After eleven years of bitter social and economic conflict many believed that the decade to come would be more “caring”; others dared to hope that the more radical policies of her “revolution” might even be overturned. Across politics and culture there was an apparent yearning for something that the Iron Lady had famously dismissed: society. Yet the forces that had warred over the country during the 1980s were to ensure there would be no simple turning back of the clock. The “New Britain” to emerge under John Major and Tony Blair would be a contradiction: both economically unequal and culturally classless.

    Of the wider issue of global politics, he reasons, the rise of Islamic fundamentalism has been a side effect. And religious intolerance places the minority communities of the country in a precarious position.They have to come to terms with a rapidly changing situation. A White Trail is an ethnographic study of these communities and the changes they are having to face. At a time when almost all accounts of religious minorities in the country focus on the persecution and discrimination they experience, A White Trail delves deeper into their lives, using the occasion of religious festivals to gain a deeper insight into the psyche of Pakistani Hindus, Sikhs, Christians, Zoroastrians and Bahais. It seeks to understand, through the oral testimonies of the members of these communities, larger socio-political issues arising from the situation.A White Trail originally began as a series of newspaper articles written by Lahore - based Haroon Khalid for Pakistans widely - circulated weekly, The Friday Times.

    It was truly horrific, a startling story – and wholly avoidable – but it had only the briefest of inquiries, and it seemed its lessons were not learned.Twelve-year-old Martin Fletcher was at Valley Parade that day, celebrating Bradford's promotion to the second flight, with his dad, brother, uncle and grandfather. Martin was the only one of them to survive the fire – the biggest loss suffered by a single family in any British football disaster.In later years, Martin devoted himself to extensively investigating how the disaster was caused, its culture of institutional neglect and the government's general indifference towards football fans' safety at the time. This book tells the gripping, extraordinary in-depth story of a boy's unthinkable loss following a spring afternoon at a football match, of how fifty-six people could die at a game, and of the truths he unearthed as an adult. This is the story – thirty years on – of the disaster football has never properly acknowledged.

    Taking his own spiritual journey as a starting point, Professor Ayoub explores all aspects of Islam; from the Qur'an and Islamic law to the epic poetry of the Sufis; from the spread of Islam worldwide to reform movements in the US and Europe.

    Like any sane person, his response is to travel to Crewe, Carlisle and Luton. Hatters, Railwaymen and Knitters is an attempt to seek out the England of today through the lens of its football clubs. Small teams and towns, Gray argues, made the country great and matter now more than ever. Taking twelve teams who had notable seasons in 1981, the year of his birth, Hatters, Railwaymen and Knitters is part-football book, part-travelogue and part-love letter to the bits of England that often get forgotten.In Middlesbrough, his own childhood team, Gray examines the concept of supporter loyalty and identity. Is football all some of us have left to cling to in a land where the industry that bound the people of towns together has gone? In Watford he muses on the existence of a North-South divide. In Sheffield, a city of bitter derbies, he examines rivalries in football and what they say about our country. In traditionally-wealthy Ipswich he ponders the ownership of football clubs past, present and future. Via such places as Chester, Burnley, Bradford and Carlisle, this is a whistle-stop tour of the outer reaches of the football league that aims to answer big questions about Englishness.For fans of Harry Pearson's The Far Corner or Stuart Maconie's Pies and Prejudice, this is a book that brings the real England vivdly jumping off the page.

    Now he shares his recollections of those encounters, providing a fascinating glimpse behind the scenes.Far from starry-eyed where Tony Blair Co are concerned, he looks back also to the Britain of his youth and castigates those responsible for its decline to "a Third World country … misruled by a typical Third World government, corrupt, incompetent and undemocratic".Controversial, witty and revealing – or "curmudgeonly", "reactionary", "undiluted spleen", according to the critics – The Light's on at Signpost has struck a chord with a great section of the public. Perhaps, as one reader suggests, it should be "hidden beneath the floorboards, before the Politically-Correct Thought Police come hammering at the door, demanding to confiscate any copies".

    As a teenager Diana's first encounter with Prince Charles was at a weekend party at Althorp, and there are memorable snapshots of the young Diana practicing ballet on the balustrades and dancing in the marble entrance hall. Some 20 years later she would be buried on a private island on Althorp's grounds.This lively and literate history guides us through Althorp -- from the lease of the lands in 1486, to the follies, foibles, and individual tastes of an aristocratic family, to the conversion of the stable block, a Palladian structure that has been called "the finest piece of architecture at Althorp", into a memorial to Diana.Althorp is open to the public only two months a year, with a limited number of visitors. This book -- superbly illustrated with full color photographs -- provides both a fascinating social history and an armchair tour for readers unable to visit Althorp.

    The same Protestant wind that had filled the sails of Drake's ships in 1588 was surely behind him.Determined to avenge the loss of the Puritan colony of Providence Island, he decided to take on the Spanish in the New World; but an assault on the island of Hispaniola proved a disaster.To Cromwell, obsessed with God's plan for an elect nation, this was a grievous blow. Concluding that God had deserted him because his domestic reforms had not gone far enough, he introduced the hardline puritan rule of the Major-Generals. Sectarianism and fundamentalism ran riot; Levellers and royalists joined together in conspiracy against Cromwell. The only way out seemed to be a return to the Parliament presided over by a King. But would Cromwell accept the crown?

