Description
Book SynopsisJulia Mitchell is Teacher and Academic Guidance Counsellor at Luther College, High School in Regina, Canada. She holds a PhD in History from University College London, UK.
Trade ReviewJulia Mitchell's book plays a lively, inspiring and novel tune, stringing together popular music, the peace movement, the BBC, industry, politics and much more. Her book strikes a chord with debates about transatlantic and national cultures and local traditions. Mitchell's refrain - that folk music matters to post-war British history - is an important intervention and one historians will want and need to listen to. * Lawrence Black, Professor of Modern History, University of York, UK *
Julia Mitchell’s new book provides a lively and informative history of the English folk revival, while also bringing a fresh and illuminating perspective to established debates about the politics of class, deindustrialisation, affluence and nostalgia. It is an assured account, which opens a series of profound and provocative questions about the interaction between different forms of identity, authenticity and popular culture in postwar Britain. * Emily Robinson, Senior Lecturer in Politics, University of Sussex, UK *
Table of ContentsList of Abbreviations 1. 'Folk Song without Folk'?: An Introduction to Folk Revivalism in Twentieth-Century England 2. The Pub and the Beeb: Structural Foundations of the English Folk Revival 3. 'Its Music Was Folk': Folk Revivalism and Socialist Politics in Postwar England 4. A Dialectic of Class and Region: Folk Music in the 'Affluent Society' 5. 'Accent Speaks Louder than Words': Imagining Regional and National Communities through Folk Music 6. Folk Music and Cultural Exchange: The ‘Shiny Barbarism’ of Americanisation 7. 'With Bob on Our Side': Folk Music, the Culture Industry and the Problem of Commercial Success Bibliography Index
