This article explores the role of textiles in the home in the later eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries. The methodology adopted is a response to the difficulties of researching homes in this period when probate inventories had largely ceased to be made. Instead of using quantitative analysis, this essay focuses on three case studies of homes where detailed lists allow speculation on the uses of furnishing textiles in these homes. Three themes are identified: conspicuous consumption, domestic ideology and the possible meanings of stored textiles. These themes are explored using recent cultural theories to provide a framework for analysis. (Ingenta)

This chapter: Mike Haynes looks at the origins of the Hungarian revolt, in terms of workplace politics while Anne Alexander reviews the impact that Suez had on Nasser s reputation within the Arab world and Arab nationalist politics. In the afternoon there was a widening of the focus. This book: ‘Through the Smoke of Budapest 50 Years On’, The February 2006 Conference of the London Socialist Historians Group was held at the Institute of Historical Research in central London, one of a series of such conferences over the previous ten years. Assembled were a modest group of academics and activists come to mark the 50th anniversary of the events of 1956, and to do so in a particular way. Firstly by presenting new historical research on the questions under review rather than trotting out tired orthodoxies. Secondly by linking historical inquiry to political activism. It was queried why such a conference was held in February 2006 rather than in the autumn, and the answer was a simple one. To intervene historically in the debates of the year by setting a socialist historical agenda for doing so.

"A Nation of Shopkeepers" reflects research on retail history and cultures of consumption. The contributors challenge existing ideas about retail development, showing how, for example, large-scale retailers played a far lesser role in the development of the modern city that is generally thought, and how the success of department stores was determined less by "entrepreneurial" spirit and more by the unforseen consequences of legislation. With the growing interest in cultures of consumption, this book should be useful to specialists and students in retail history, human geography and social and cultural history. (I.B. Taurus publishers)

Keith Gildart concentrates on the period between the nationalization of the coal industry in 1947 and its privatization in 1994 and, through a detailed study of groups, individuals and communities, demonstrates the complex nature of work and politics during a period of momentous change in British coalfield history. He pays particular attention to the politics of the National Union of Mineworkers, the role of the Labour Party, and the impact of pit closures on miners and their localities. North Wales Miners combines oral history and archival sources to provide a ground-breaking account of social, political and industrial change in post-war Wales. Contents: The Golden Age of Labourism, 1945-1963; Miners, Labour and pit closures, 1964-1971; The Politics of Coal, 1972-1982; The Fragmentation of Unity, 1983-1988; The End of an era, 1989-1996. (University of Wales Press)

This article explores British men's attitudes towards the purchase of a particular commodity — the suit — in order to shed some light on the nature of male consumer demand in the four decades before the outbreak of the Second World War. The focus is on men's motives for choosing between a ready-to-wear and a made-to-measure suit. Financial considerations aside, the article suggests that interested and well-informed male consumers generally preferred to buy bespoke suits : while usually more expensive than their ready-made counterparts, these were also perceived to be better quality, better looking, and better value, and therefore most likely to enhance the wearer's sense of self-worth as a manly, discerning and successful consumer. (Ingenta)

The spectre of Stalinism continues to haunt radicals across the world. If revolutions inevitably lead to tyranny, how can the anti-capitalist movement develop a vision for a better world. This timely book reexamines the rise and fall of the Russian revolution, as well as the destructive consequences of market capitalism since the collapse of the Soviet Union, in the context of a buoyant anti-capitalist movement. (Amazon)

"Reinventing Gender" focuses on the consequences of post-communist transformation for women in eastern Germany and evaluates their responses. In the GDR era, women were required to take on employment while the state provided child care and financial incentives for mothers. Since the duty to work applied to men as well as women, women did not perceive their situation as disadvantaged or gender as a barrier to their socio-economic participation. Gender was not linked with inequality and there was no feminist discourse, although the hidden reality was that women's issues lagged behind those of men. In the post-communist era gender emerged as a new divide. While the politicians had expected that eastern German women would focus on their families, they confounded policy-makers by refusing to regard homemaking as an acceptable lifestyle. However, since unification women have had fewer employment opportunities and lower job security. Gender has been reinvented in two ways: a sense of injustice among women and their bid for labour market inclusion, and the experience of unfamiliar barriers to employment on the grounds of gender. In recasting their biographies by postponing marriage and childbirth and developing new strategies of risk management to retain their place in the newly competitive labour market, women are trying to avoid the pitfalls of gender and take advantage of the opportunities in the post-communist setting.

Research on late nineteenth and early twentieth century German society has concentrated overwhelmingly on life in the cities. By contrast, and despite the fact that almost one third of Germans were still working in agriculture as late as 1914, Germany's rural society remains relatively unexplored. Although historians have begun to correct this imbalance, very few full-length studies of social relations east of the Elba in this period have been published. This book concentrates on social relations in the 1,500 estate villages (Gutsdörfer) of Mecklenburg-Schwerin and Mecklenburg-Strelitz. 'Social relations' include the chains of command and obedience, the relative legal positions of owner and workers, contractual-relations, economic relations; the mutual economic dependency of estate owners and workforce, as well as the value systems of owners and labourers which informed these relationships. With its focus on both rural elites and workers, this study differs from much other work on rural Germany. For while a number of historians have examined the rural elites, few have chosen to investigate the lower strata of rural society. This book makes use of overlooked autobiographical accounts, statements given by workers at labour exchanges and before military authorities, as well as confiscated letters, jokes and anecdotes to provide greater insight into the perspective of rural workers. (Ashgate Publishing)

Most homes in the past were not elite, wealthy interiors complete with high fashion furnishings, designed by well-known architects and designers, as many domestic histories often seem to have assumed. As this book makes clear, there were in fact an enormous variety of house interiors in England during the period 1750–1850, reflecting the location, status and gender of particular householders, as well as their changing attitudes, tastes and aspirations. By focusing on non-metropolitan homes, which represented the majority of households in England, this study highlights the need for historians to look beyond prevailing attitudes that often reduce interiors to generic descriptions based on high fashions of the decorative arts. Instead it shows how numerous social and cultural influences affected the manner in which homes were furnished and decorated. Issues such as the availability of goods, gender, regional taste, income, the second-hand market, changing notions of privacy and household hierarchies and print culture, could all have a significant impact on domestic furnishing. The study ends with a discussion of how domestic interiors of historic properties have been presented and displayed in modern times, highlighting how competing notions of the past can cloud as well as illuminate the issue. Combining cultural history and qualitative analysis of evidence, this book presents a new way of looking at 'ordinary' and 'provincial' homes that enriches our understanding of English domestic life of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. (Ashgate Publishing)