg to Wagga-Wagga. The empire 'on which the sun never sets' embraced peoples as diverse as head-hunting Dyaks, Eskimos, Fulani horsemen, Gulf sheikhs, Canadian hunters, Zoroastrian pilgrims, and caparisoned maharajahs. In a sequence of thematic chapters examining every aspect of the Empire, from the imperial monarchy to the armed forces, and from district commissioners to dependent territories, Mad Dogs and Englishmen describes the shape and functioning of the largest imperium in world history. Each chapter consists of a lively and accessible essay, accompanied by a vivid and array of captioned pictures, evoking the fascinating spectacle that the British Empire presented to its citizens: the sights, scenes, and organizations that shaped the world view of people in Britain and its colonies and Dominions beyond the seas.