Search results for ""Welsh Academic Press""

What on earth do Blaenegel, Gwauncaegurwen and Mawdlam mean? Is Brynsadler named from someone who made saddles or someone called Sadler? Are there really `high lights' in Highlight, worms at Worms Head and butter at Brynmenyn? Scarcely a week goes by without hearing arguments about how we should spell or say a particular name but finding answers to your questions isn't always easy and what you find in dictionaries, local histories and websites may leave you with lingering doubts. Based on many years of detailed research, Place-Names of Glamorgan investigates the historical evidence and meanings of more than 1,100 place-names in the historic county of Glamorgan, stretching from Rhossili to Rumney and Rhoose to Rhigos. The illustrated volume contains a concise introduction to the subject, a bibliography, a glossary of common place-name elements, and a close examination of individual place-names and their historic forms.

Read more less

The Welsh Government's Department of Education was famously called 'dysfunctional', by its own Minister. In Testing Times, a forensic and devastating critique of the Welsh Government's strategies and initiatives since devolution, the respected educationalist Philip Dixon argues that this is still the case, stating: 'If you want to find the weakest link in Welsh education today then look no further.'A strong supporter of devolution, and a firm believer that Wales has the capability to create a world class educational system, Philip Dixon is brutally and refreshingly honest when identifying the major failures in the Welsh Government's creation and implementation of educational policy. He criticises a culture which he describes as overly complacent and occasionally reckless.The first detailed analysis of education policy and delivery in Wales since 1999, Testing Times critically examines Welsh Labour's 17-year continuous tenure of the education portfolio under various different Ministers.He scrutinises the collective grand narrative, from the 'Learning Country' to 'Qualified for Life', and he investigates their impact on the foundation blocks of any education system: curriculum and assessment, qualifications, and accountability. Essential reading for teaching professionals and education policy researchers, as well as for parents and school governors, Philip Dixon also perceptively describes the educational journey made by modern-day Welsh children as they move through school, and the major implications of the 2014 Donaldson Review. He pulls no punches in examining key statistical data to judge the effectiveness of Wales' education system.Finally, following the 2016 National Assembly elections and the appointment of a new Education Minister, Philip Dixon, in the guise of a 'critical friend', outlines a number of essential questions that need to be addressed if Wales is not to languish for ever at the lower end of international comparison tables, and with a system that is noticeably worse than its immediate neighbours in Scotland, Northern Ireland and England.Testing Times will ruffle the feathers of the political peacocks who've ruled the educational roost since 1999 and presided over numerous debacles and fiascos.

Read more less

Since its establishment in 1866 by prominent businessmen and the gentry of south Wales, the Cardiff and County Club has played a central role in the commercial, political and sporting life of Cardiff, as it developed from a burgeoning Victorian coal metropolis into the dynamic Welsh capital city of today. Led by local solicitor Henry Heard, the Club's founders had moved to Cardiff to work in the rapidly expanding town and, as the trade of the docks, businesses and shops all flourished, the men of influence, high social standing and growing wealth were looking for somewhere to gather, relax, dine and socialise in a convivial atmosphere with their friends and acquaintances. Initially located within, and then alongside, the Royal Hotel on St. Mary Street, the Club's growing popularity, and its close association with the Bute Estate, saw the members decide to construct the current Clubhouse on Westgate Street, which became one of the City's landmarks and still remains Wales' leading private members' club. Extensively researched and lavishly illustrated, Always Amongst Friends not only traces the fascinating 150-year history of the Club through a scholarly study of the social and economic history of Cardiff, but also celebrates the Cardiff and County Club's colourful characters, their mischievous humour and exudes the warmth and camaraderie so treasured by its members.

Read more less

Essential reading for all involved in the educational sector in Wales (and beyond), A Class Apart investigates the effectiveness of educational policies, such as the Foundation Phase and Welsh Baccalaureate, introduced by the Welsh Government since devolution and assesses whether they have really created the potential for Wales to become a 'small, clever nation'. Spanning all major policy developments, from Primary to Higher Education, since 1999, Gareth Evans also assesses the legacy of the two main protagonists, former Education Ministers Jane Davidson and Leighton Andrews. He investigates the issues that some policymakers wished were swept under the carpet and delves deeper to analyse the big issues effecting educational practitioners in Wales, including: Welsh education's place on the world stage The growing funding gap between Wales and England The role of schools inspectorate Estyn The truth behind Wales' ambitious PISA target The 2012 GCSE grading fiasco Secrecy and personality clashes in the higher education merger saga His chronological account also includes the events up to and following the PISA results of 2013 and his close proximity to the key protagonists in Welsh education provides him with the perfect position to judge the situation in which Wales' education system finds itself today.

