Search results for ""author christopher harvie""

This is a colourful and stimulating history of modern Scotland. Christopher Harvie brings his inimitable vision to a history of modern Scotland epitomised by political and social change, in what he sees as 'recuperation' through change. This introductory history takes Scotland through two world wars and subsequent social exhaustion, through the re energising adjustments loosely referred to as 'the sixties' to a final endgame of Union versus Independence. The novel structure of Harvie's history mirrors that of a grand engineering project, or a structure as complex as the Forth Railway Bridge: 'three periods of change rendered as towers, and two great cantilevered arches of life in common, over which day to day life proceeds'. This is a final narrative of 'Union versus Independence'. It thematically rebuilts chapters: Economy/Society/Politics/Culture. The '60s' is reinterpreted.

Read more less

How did the intellectually intimidating, industrious architect of the New Labour project become its maligned and feckless undertaker? In this scathing, witty indictment of Gordon Brown's tenure as prime minister, Christopher Harvie says goodbye to Broon by exploring the Britain New Labour helped create. It is a place where the gap between rich and poor grows ever wider and manufacturing has been replaced by 'retail, entertainment and recreation' (for which read shopping, gambling and drinking). Now that the casino economy has veered wildly out of control, and our public utilities and industries have been auctioned to the highest bidder, Broonland is both an essential anatomy of a country on the brink of collapse and a caustic, darkly funny portrait of a decade that took Britain from boom through bust to busted.

Read more less

Edward Leithen is the closest of Buchan's protagonists to theauthor's own experience and imagination. A prosperous Scots lawyer andMP in London, Leithen seeks adventure to relieve the tedium ofrespectability. In The Power House he is forced by event and accident to see civilisation as a thin veneer over the human jungle; in John Macnab he makes his own adventure by playing the poacher; in Sick Heart River, seeking a lost friend he meets death and redemption in the wastes of Canada.Each book contrasts with the others; each pulls us into Buchan's world and holds us there.

Read more less

First published as part of the best-selling The Oxford Illustrated History of Britain, Christopher Harvie and Colin Matthew's Very Short Introduction to Nineteenth-Century Britain is a sharp but subtle account of remarkable economic and social change and an even more remarkable political stability. Britain in 1789 was overwhelmingly rural, agrarian, multilingual, and almost half Celtic. By 1914, when it faced its greatest test since the defeat of Napoleon, it was largely urban and English. Christopher Harvie and Colin Matthew show the forces behind Britain's rise to its imperial zenith, and the continuing tensions within the nations and classes of the 'union state'. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Read more less

Set against the religious struggles of seventeenth-century Scotland, with Montrose for the king against a convenanted kirk, John Buchan's Witch Wood is a gripping atmospheric tale in the spirit of Stevenson and Neil Munro.As a moderate Presbyterian minister, young David Sempill disputes with the extremists of his faith. All around, the defeated remnants of Montrose's men are being harried and slaughtered by the faithful, and Sempill's plea for compassion, like his love for the beautiful Katrine Yester, is out of joint with the times.There are still older conflicts to be faced however, symbolised by the presence of the Melanudrigill Wood, a last remnant of the ancient Caledonian forest. Here there is black magic to be uncovered, but also the more positive pre-Christian intimations of nature worship.In such setting, and faced with the onset of the plague, David Sempill's struggle and eventual disappearance take on a strange and timeless aspect in what was John Buchan's own favourite among his many novels.

Read more less

John Buchan wrote The Thirty-Nine Steps while he was seriously ill at the beginning of the First World War. In it he introduces his most famous hero, Richard Hannay, who, despite claiming to be an `ordinary fellow', is caught up in the dramatic race against a plot to devastate the British war effort. Hannay is hunted across the Scottish moors by police and spy-ring alike, and must outwit his intelligent and pitiless enemy in the corridors of Whitehall and, finally, at the site of the mysterious thirty-nine steps. The best-known of Buchan's thrillers, The Thirty-Nine Steps has been continuously in print since first publication and has been filmed three times, most notably by Alfred Hitchcock in 1935. In this, the only critical edition, Christopher Harvie's introduction interweaves the writing of the tale with the equally fascinating story of how John Buchan, publisher and lawyer, came in from the cold and, via The Thirty-Nine Steps, ended the war as spy-master and propaganda chief. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Read more less