Liverpool Univ Press

This is the first such study of Operation Banner, the British Army's campaign in Northern Ireland. Drawing upon extensive interviews (read more)

This is the first such study of Operation Banner, the British Army's campaign in Northern Ireland. Drawing upon extensive interviews with former soldiers, primary archival sources including unpublished diaries and unit log-books, this book closely examines soldiers' behaviour at the small infantry-unit level (Battalion downwards), including the leadership, cohesion and training that sustained, restrained and occasionally misdirected soldiers during the most violent period of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. It contends that there are aspects of wider scholarly literatures - including from sociology, anthropology, criminology, and psychology - that can throw new light on our understanding of the British Army in Northern Ireland.

It also offers fresh insights and analysis of incidents involving the British Army during the early years of Operation Banner, including the 1972 `Pitchfork murders' of Michael Naan and Andrew Murray in County Fermanagh, and that of Warrenpoint hotel owner Edmund Woolsey in South Armagh. The central argument of this book is that British Army small infantry units enjoyed considerable autonomy during the early years of Operation Banner and could behave in a vengeful, highly aggressive or benign and conciliatory way as their local commanders saw fit. The strain of civil-military relations at a senior level was replicated operationally as soldiers came to resent the limitations of waging war in the UK. (hide)

Are We All Addicts Now? Digital Dependence is an artist-led enquiry by Katriona Beales into digital hyper-connectivity and the normalization (read more)

Are We All Addicts Now? Digital Dependence is an artist-led enquiry by Katriona Beales into digital hyper-connectivity and the normalization of addictive behaviours through our everyday interactions with digital devices. While internet addiction is not yet considered an official psychiatric disorder, it is gaining increased recognition as a behavioral phenomenon in both scientific study and the popular press. This project is the first interdisciplinary exploration of this burgeoning diagnostic territory.

The book combines visual and textual research, including artistic works from Katriona Beales and Fiona MacDonald : Feral Practice, alongside essays from contributors in the fields of anthropology, digital culture, psychology and philosophy. Informed by the latest scientific research, the book acknowledges the increasing difficulty many people experience in controlling their online habits. At the same time, it also thinks beyond the biological model of internet addiction toward the social and political dimensions that shape everyday online activities and habit-forming behaviour.
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Over the last twenty years there has been a growing international interest in the city of Barcelona. This has been reflected in the (read more)

Over the last twenty years there has been a growing international interest in the city of Barcelona. This has been reflected in the academic world through a series of studies, courses, seminars, and publications. The Barcelona Reader hinges together a selection of the best academic articles, written in English, about the city, and its main elements of identity and interest: art, urban planning, history and social movements.

The book includes scholarly essays about Barcelona that can be of interest to the student and the general public alike. It focuses on cultural representations of the city: the arts (including literature) provide a complex yet discontinuous portrait of the city, similar to a patchwork. The authors selected create a kaleidoscope of views and voices thus presenting a diverse yet inclusive Barcelona portrait. (hide)

The Birds of Shropshire provides the most comprehensive record of the County's avifauna ever published. Produced by Shropshire Ornithological (read more)

The Birds of Shropshire provides the most comprehensive record of the County's avifauna ever published. Produced by Shropshire Ornithological Society, the book is based on the results of six years fieldwork by over 650 different observers who submitted over 333,400 records. These records have been used to produce maps showing the current distribution of almost 200 different species.

Stunning images of 220 species have been contributed by 21 local photographers. The book includes an account for each species, describing its distribution and relative abundance, and the breeding status where relevant. The current breeding and winter maps will be compared with those shown in An Atlas of the Breeding Birds of Shropshire (1992) and with the Shropshire part of the national An Atlas of the Wintering Birds in Britain and Ireland (1986). (hide)

Following on from her Forward prize-winning collection, Small Hands, Mona Arshi's new book continues its lyrical and exact exploration (read more)