Read more less

Regarded as a classic text amongst teachers of adults and those working with adult groups in a variety of professional and adult community settings, "Adult Learning, Adult Teaching" has now been enlarged, updated and thoroughly revised for this fourth edition. This new fourth edition retains the direct and practical approach that has proved so successful with thousands of practitioners and contains additional chapters on: learning styles; equal opportunities; self-presentation; difficult students and 'reluctant attenders'; practical planning; attendance and drop-out; the observation of teaching and learning; guidance, progression and 'what next'; a real student's experiences of adult education with a matched critique addressed to her tutor.

Read more less

Anne Charlotte Leffler (1849-1892) was the most important European woman playwright of the last decades of the nineteenth century and together with Ibsen and Strindberg one of the Scandinavian pioneers of modern and modernist drama. Lynn R. Wilkinson's Anne Charlotte Leffler and Modernist Drama is the first full-length study of Leffler's dramatic production. It argues that Leffler's plays deserve to be read and performed today alongside those of Ibsen and Strindberg, as they indeed were during her lifetime, and will serve as a welcome resource for new productions of her plays and studies of her work. Born the same year as August Strindberg, Anne Charlotte Leffler was a far more successful playwright in Scandinavia and elsewhere during her lifetime. After her death, however, literary histories dismissed her work as an example of the propagandistic literature of the Swedish 1880s. But beginning in the 1970s, revivals of her plays in theaters and on television have rekindled interest in Leffler and her work. Scoring her first theatrical success in 1873 with a play about a young actress who rejects marriage for a career on the stage, Leffler wrote fourteen plays that were either published or performed in theaters throughout Scandinavia and Europe - often to considerable critical acclaim. All address the situation of women, but often in connection with other issues, such as the exploitation of the working classes or the repressiveness of late-nineteenth-century European culture, and in a range of styles. Her feminist classic, the realist True Women, centers on the conflicts that arise on one household when a daughter opposes her spendthrift father's claim to the last of his wife's money. But it premiered together with the avant-garde one-act A Saving Angel, which depicts in the form of a dance the unsettling effects of urban sexuality on a group of young women. And Leffler's last play, The Ways of Truth, is a dream play that draws on flaneur narratives to show the wanderings of an intellectual heroine and her companion through scenes from late-nineteenth-century European life.

Read more less

An essential reference guide, this volume draws together an impressive collection of academics and religious practitioners to map out for the first time the religious multiplicity and diversity of Wales. For the first fifteen hundred years or so of its existence, the Christian Church in Wales was a unified entity. The Welsh Church, initially Celtic, but then Roman Catholic, held a virtual monopoly over religious life and belief in the country. The sixteenth century Reformation ended the notion of a monolithic Christendom; the proliferation of Protestant sects guaranteed that competition and variety would be the norm. By charting the gradual proliferation of religious communities in Wales from the seventeenth to the twenty-first centuries, this volume seeks to dispel many of the myths of a monochrome Christian, Protestant or even Nonconformist Wales. Each chapter also uniquely examines the persistence of faith, often in surprising places, in post-Christian Wales.

Read more less

Women in Swedish Society is a groundbreaking study by two general practitioners, Annika Forssén and Gunilla Carlstedt, who believed that the medical profession and accepted medical science was inadequately responding to the health problems presented by their female patients. Rejecting the tendency of the medical profession to link women's symptoms with female psychological issues or reproductive biology, the authors undertook their own in-depth research, drawing on systematic, wide-ranging interviews with 20 carefully chosen subjects. Their goal was to identify how women's daily lives, in particular their personal circumstances and work experiences - both in salaried employment and in the home - impacted on their health. Women in Swedish Society incorporates the detailed and intimate testimonies of these women. Through them, Forssén and Carlstedt illustrate how changes in female health and wellbeing reflect the radical changes in Swedish society during their lifetimes, which spanned the twentieth century. The authors also make comparisons with the situation of contemporary Swedish women, finding that despite the shift in social attitudes and improved opportunities for women, many issues surrounding power, class and division of labor as well as medical care remain unresolved.

