How to use this Page

Following the announcement of the so-called “Brexit” referendum on 20 February 2016 journalists and bloggers have discussed the “ins” and “outs” of EU membership, focusing on the arguments for and against, on interpreting the polls, and on reflecting on the success of the Leave and Remain camps during the first weeks of the pre-campaign period.

The post How much of a threat does the “Brexit” referendum pose for the European Union? appeared first on OUPblog.

Mysteries and London go together like tea and cake or jeans and Converse. Although not all of my favourite English mysteries take place in London, many do. Here are three (okay, maybe a few more than just three) of my top mystery novels set in London.

The light in the Orkneys is so clear, so bright, so lucid, it feels like you are on top of the world looking though thin clouds into heaven.

It doesn’t even feel part of the UK: when you sail off the edge of Scotland by the Scrabster to Stromness ferry, you feel you are departing the real world to land in a magical realm.

Nowhere else on earth can you go to a place and see eight thousand years of continuous history in such a tiny space.

Skara Brae is what remains of a neolithic village, older than Stonehenge and the pyramids, kept secret underground until uncovered by a severe storm in 1850. You can walk in and sit down, look around at the stone walls, stone beds, stone cupboards, dressers, seats, and storage boxes. Recognizably human people lived here, seeing this same landscape and coast, feeling the same wind on their faces that you do, their eyes resting on the doors, hearths and toilets (one in each dwelling).

This is ‘stone age’ but talking about such ages is a misnomer in the Orkneys where they had no appreciable bronze age nor iron age so proceeded from the non-use of one metal to the non-use of another in what is now the best preserved neolithic site in Europe.

The Orkneys have been so fascinating for so long that even the vandalism needs to be preserved. In Maeshowe burial mound you can see where Viking tourists who came to the monument, already ancient by their time, wrote graffiti about their girlfriends on the walls. They wrote in Norse runes.

The Orkney islands were the headquarters of the Viking invasion fleets, and to this day the Orkneys are the only place in the world besides Norway where the Norwegian national day is celebrated.

The islands are filled with Tolkeinesque place names like the Ring of Brodgar, the Brough of Birsay, the Standing Stones of Stenness. Sagas were born here, like that of the peaceable 12th century Earl of Orkney, treacherously assassinated and now known as St Magnus, after whom the cathedral is named.

Sagas were created here in living memory. This is where the British home fleet was at anchor and the German fleet still lies. The battle fleet of the German Imperial Navy transferred in its entirety to Scapa Flow in 1919 to await a decision on its future. The German sailors could not bring themselves to give up their ships; they opened the seacocks and scuttled them all. At low tide you can still see the rusting hulks of Wilhelmine ambitions to dominate Europe.

If the Orkneys sound bleak and rocky, that would be the wrong impression to leave. They have rich and fertile farming land with green plains rolling on under a pearl sky. People tell folk tales around the peat fires, drinking ginger-flavoured whiskey; an orange cat pads around the grain heaps in the Highland Park distillery, and the islands shimmer under the ‘simmer dim’ of nightless summer days. I should be there now.

Headline image credit: Stromness, Orkney Islands by Geoff Wong. CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

The post Magical Scotland: the Orkneys appeared first on OUPblog.

        

Related Stories

• Scottish OUP staff reflect on Scotland as Place of the Year 2014
• An excerpt from Scotland: A Very Short Introduction
• Scotland is a different place now

 

While each couple believes their wedding to be unique, they are in fact building on centuries of social traditions, often reflecting their region and culture. Throughout England, Scotland, and Wales, these celebrations served not only the families but their communities. We sat down with Rab Houston, author of Bride Ales and Penny Weddings: Recreations, Reciprocity, and Regions in Britain from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Centuries, to discuss the creation of modern marriage ceremonies.

How did you encounter this subject?

When I first started my career as an historian, I came across Scottish penny weddings in my documents. Lively, open events where guests paid for their own entertainment and gave money to the couple, they evoked a strong sense of community. That provoked my curiosity and they have been in the back of my mind ever since. Then, when researching my last book, I found similar sorts of marriage celebration in both Wales and the north of England. That made me even more curious, because the parts of Britain that shared these ‘contributory weddings’ were so very different in other ways. Then it dawned on me that the north and west of Britain had many social and cultural characteristics in common, like a sense of egalitarianism and trust, which went beyond conventional territorial boundaries and which made them very different from the south and east of England. I wanted to understand regional variations in social values.

So you believe that an understanding of our history and culture is crucial to a sense of identity?

It is absolutely vital. To be alive is to be touched by history. However much we think we live in the present and hope for a better future, we are our memories and our history. Knowing where we come from and why we are the way we are gives us identity. But understanding ourselves in both time and space also makes us better at dealing with the profound changes that are affecting Britain now.

