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Terence Brown’s history of the Irish Times is one of a number of similar texts published recently which indicates an upsurge of interest in the Irish media landscape – Kevin Rafter’s Irish Journalism Before Independence (1), Ann Andrews’ Newspapers and Newsmakers (2) and Mark O’Brien and Felix Larkin’s edited collect
In between small model spitfires and Sherman tank key rings, visitors browsing the shelves of the Imperial War Museum’s gift shop will find their gaze met by the reassuringly familiar smile of a round-faced rag doll, beaming from the side of a tote bag.
Essay collections are always a mixed bag, and this one is more muddled than most. The warning signs are clear. The volume is part of a series ominously titled ‘Austrian Studies in English’. Six of the 15 essays were papers presented at a 2010 conference of the same name at the University of Vienna.
Benedict Anderson’s conceptualisation of nations as ‘invented communities’ identified the emergence of modern nationalism through a combination of demotic print culture and the growth of capitalism.
Tucked away in museums displaying and storing collections of dress and textiles there is often a subsidiary but significant collection of printed ephemera. This might encompass bills, trade cards, paper carrier bags, fashion plates and dressmaking patterns.
Rather like the ever-rising middle classes, in every decade of modern history British men appear to be in the midst of becoming better fathers.
The dissemination of cultural improvement was written into the ethos of the BBC under John Reith, the first director-general from 1927. Until 1945 the BBC broadcast a single national service and therefore constructed programming that attempted to offer a culturally unified ‘voice of the nation’.
August 2014 marked the First World War Centenary and around the globe commemorations are in place or in progress.
In When Hollywood Loved Britain Mark Glancy used a trove of fascinating archival material to examine the ways in which propaganda and economic expedience shaped the American film industry’s representation of Britain during the Second World War.(1) For his new book, Glancy returns to the history of British-American film culture, albeit with a rather different p
I cannot help a passing allusion to the lack of pictorial records of this war – records made by artists of experience, who actually witness the scenes they portray.