Read more less

Written by two award-winning public affairs professionals, The Public Affairs Guide to Scotland provides practical advice and guidance to individuals and organisations wishing to influence policy makers, and to contribute to legislative change in Scotland.The Public Affairs Guide to Scotland strips away the mysteries and misconceptions of engaging with the Scottish Government, Opposition parties, MSPs and the civil service and explains how to deliver cost effective public affairs activities that can achieve tangible outcomes.Robert McGeachy and Mark Ballard's step-by-step guide will empower private, public and third sector organisations to manage their own public affairs programmes, without the need to hire expensive consultants or specialist lobbying companies, by comprehensively outlining:What your organisation could achieve by developing its own in-house public affairs activitiesHow to identify the correct policy and legislative context via effective parliamentary monitoring and by engendering good relations with key policy makers How to engage with the legislative process including Parliamentary Committees, Members' Bills, Public Petitions, Cross Party Groups, and Parliamentary Motions & DebatesHow to create, organise and undertake a public affairs programme most appropriate for your organisation including hosting parliamentary receptions, attending party conferences and joint-working with a partner organisationFull of useful hints and tips, and written with the benefit of years of experience and success in the profession, The Public Affairs Guide to Scotland is the essential tool for those organisations needing to engage with the legislative process of the Scottish Parliament and its policy development.

Read more less

An essential introduction to Irish politics, Radicals and Realists expertly analyses the political parties that have influenced the history of pre- and post-partition Ireland. Lila Haines' rigorously researched guide provides concise histories of the island's 12 most significant political parties, revealing their ideals and deals, clashes and collaborations, and splinters and mergers. Dispassionate and insightful, Radicals and Realists discusses the achievements, trends and milestones of the contemporary two-jurisdiction island. It also demolishes popular myths and reveals the inconvenient truths about political ineptitude, corruption, authoritarianism or tolerance of terrorism that some parties may prefer to forget or rewrite. Radicals and Realists is an indispensable companion for all who wish to understand how political parties in Ireland have evolved, and how their electoral fortunes are shaping the future of the island they share.

Read more less

George Thomas, the former Labour Cabinet Minister and Speaker of the House of Commons, was the sycophant supreme of the British political system and arguably the most divisive figure in twentieth-century Welsh politics, whose transformation from a radical young socialist to Viscount Tonypandy, a fervent supporter of Margaret Thatcher and servile courtier to the English Royal Family who was perfectly described by poet Nigel Jenkins as 'The Lord of Lickspit'. Drawing on previously unpublished material from Thomas' vast personal and political archive in the National Library of Wales, and interviews with many who knew him during his career, award-winning journalist Martin Shipton reveals the real George Thomas, the complex character behind the carefully crafted facade of the devout Christian and ultra British-loyalist, and discovers a number of surprising and shocking personae - which have previously been unknown, downplayed or overlooked - of this ultimate Political Chameleon whose political legacy now lies in ruins: The devious draft-dodger during World War Two. The Communist sympathiser controlled by the Soviet Union. The secret Freemason. The self-proclaimed teetotaller who enjoyed alcohol in private. The close acquaintance of a controversial financier. The spiritual sidekick of a Saudi Arabian oil minister. The duplicitous informer for Harold Wilson. The shameless betrayer of the people of Aberfan. The die-hard opponent of devolution with a spiteful antipathy towards the Welsh language. The unscrupulous fixer of Honours and master of patronage. The 'confirmed bachelor' and Methodist lay-preacher who sought the company of 'rent boys'. Martin Shipton also investigates fresh evidence relating to the explosive allegation that Thomas was a child rapist and a predatory sexual abuser of young males. This is the book that his dwindling number of supporters feared and the book his political opponents have been waiting for. Political Chameleon dissects George Thomas chapter by chapter, exposing him as a sanctimonious hypocrite whose religious veneer was a sham.