    This refreshing approach reaches beyond the myths and stereotypes surrounding this monumental historical figure and encourages readers to reassess their perceptions of the great Tudor monarch who still manages to cast a spell over our imaginations.Richly illustrated with color images from the accompanying exhibition at the British Library—including many of Henry’s own annotated volumes—and including contributions from notable scholars such as Eamon Duffy and James Carley, this volume presents an unsurpassed firsthand outline of the revolutionary changes in ideas that took place during Henry’s reign—and above all, in his own mind.

    But beyond these familiar images, which have come to define our perception of the age, Holbein was a multifaceted genius: a humanist, satirist, and political propagandist, and a deft man whose work was rich in layers of symbolism and allusion. In The King’s Painter, biographer Franny Moyle traces and analyzes the life and work of an extraordinary artist against the backdrop of an era of political turbulence and cultural transformation, to which his art offers a subtle and endlessly refracting mirror. It is a work of serious scholarship written for a wide audience.

    The basic medieval idea of an ordered Chain of Being is studied by Prof. Tillyard in the process of its various transformations by the dynamic spirit of the Renaissance. Among his topics are: Angels; the Stars & Fortunes; the Analogy between Macrocosm & Microcosm; the Four Elements; the Four Humours; Sympathies; Correspondences; & the Cosmic Dance--ideas & symbols which inspirited the minds & imaginations not only of the Elizabethans but of all of the Renaissance.PrefaceIntroductoryOrderSinThe Chain of BeingThe Links in the ChainThe Corresponding PlanesThe CorrespondencesThe Cosmic DanceEpilogueNotesIndex

    During this period western Christianity underwent the most dramatic changes in its entire history. From Iceland to Transylvania, from the Baltic to the Pyrenees, the Reformation divided churches and communities into 'Catholic' and 'Protestant', and created varying regional and national traditions. The new Protestant creed rejected traditional measures of piety--vows, penances, pardons, and masses--in favor of sermons and catechisms, and an everyday morality of diligence, neighborly charity, and prayer. In the process, it involved many of Europe's people for the first time in a political movement inspired by an ideology and nourished by mass communication. Using the most recent research, Cameron provides a thematic and narrative synthesis of the events and ideas of the Reformation. He examines its social and religious background, its teachers and their message, and explores its impact on contemporary society.

    The letters appear to have been written after Anne Boleyn had been sent away from court, in consequence of reports injurious to her reputation, which had begun to be publicly circulated. Her removal indeed was so abrupt that she had resolved never to return. The king soon repented his harshness, and strove to persuade her to come back; but it was a long time, and not without great trouble, before he could induce her to comply. This book is very different from other works on the same topic and two of its letters-the fifth and the thirteenth-are not comprehended in the Vatican collection. Of the seventeen letters here included eight were written in English and nine in French.

    Elizabeth II has lived through the Abdication, the Blitz and World War Two, the sex and spy scandals of the swinging sixties, the Cold War and the nuclear threat and the Fall of the Berlin Wall. She has known 11 US Presidents including JFK and Ronald Reagan, and other world leaders like President Mandela and Pope John XXII. Her Prime Ministers have ranged from Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher to David Cameron, the last only ten years older than her grandson. Her own family experiences, a mixture of happiness and crisis, weddings and divorces, and, in the case of Diana, violent death, have been lived in the glare of tabloid headlines. More than 2 billion people watched the wedding of her grandson Prince William to Catherine Middleton in 2010 shortly before she made the first State Visit to Ireland by a British monarch for 100 years. Our world has changed more in her lifetime than in any of her predecessors': the Queen has remained a calm presence at the centre, earning the respect of monarchists and republicans. How has she done it? 'Bradford has a real grasp of history and the ability to make it spark into new life' Sunday Telegraph 'Bradford's forte, ever since she was a history-mad girl, is thinking herself into other lives' Daily Telegraph Sarah Bradford is a historian and biographer. Her books include Cesare Borgia (1976), Disraeli (1982), winner of the New York Times Book of the Year, Princess Grace (1984), Sacherevell Sitwell (1993), Elizabeth: A Biography of Her Majesty the Queen (1996), America's Queen: The Life of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (2000), Lucrezia Borgia (2005) and Diana (2007). She frequently appears on television as an authority on her biographical subjects and as a commentator on notable royal events. She is currently working on a full scale biography of Queen Victoria. She lives in London.

    Porter certainly acknowledges France's importance, but here makes an overwhelming case for consideringBritain the true home of modernity - a country driven by an exuberance, diversity and power of invention comparable only to twentieth-century America. Porter immerses the reader in a society which, recovering from the horrors of the Civil War and decisively reinvigorated by the revolution of 1688, had emerged as something new and extraordinary - a society unlike any other in the world.