Search results for ""Author Stephen Hart""

James Chuter Ede (1882-1965) served the longest term of office as Home Secretary in the last 200 years, three weeks more than Theresa May. He is the only senior member of Attlee's legendary 1945 cabinet not yet to have found a biographer. His contribution to that government - and in Robert Harris's words, 'We still live in the society shaped by Clement Attlee' - although largely unsung, was immense. Alongside towering achievements such as Bevan's NHS, his own measures, in administrative, legal and social reform, did much to set the seal on Labour's reforming programme, including the Criminal Justice Act 1948, paving the way for the abolition of capital punishment. Previously, working with RA Butler, he provided a major contribution to the Education Act 1944\. Equally interesting for historians and readers of history is how Ede's life and career present a political, cultural and social account, in his journey from Victorian family life with a Liberal background, through Cambridge and the Unitarian religion, to Labour politics, working in education and local government. He represented suburban Mitcham and then industrial South Shields in Parliament, where his performances were legendary in an age of oratory - low-key, yet cutting and decisive. This will be an important contribution to the burgeoning interest in the historiography of post World War II Labour Britain.

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A comprehensive review of the wide and varied range of window tracery designs that emerged during the medieval period. While the terms used to describe the tracery of medieval church windows are familiar (Early English, Decorated, Perpendicular), there has been no really detailed attempt to examine it as a distinct, stylistic architectural form, agap which this book seeks to address. Based upon a visual catalogue of over 250 images of surviving types and styles from churches throughout England, it traces the progression of ideas and the continuity of motifs and themes intracery patterns from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries, showing how different themes emerged within the main architectural styles; it also looks at the distinction between a window's architectural form and its tracery style, and describes the several different tracery techniques. The volume is completed with a detailed glossary. Stephen Hart is a retired architect, and the author of numerous works, including Flint Flushwork.

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East Anglia has a unique and very substantial heritage of flint-built churches and secular buildings over a wide area that range from Saxon times to the 20th century, many of them of exceptional beauty, and most in a good state of preservation. Stephen Hart considers that these buildings, in which a large number of different flintwork techniques and designs are used that are partly functional, partly dependent upon local materials and partly aesthetic in inspiration, constitute an important part of our heritage. It has only been scantily treated in previous works. His book is the first comprehensive one to be written on English flint architecture and is likely to become the definitive work on the subject. He shows that, although some of these techniques and designs are also to be found in other chalkland regions of England, including Hampshire, Sussex (e.g. Goodwood House), Kent, Wiltshire and Dorset, the greatest variety is in East Anglia. He has devised a classification system based on analysis of the materials and workmanship in flintwork which distinguishes between different types of flint, including flint combined with brick and stone. The numerous colour plates and black and white photographs convey the fascinating multiplicity of styles to be found, some of them reminiscent of the work of contemporary artists like Richard Long, and the virtuoso skills of the craftsmen who created them. There is a deeper consciousness and wider appreciation of vernacular architecture today in Britain than there has ever been, and the book could well inspire people to explore new possibilities in the use of flint architecture. Apart from its general appeal, it is a book that will strike a particular chord among architects, designers, craftsmen, local historians, artists and regional councils responsible for planning and conservation.

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