Africa is a huge continent, as large as the more habitable areas of Europe and Asia put together. It has a history immensely long, yet the study of that history as an academic discipline in its own right is little more than fifty years old. Since then the subject has grown enorm…
A fresh new approach to the works of William of Malmesbury, looking in particular at his presentation of men and women. William of Malmesbury is one of the most important English historians of the twelfth century - not only a critical period in English history, but also one that…
Both episcopal and abbatial authority were of fundamental importance to the development of the Christian church in Anglo-Saxon England. Bishops and heads of monastic houses were invested with a variety of types of power and influence. Their actions, decisions, and writings could…
This book examines violence in its social setting, and especially as an essential element in the heroic system of exchange (sometimes called the Economy of Honour). It situates Beowulf in a northern European culture where violence was not stigmatized as evidence of a breakdown i…
Thirty years ago, when theory emerged as integral to literary studies, investigations into the nature of reading dominated academic criticism. Since then, as cultural studies and historical approaches have gained ascendancy, critical focus on reading has waned. This collection o…
On 17 July 1791 the revolutionary National Guard of Paris opened fire on a crowd of protesters: citizens believing themselves patriots trying to save France from the reinstatement of a traitor king. To the National Guard and their political superiors the protesters were the dreg…
Of all the differentiated regions comprising contemporary Spain, Galicia is possibly the most deeply marked by political, economic and cultural inequities throughout the centuries. Possibly due to the absence of a nationally aware local bourgeoisie and the enduringly colonial st…
The author argues that its reading reflects an ecclesiastical setting more than a political one, with uses more hagiographical than royal; and that rather than being used as a class-book or crib, it functioned as a resource for vernacular preaching, as a corpus of vernacular sai…
Aristophanic Comedy and the Challenge of Democratic Citizenship' finds in Aristophanes' comedies a complex comic disposition necessary for meeting the fundamental challenge of ordinary citizenship. That challenge, Zumbrunnen argues, emerges from the tension between two democrati…
The psychological dimension of Richard Wagner's operas has long been associated with the ideas of Arthur Schopenhauer, yet Wagner had begun absorbing elements of contemporary psychological thought into his stage works as early as the 1830s, twenty years before he engaged with th…
The Norman expansion in eleventh-century Europe was a movement of enormous historical importance, which saw men and women from the duchy of Normandy settling in England, Italy, Sicily and the Middle East. The Norman establishmentin the South is particularly interesting, because …
This book is designed as a tribute and response to Yvonne Vera's famous novel 'Butterfly Burning', which is set in the Bulawayo townships in 1946 and dedicated to the author. It is an attempt to explore what historical research and reconstruction can add to the literary imaginat…
In 2014 he was made an Associate Fellow of the Ethiopian Academy of Sciences. Published in association with the British Institute in Eastern Africa. Ethiopia: Addis Ababa University Press.
"Unmasking Ravel: New Perspectives on the Music" fills a unique place in Ravel studies by combining critical interpretation and analytical focus. From the premiere of his works up to the present, Ravel has been associated with masks and the related notions of artifice and impost…
Harry Potter is a former fellow of Selwyn College, Cambridge and a practising barrister specialising in criminal defence. He has authored books on the death penalty and Scottish history and wrote and presented an award-winning series on the history of the common law for the BBC.
Ferruccio Busoni is most widely known today as the composer of such works as the Second Violin Sonata, the incidental music for Gozzi's 'Turandot', and the most monumental piano concerto in the repertory (some eighty minutes long, with male chorus in the finale). But Busoni was …
'Enlightened War' investigates the multiple and complex interactions between warfare and Enlightenment thought. Although the Enlightenment is traditionally identified with the ideals of progress, eternal peace, reason, and self-determination, Enlightenment discourse unfolded dur…
In-depth examinations of the role played by liberties across the British Isles. The liberties and franchises of medieval England have been a neglected area of study in recent years, yet they were an important aspect of government and society, providing an influential basis of co…
A richly sourced account of diplomatic practice in the British mission to Istanbul from 1661 to 1807.