Read more less

Place-Names of Carmarthenshire is the first publication to investigate all major place-names in the historic county of Carmarthen (1536-1974), including the westerly parts of the county transferred to modern Pembrokeshire after 1996. Tracing the history of Welsh place-names casts light upon the ways in which our ancestors lived and how they thought about the world around them. The meaning of place-names, however, is not always easy to determine because their written and spoken forms have often changed over time and particularly when the language in a particular location switched from Welsh to English. Fortunately, Carmarthenshire was not so markedly affected in this respect as many other parts of Wales but it is still easy to be mislead by modern spellings: Caerfyrddin (Carmarthen) does not recall the name of the mythological Myrddin (Merlin) in the Arthurian tales but is derived from morddin (mor / 'sea' and din / 'fort') describing a Roman maritime fort - the precursor of the medieval borough; Llanboidy does not contain a llan ('church') but rather a nant ('stream') located near a beudy ('cow-shed'); Castelldwyran actually means 'Durant's castle', being composed of castell ('castle') and an Anglo-Norman personal name Durant, rather than dwyran ('two-thirds'). Illustrated with many images of the county, Place-Names of Carmarthenshire examines more than 920 place-names and features a 1,000-entry Glossary of place-name elements, personal names and rivers, and is the result of the author's detailed research in archives and reference libraries.

Read more less

Women in Swedish Society is a groundbreaking study by two general practitioners, Annika Forssen and Gunilla Carlstedt, who believed that the medical profession and accepted medical science was inadequately responding to the health problems presented by their female patients. Rejecting the tendency of the male-dominated medical profession to link women's symptoms with female psychological issues or reproductive biology, the authors undertook their own in-depth research, drawing on systematic, wide-ranging interviews with 20 carefully chosen subjects. Their goal was to identify how women's daily lives, in particular their personal circumstances and work experiences - both in salaried employment and in the home - impacted on their health. Women in Swedish Society incorporates the detailed and intimate testimonies of these women. Through them, Forssen and Carlstedt illustrate how changes in female health and wellbeing reflect the radical changes in Swedish society during their lifetimes, which spanned the twentieth century. The authors also make comparisons with the situation of contemporary Swedish women, finding that despite the shift in social attitudes and improved opportunities for women, many issues surrounding power, class and division of labor as well as medical care remain unresolved.

Read more less

The Public Affairs Guide to Westminster is the essential handbook for organisations seeking to influence legislation and shape policy development in the UK Parliament and at UK Government level, and is packed with invaluable advice on devising cost effective public affairs strategies and campaigns that achieve success on a limited budget. Robert McGeachy's step-by-step guide - for private, public and third sector organisations - expertly strips away the mysteries and misconceptions of engaging with the UK Government, Opposition parties, as well as with individual MPs, Peers and the civil service. The Public Affairs Guide to Westminster will empower campaigners to maximise their influence and to ensure their voice is heard at Westminster by comprehensively explaining: What your organisation could achieve by developing its own in-house public affairs capacity and activities How to develop a public affairs strategy to influence key policy makers at UK Government level, and in the UK Parliament How to identify the correct policy and legislative context via effective parliamentary monitoring and by developing good relations with key policy makers How to fully engage with the legislative processes in the House of Commons and in the House of Lords What action your organisation can take to influence Parliamentary Committees, and All-Party Parliamentary Groups How to make the most of Parliamentary Motions and Debates, Private Members' Bills and Public Petitions How to create, organise and undertake a public affairs programme most appropriate for your organisation including hosting parliamentar receptions, attending party conferences and joint-working with partner organisations.

Read more less

Voters in Scotland face a fundamental choice about their future at the independence referendum on 18th September 2014 and political parties are key actors in this process. Though the referendum saw the launch of umbrella campaign groups - Yes Scotland and Better Together - political parties remained central to the campaign. Parties shaped the nature of the referendum in government; parties provided leadership, resources, activists and expertise to the campaign; and were also major producers of political discourse throughout Scotland's contemporary referendum experience. Though the referendum offers a simple Yes/No choice on the ballot paper, some voters may also use party loyalty as a short-cut guide to understanding the issues and their decision. This book: analyses the referendum roles and activities of the Conservatives, Scottish Green Party, Labour, Liberal Democrats, Scottish National Party and Scottish Socialist Party during the campaign. places the independence referendum in international context through examining other sovereignty referendums looks at the emergence of new organizations like Radical Independence and National Collective. Finally, the book adopts the Essex School of discourse analysis to examine the contested nature of political discourse around the referendum.

