Description
Book SynopsisThis 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.
Trade Review'A valuable contribution to leisure history. It deserves to be included on reading lists and study guides relating to 20th-century leisure and sports history courses.'
John Griffiths, Reviews in History, June 2013
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Table of ContentsIntroduction: contextualising leisure history
1. Jeffrey Hill - Leisure and historiography in twentieth-century Britain
2. Allison Abra - The evolution of popular dancing in Britain in the 1920s
3. Brad Beaven - Mass commercial leisure and working-class cultures in 1930s Britain
4. Sandra Dawson - Selling the circus: Englishness, circus fans and democracy
in Britain, 1920–45
5. Kelly Boyd - The western and British identity on British Television in the 1950s
6. Brett Bebber - ‘The misuse of leisure’: football violence, politics and family values in 1970s Britain
7. Chad Martin - Permissive claptrap: cannabis law and the legacy of the 1960s
8. Cécile Doustaly - Women and leisure in Britain: a socio-historical approach to twentieth-century trends
Index