What are the implications for the current debate on regional devolution and even Scottish independence?

National frontiers are important in many ways, but they often draw arbitrary lines, which meant little to people in the past and may be exaggerated for us. I think the people of north and west Britain always have had different social priorities from those in the south and east. To me this is the fundamental division within Britain: not any political dividing line between Scotland and England.

Illustrated Penny Tales. From the “Strand” Library. no. 1-10″ Shelfmark: “British Library HMNTS 12623.k.24.” via British Library Flickr

How has the view of marriage and the marriage ceremony changed?

The point about a penny wedding is that the marriage ceremony itself was much less important than the social rituals surrounding it. Bridals celebrated the union and welcomed the couple into their new life. The couple’s relationship with each other and with their family and friends is also what matters most to men and women now.

This is all a bit serious: surely weddings are just about having fun?

Of course! Penny weddings and their English and Welsh equivalents were occasions of hospitality, sociability, and reciprocity. Relatives, friends, and neighbours all attended, showing their approval of the couple and helping to establish them in life. Bride ales and penny weddings were about husband and wife, but they also say something very important about the desire to create a sense and a practice of community. They may have much to tell us about some of the best things that we once enjoyed, in a world we have now largely lost.

Could we recreate that in the modern world?

I don’t see why not. Penny weddings are still held in the west of Scotland and other forms of communal sociability that express civic identity and a desire for self-help remain part of life in Cumbria and Wales. People can recreate this type of celebration for themselves, enriching their own lives and those of the communities in which they live and work.

Robert Allan Houston is the author of Bride Ales and Penny Weddings: Recreations, Reciprocity, and Regions in Britain from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Centuries. He has worked at the University of St Andrews since 1983 and is Professor of Early Modern History, specialising in British social history. He is a fellow of both the Royal Historical Society and the Royal Society of Edinburgh (Scotland’s national academy), and a member of the Academia Europaea. He is also the author of Scotland: A Very Short Introduction.

Subscribe to the OUPblog via email or RSS.
Subscribe to only British history articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS.

The post Rab Houston on bride ales and penny weddings appeared first on OUPblog.

        

Related Stories

• The Normans and empire
• Gloomy terrors or the most intense pleasure?
• Celebrating Women’s History Month

 

By Lauren Pecorino

There is a tendency to complain about policies when writing blogs, but I think it is time to commend the British campaigns and innovations in treatment. They have proven to be some of the best in the world and have had a major impact in the fight against cancer.

One of the best British campaigns is against cervical cancer. Getting personally posted invitations to attend your next PAP screening, supported by pamphlets of information, is something few women ignore. Those who try to ignore these invitations are rightly and relentlessly bombarded with regular reminders.

And, with the knowledge that a sexually transmitted virus, Human Papilloma Virus (HPV), is responsible for all cases of cervical cancer, the UK implemented a national school-based HPV vaccination programme that has proven to yield high uptake. By 2009, 70 percent of 12-13 year olds in the UK were fully vaccinated. These results are admirable compared to the results of alternative on-demand provisions offered by other countries including the USA. Note that the vaccine is recommended for early teens as it is a preventative vaccine and not a therapeutic vaccine, and must be administered before the initiation of sexual activity for it to be effective. The vaccine prevents about 70% of cervical cancers caused by two specific strains of HPV. PAP screening is still important to catch cases that are not prevented by the vaccine. An added bonus of this campaign is that the same vaccine also protects against some head, neck, and anal cancers caused by HPV infections.

Another great British effort is towards the prevention of lung cancer. The anti-smoking adverts have been haunting, especially the most recent one released by the UK Department of Health that shows a tumor growing on a cigarette. It is brilliant. I wish I had designed it. The advert strikingly conveys the message that if you saw the damage smoking causes, you would not smoke. The percentage of male cigarette smokers have fallen from 55% in 1970 to 21% in 2010 and a decreasing number of deaths due to lung cancer has followed this trend.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The UK is also a model of good practice in that it is the only country in the world which has a network of free ‘stop-smoking’ services, recently supported by specialized training for National Health Service Stop Smoking practitioners.

We can help the national campaign at a personal level by being more opinionated and outspoken when it comes to letting those around us know that smoking is harmful and “uncool”- especially among the young. We must ensure the message is passed down to new generations.

Finally, the UK is at the leading edge in using stem cells to help replace organs damaged by cancer. Tracheal transplants using tracheal scaffolds from cadavers seeded with the patient’s own stem cells have been used to replace damaged tissue for patients with tracheal cancer. Currently scientists at University College London are developing very similar procedures to grow a new nose for a patient who had lost their nose to cancer. These innovative approaches are the result of a continuously open, well-supported but regulated stem cell research policy, not yet seen in the USA.