Read more less

Ingmar Bergman's film Persona (1966) is considered both one of his greatest masterpieces and his most enigmatic and abstract film. The highly influential film achieved global critical acclaim and has been the subject of numerous studies and interpretations. In Wordless Secrets, a ground-breaking new study of Persona, Peter Ohlin asserts that the essential Swedish context of the film has been overlooked by Bergman's international audience which has mistakenly preferred to focus on the abstract and metaphysical aspects of Persona. By repatriating the discussion of Persona to its Swedish context Peter Ohlin argues that: * the film's setting is seen not just as a barren rocky shore, but as a landscape with people who live and work there and whose marginalization is not metaphysical but immediate and political as well as cultural. * the profession of the nurse is not accidental, nor only symbolic: Alma's confusion may in part stem from the transformation of the nursing profession in the 1960s in Sweden * the Holocaust photograph from the Warsaw ghetto: it is not just an image of total violence and cruelty, but also alludes to the Swedish guilt over neutrality in the face of Nazi war crimes In addition, the book discusses the relationship of Bergman's radical attack on formal cinematic language in Persona to Swedish and international modernism, as well as the institutional incorporation of Bergman and his work in the cinematic canon.

Read more less

The first comprehensive account of the 'Fire' at Penyberth in English.

Read more less

The Wild West of Hollywood and American folklore is nothing more than a functional myth asserts D.H. Murdoch in "The American West", which for the first time, presents a sustained analysis of how the myth originated, and why? He demonstrates that the myth was invented, for the most part deliberately, and then outgrew the purpose of its inventors. Murdoch answers the questions which have too often been ignored. Why should the American West become the focus for myth in the first place and why, given the long process of Western settlement, is the cowboy the mythic hero? And why should the myth have retained its potency up to the last decade of the twentieth century?

Read more less

Murdered in Mongolia in 1935 aged only 29, the Welsh investigative journalist Gareth Jones is a national hero in Ukraine for being the first reporter to reveal the truth about the Holodomor - the 1932-33 genocide inflicted on Ukraine by the Soviet Union which killed over four million people. A graduate of Aberystwyth and Cambridge universities, Jones - fluent in Welsh, English, Russian, French and German - was talented, well-connected and determined to discover the truth behind the momentous political events of the post-war period. He travelled widely to report on Mussolini's Italy, the fledgling Irish Free State, the Depression-ravaged United States, and was the first foreign journalist to travel with Hitler after the Nazis had taken power in Germany. Jones' quest for truth also drew him to the Soviet Union where his reporting of the Holodomor incurred the wrath of Stalin who, in 1933, banned Jones from ever returning. In August 1935, on the eve of his 30th birthday, Jones was killed by bandits in Manchukuo - Japanese-occupied Inner Mongolia - while on a 'Round-the-World Fact-Finding Tour'. Suspicions surrounding his death remain to this day, heightened by the close involvement of individuals with known links to the NKVD, the Soviet Union's secret police. Drawing upon Jones' articles, notebooks and private correspondence, Martin Shipton, the respected political journalist at Jones' former newspaper, the Western Mail, reveals the remarkable yet tragically short life of this fascinating and determined Welshman who pioneered the role of investigative journalism.

Read more less

Since Gareth Jones's historic press conference in Berlin in 1933 when he became the first journalist to reveal the existence and extent of the Holodomor, a Soviet-induced famine in Ukraine in which over four million people died, Jones and his professional reputation have been the focus of a determined campaign by those who deny the famine ever happened. Attempts to destroy Jones's character, which would de facto undermine the reliability of his reports of the Holodomor, have increased in recent years following global recognition and acclaim for the importance of his work. Citing his professional connections with the Nazis, including: Flying on Hitler's plane on the day he became German Chancellor Having a front row seat at a Nazi rally in Frankfurt Noting that he enjoyed a private dinner with Goebbels Having several acquaintances who later took key roles in the Third Reich His 1935 obituary in a Nazi paper which stated Jones was 'one of us' and his self-confessed love of Germany, speaking fluent German, and making annual visits from 1923-34, there have been a number of accusations that Jones was, in fact, a Nazi sympathiser and fascist collaborator. In this groundbreaking new study, Ray Gamache, an acknowledged expert on Gareth Jones and the reporting of the Holodomor, thoroughly examines Jones's extensive notebooks, letters, articles and speeches to investigate these claims. In Gareth Jones - On Assignment in Nazi Germany 1933-34, Gamache provides a compelling narrative which refutes claims of Jones's Nazi sympathies, stating: 'That he encountered some of the most impactful historical figures and events of the 1930s is beyond dispute, and his reporting of those events offers considerable insight into what responsible journalism looked like at that time.'