Following on from her Forward prize-winning collection, Small Hands, Mona Arshi's new book continues its lyrical and exact exploration of the aftershocks of grief. These extraordinary poems, which see Arshi continuing with her experiments with form, relocate experience in past, present and future feeling, in both the intimacies of ordinariness and the collective experience of myth. Moving and discomfiting in their acute emotional awareness of individual pain these poems tune in to the cruelty and unsettling violence of our contemporary world. (hide)

This book examines the grass-roots relationship between the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and the civilian population during the Irish (read more)

This book examines the grass-roots relationship between the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and the civilian population during the Irish Revolution. It is primarily concerned with the attempts of the militant revolutionaries to discourage, stifle, and punish dissent among the local populations in which they operated, and the actions or inactions by which dissent was expressed or implied.

Focusing on the period of guerilla war against British rule from c. 1917 to 1922, it uncovers the acts of 'everyday' violence, threat, and harm that characterized much of the revolutionary activity of this period. Moving away from the ambushes and assassinations that have dominated much of the discourse on the revolution, the book explores low-level violent and non-violent agitation in the Irish town or parish.
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This book draws on a lengthy experience of teaching graduates how to approach medieval books. It leads the reader through the stages (read more)

This book draws on a lengthy experience of teaching graduates how to approach medieval books. It leads the reader through the stages of the editorial process, using part of Richard Rolle's Commentary on the Song of Songs as the working exemplar. In the humane sciences, the need for texts is ubiquitous; they provide the regular objects of study.

But far less prevalent than editions is any discussion of the premises underlying these objects, or the mechanisms by which they have been constructed. This volume takes up both challenges. First, in a preliminary chapter, it discusses what is at stake in any edition one might read; the persistent argument is that these represent products of modern scholarly decision-making, the imposition of various kinds of unity on the extremely diverse evidence medieval books offer for any literary work. (hide)

This timely book explores what might be termed 'Gothic science fiction' from 1980 to 2010. This designation may at first appear contradictory, (read more)

This timely book explores what might be termed 'Gothic science fiction' from 1980 to 2010. This designation may at first appear contradictory, as the Gothic's connotations of the irrational and supernatural seem to conflict with the rational foundations of science fiction. However, this collection demonstrates that the two categories in fact overlap and intersect in creatively and critically fruitful ways.

Understanding texts of this period by means of this hybrid category allows a fresh examination of their engagement with the dramatic socio-economic changes - in communication technology, medical science, globalization, and global politics - that have transformed the way we live, and for which Gothic science fiction texts provide compelling narrative modes. The essays in this collection reflect the current willingness among researchers to explore interpretations across genre, form, and discipline, as well as revealing a buoyant field of research in contemporary Gothic and science fiction studies. The collection ranges across narrative media (including literature, film, graphic novels and trading card games) and across genres, taking in horror, science fiction, the Gothic, the New Weird and more.

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James Watt (1736-1819) was a pivotal figure of the Industrial Revolution. His career as a scientific instrument maker, inventor and (read more)

James Watt (1736-1819) was a pivotal figure of the Industrial Revolution. His career as a scientific instrument maker, inventor and engineer was developed in Scotland, his land of birth. His subsequent national and international significance as a scientist, technologist and businessman was formed in the Birmingham area.

There, his partnership with Matthew Boulton and the intellectual and personal support of other members of the Lunar Society network, such as Erasmus Darwin, James Keir, William Small and Josiah Wedgwood, enabled him to translate his improvements in steam technology into efficient machines. His pumping and rotative steam engines represent a summit of technological achievement in the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries. This is the traditional picture of James Watt. (hide)

This is the first biography of John Francis Bentley (1839-1902), best known as architect of Westminster Cathedral, since his daughter (read more)

This is the first biography of John Francis Bentley (1839-1902), best known as architect of Westminster Cathedral, since his daughter Winefride de l'Hopital's Westminster Cathedral and its Architect (1919). Bentley was born in Doncaster, Yorkshire, and went to London to work in the office of Henry Clutton, a distinguished High Victorian architect who became a Roman Catholic in 1856. Bentley also converted, and, after setting up his own practice in 1860, came to be widely recognised as the best Catholic architect of his time. (hide)