Well done Great Britain!

Lauren Pecorino received her PhD from the State University of New York at Stony Brook in Cell and Developmental Biology. She crossed the Atlantic to carry out a postdoctoral tenure at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, London. She is a Principal Lecturer at the University of Greenwich where teaches Cancer Biology and Therapeutics. The teaching of this course motivated her to write The Molecular Biology of Cancer: Mechanisms, Targets, and Therapeutics, now in its second edition. Feedback on the textbook posted on Amazon from a cancer patient drove her to write a book on cancer for a wider audience: Why Millions Survive Cancer: the Successes of Science.

Read a World Cancer Day Q&A with Lauren Pecorino.
Subscribe to the OUPblog via email or RSS.
Subscribe to only health and medicine articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS.

The post World Cancer Day 2013: The Best of British appeared first on OUPblog.

London's greatest modern chronicler-poet takes on the propaganda parade of the London Olympics. Books mentioned in this post $22.00 Used Hardcover add to wish list Ghost Milk: Recent Adventures Among the Future Ruins of London on the Eve of the Olympics Iain SinclairIain Sinclair 9780865478664

Tweet

by Laura Sneddon

The Dandy, a UK comic for children, is one of the oldest comics in the world, first appearing way back in 1937. Along with its sister publication at DC Thomson, The Beano, these comics are pretty much the main reason why the entire population of Britain knows how to read a comic, even if they never make the jump later to more adult fare. Earlier this year, there was a huge amount of press attention given to The Dandy, as it emerged that poor sales were leading to the publication ending its historical run.

But fear not cow pie fans! For The Dandy, that pioneer of British comics, was simply reinventing itself for the demands of its young readership. This week The Dandy Online has launched, bringing favourite characters including Desperate Dan, Bananaman, The Numskulls, Brassneck, and an all new team of classic British superheroes, Retro Active, to its fans.

Everything has been based around portability, with a dedicated app set to launch as soon as possible. Each comic has been created with screen size in mind, and the animation – when used – mimics the reading of a comics page. Pacing is set by the reader, with each panel finishing on the text, much as a reader would find when reading a conventional comic.

Some of the comics include little minigames that advance the plot, but equally are skippable if you don’t fancy them (or are re-reading). The website contains more content including puzzles and shorter comic strips, along with videos and projects to print out and make.

Issue Zero is free to read, and while there are obviously some niggles to iron out, I’ve had a peek behind the scenes (crikey!) and can confirm that there are some very exciting things coming up! Make sure to check out Jamie Smart‘s The Numskulls in particular, a clever reinvention of the characters I knew as a child, and keep an eye on Retro Active which is particularly interesting for old school fans – and fans of female superheroes!

I’m really looking forward to seeing the app come out for my phone, and as I’ve talked about elsewhere, I think the growing audience of children reading comics in the UK will be really into this once it is up and running in full. It’s wonderful to see one of the oldest comics in the world leading the charge into a new frontier rather than fading away, keeping the spirit of The Dandy alive but bringing it to where the audience now resides. Exciting things are afoot!

By Bianca Schulze, The Children’s Book Review
Published: February 7, 2012

A Boy Called Dickens

By Deborah Hopkinson; Illustrated by John Hendrix

Reading level: Ages 4-9

Hardcover: 40 pages

Publisher: Schwartz & Wade (January 10, 2012)

Source: Publisher

What to expect: Charles Dickens, London—19th Century, Fiction

In honor of the 200th anniversary of Charles Dickens’ birth—February 7—Random House Children’s Books has published A Boy Called Dickens by Deborah Hopkinson, illustrated by John Hendrix.

Deborah Hopkinson has created an incisive and thought provoking picture book that introduces children to one of the greatest and most treasured writers of all time. Although it is fiction, Hopkinson has based the story on real moments from Dickens’ life. The captivating illustrations created by John Hendrix add mystique to the text. Graphite and pen-and-ink provide the gloominess and dinginess of old London, while fluid acrylics add personality to the people and rosiness to their cheeks—the time period in history is captured well.

Illustration copyright © 2012 by John Hendrix

Growing up extremely poor, Dickens had four things going for him: a pencil, a slate, a love of books and a dream to write stories of his own. Even though times were very tough and the young, hungry, penniless Charles Dickens had to work in a rat-infested blacking factory, he still managed to hold onto his dream. It is this theme that makes the story not only interesting, but empowering to young readers. A Boy Called Dickens is a Junior Library Guild selection—if you’re looking for a little slice of history a la mode, you’ll find this book to be delicious.

Add this book to your collection: A Boy Called Dickens

©2012 The Childrens Book Review. All Rights Reserved.