Read more less

Gareth Jones (1905-1934), the young Welsh investigative journalist, is revered in Ukraine as a national hero and is now rightly recognised as the first reporter to reveal the horror of the Holodomor, the Soviet Government-induced famine of the early 1930s, which killed millions of Ukrainians. Gareth Jones - Eyewitness to the Holodomor is a meticulous study of the efforts made by the the Aberystwyth and Cambridge-educated journalist, a fluent Russian-speaker, to investigate the Soviet Government’s denials, that its Five Year Plan had led to mass starvation, by visiting Ukraine in 1933 and reporting what he saw and witnessed: `I walked along through villages and twelve collective farms. Everywhere was the cry, “There is no bread. We are dying”’. Determined to alert the world to the suffering in Ukraine and to expose Stalin’s policies and prejudices towards the Ukrainian people, Jones published numerous articles in the UK (The Times, Daily Express and Western Mail) and the USA (New York Evening News and Chicago Daily News) with headlines such as `Famine Grips Russia. Millions Dying’, but soon saw his credibility and integrity attacked and denigrated by Soviet sympathizers, most famously by Moscow-based Walter Duranty of the New York Times. Gareth Jones was killed by bandits the following year, on the eve of his 30th birthday, whilst travelling in Japanese-controlled China. There remain strong suspicions that Jones’ murder was arranged by the Soviets in revenge for his eyewitness reporting which brought global attention to the Holodomor.

Read more less

On 21 October 1966, 116 children and 28 adults died when a mountainside coal tip collapsed, engulfing homes and part of a school in the village of Aberfan below. It is a moment that will be forever etched in the memories of many people in Wales and beyond. Aberfan - Government & Disaster is widely recognised as the definitive study of the disaster. Following meticulous research of public records - kept confidential by the UK Government’s 30-year rule - the authors, in this revised second edition, explain how and why the disaster happened and why nobody was held responsible. Iain McLean and Martin Johnes reveal how the National Coal Board, civil servants, and government ministers, who should have protected the public interest, and specifically the interests of the people of Aberfan, failed to do so. The authors also consider what has been learned or ignored from Aberfan such as the understanding of psychological trauma and the law concerning ‘corporate manslaughter’. Aberfan - Government & Disaster is the revised and updated second edition of Iain McLean and Martin Johnes’ acclaimed study published in 2000, which now solely focuses on Aberfan.

Read more less

David Lloyd George, was a immensely colourful, controversial and enigmatic character who dominated the political life of Britain in the opening decades of the twentieth century.Famously described by Churchill as 'the greatest Welshman that unconquerable race has produced since the age of the Tudors', Lloyd George's political legacy is considerable and includes the introduction of a 'welfare state' whilst as Chancellor of the Exchequer, and as an effective and successful Prime Minister during the Great War. He was also however, implicated in a number of personal scandals relating to his great duel loves; women and money.The Financial Affairs of David Lloyd George is the first serious and systematic study to examine, assess and analyse Lloyd George's attitude to money and finance and compellingly illustrates how he accumulated great wealth by fair and more questionable methods.The product of many year's forensic research, author and accountant Ian Ivatt tells the intriguing story of how the man, who started work at 15 as a trainee solicitor's clerk in Porthmadog, earning a mere 15 shillings (less than GBP40), died in 1945 leaving an estate valued at GBP139,855 (GBP6.5 million).

Read more less

This comprehensive study includes over 40 interviews with senior figures from within the Welsh Liberal Party, the Welsh SDP and Welsh Liberal Democrat Party and provides the first detailed history of Wales'' oldest political party.

Read more less

Though the SNP has existed since 1934, no full-length history of the Scottish National Party was written until the first edition of this book in 2002. With the SNP having governed Scotland since 2007, and with an outright majority since 2011, the long-held SNP policy of an Independence Referendum is now a reality and scheduled to be held in 2014. This timely 2nd Edition: traces the fortunes of the SNP since 2002 particularly since 2007 when it became the governing party in the Scottish Parliament uses recently discovered material about the party's history to reassess some of the issues in its earlier development outlines the party's role in government in Scotland from 2007-2013 looks ahead to the independence referendum in 2014

Read more less

The Butcher, in this new edition, deals with the Government's response to the 1745 Jacobite Rebellion. Whilst there have many studies of the uprising from the Jacobite perspective, few have tackled the event from the view of the Government and its supporters. When roused from the initial reluctance to take the rebellion seriously, supporters of the Hanovarian dynasty rallied to its defence and exposed adherents of the Stuarts as a small minority, not only in England but even in Scotland. The result was to revenge the spectacular early successes of the Young Pretender's forces in the crushing defeat at Culloden. The leader of the Government's forces, The Duke of Cumberland, was determined there would not be a third rebellion to add to those in 1715 and 1745 and his tactics and treatment of the defeated Jacobite forces rightly earned him the title 'The Butcher'.

Read more less

Imprisoned in Wormwood Scrubs for his pacifist beliefs during the First World War, Morgan Jones made history by becoming the first conscientious objector to be elected an MP when he won the Caerphilly by-election for Labour in 1921. In Morgan Jones - Man of Conscience, the first biography of this remarkable politician, Wayne David explains how Jones became a pioneering education minister in the 1924 and 1929-31 Labour Governments - being amongst the first to articulate the need for free, `comprehensive' secondary education for all - and how he was a tireless campaigner against injustice, supporting many causes at home and abroad from Welsh devolution to the establishment of a Jewish homeland. Published on the 80th anniversary of his death in 1939, aged only 53, Wayne David's Morgan Jones - Man of Conscience for the first time reveals the full story of Jones' political journey from Rhymney Valley radical to parliamentary pragmatist who, after witnessing the rise of fascism in Europe and the horrors of the Spanish Civil War, finally rejected pacifism in favour of military action to defend democracy from the evils of Nazism.

Read more less

The Scottish independence referendum of 2014 was the most colourful, dynamic and longest political campaign Scotland has ever seen and which, in IndyRef to ScotRef , is lovingly recounted through the experiences of a university lecturer turned Yes for Scotland activist who was inspired to roll up his sleeves and get involved in his native city of Edinburgh. Sharing a personal journey that will resonate with tens of thousands of Scots, from all backgrounds and walks of life, who found themselves drawn to Campaigning for Yes, Peter Lynch describes his transition from an academic observer of the referendum to an active participant. Through his early involvement with local Yes groups to a deeper immersion in the grassroots campaign with leafleting, street stalls, door-to-door canvassing, public meetings, electoral registration and the many political carnivals held across Edinburgh in pursuit of a Yes vote, Lynch also rediscovered the city he grew up in and describes how it had been effected by decades of economic, political and social change. When Yes Scotland was launched in May 2012, support for independence stood at 23% but, as the IndyRef campaign galvanised and inspired the nation to debate its future in a way that caught the imagination of hundreds of thousands of previously non-politically active Scots, support for independence grew steadily reaching 44.7% - 1,617,989 votes - on 18th September 2014; referendum day. Of interest to supporters of independence and neutral observers alike, IndyRef to ScotRef explains how, despite losing the vote, many Yes activists soon concluded that the referendum campaign had fundamentally changed their lives as well as the political landscape of Scotland and committed themselves to `get it right next time’: it was the beginning, not the end. In the final chapters of IndyRef to ScotRef, Peter Lynch analyses the huge political events that have occurred in Scotland and the rest of the UK since September 2014, which have seen the SNP’s domination of Scottish politics and Britain voting for Brexit despite Scotland voting to Remain, resulting in the decision of the Scottish Parliament in March 2017 to call for a further independence referendum. With an eye on ScotRef, whenever it comes, Lynch warns `Yessers’ to be realistic and prepared, outlining what must be done to secure a `Yes’ for Scotland.

Read more less

This work, first published in 1944, provides the most reliable texts of the Lives of Welsh Saints based upon the Cotton MS in the British Library from 1200. Out of print for over 50 years, this work is still the standard edition of these Lives and is still widely used by scholars today. As well as being the major text for our information concerning the Welsh saints it also contains some of the earliest Arthurian material and is the first to make Arthur a king.

Read more less