Outrage! hypocrisy, episcopacy, and homosexuality in 1990s England
July 2024
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Journal article
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Studies in Church History
The brief but bitter campaign to expose the hidden homosexuality of Anglican bishops in the
mid-1990s was framed as a contest about hypocrisy, with bishops – whether suspected of
homosexuality or not – condemned as hypocrites and the Church of England as hypocritical.
However, the activists behind this ‘outing’, and the media which covered the story with such
enthusiasm, were similarly attacked for hypocrisy. A neglected moment in recent
ecclesiastical history, it reveals the ongoing importance of hypocrisy in debates about the
nature of faith and the authority of the church. Still more, it sheds light on how contemporary
assumptions about authenticity both intensified the perceived importance of hypocrisy and
increased the chances of being accused of acting hypocritically.
FFR
The British Academy’s home at 10-11 Carlton House Terrace: a history
April 2024
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Journal article
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Journal of the British Academy
FFR
Bricks and Moolah: buildings, money, and the civic university’
July 2023
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Chapter
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UK higher education – policy, practice and debate during HEPI's first 20 years
An episcopal puzzle: George Richmond’s monument to Bishop Charles James Blomfield (1859–67)
August 2022
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Journal article
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Journal of Victorian Culture
FFR
Architecture, Faith, and Charlotte M. Yonge
January 2022
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Chapter
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Charlotte Mary Yonge
5005 Theology, 3601 Art History, Theory and Criticism, 50 Philosophy and Religious Studies, 36 Creative Arts and Writing
‘Shaping Material Reform: pressure groups in Great Britain and Ireland, 1780-1920’
January 2022
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Chapter
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The Dynamics of Religious Reform in Church, State and Society in Northern Europe, c. 1780-c.1920: vol. vi, material reform
The spaces and places of schooling: historical perspectives
November 2021
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Journal article
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Oxford Review of Education
FFR
‘A Church-Building Country’: places of worship, 1829-1929
January 2021
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Chapter
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Places of worship, 1829-1929
A Cultural History of Objects
December 2020
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Book
Class and classification: the London Word Blind Centre for Dyslexic children, 1962–1972
August 2020
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Journal article
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Oxford Review of Education
The Word Blind Centre for Dyslexic Children opened in London in 1963. It was not only the first clinic established in Britain specifically to cater for children diagnosed with dyslexia. It was also intended to provide compelling evidence that a condition called dyslexia actually existed. The results of this work were published in Sandhaya Naidoo’s path-breaking study, Specific Dyslexia, which did exactly what its promoters had hoped it would, drawing on in-depth studies of 196 children to argue that dyslexia was indeed a distinct ‘constitutional disorder’. Using the archives produced by Naidoo and other sources, my article offers the first-ever account of this pioneering enterprise, exploring the reasons the Centre was set up, the way it worked, and the consequences of its work. In particular, it focuses on the rationale for Naidoo’s report, which only dealt with the experiences of middle-class boys. This choice is highly revealing, illuminating attitudes to reading, to class and gender, and to the competition for authority amongst the professionals who sought to explore all these issues. An intriguing case study in its own right, this also sets the scene for many of the themes that follow in this Special Issue.
education, dyslexia, psychiatry, social class, psychology, FFR
The problem of dyslexia: historical perspectives
August 2020
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Journal article
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Oxford Review of Education
FFR
Ecclesiastical Gothic Revivalism
January 2020
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Chapter
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The Oxford Handbook of Victorian Medievalism
Learning from Redbrick: utopianism and the architectural legacy of the civic universities
January 2020
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Chapter
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Utopian Universities: a global history of the new campuses of the 1960s
Architecture and experience: Regimes of materiality in the nineteenth century
January 2019
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Chapter
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EXPERIENCING ARCHITECTURE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY: BUILDINGS AND SOCIETY IN THE MODERN AGE
Building Corpus Christi
January 2019
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Chapter
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Renaissance College: Corpus Christi College, Oxford, in Context,
1450–1600
Introducing Thomas Rickman
January 2019
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Journal article
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Studies in Victorian Architecture and Design
Somewhere to live: Why British students study away from home – and why it matters
January 2019
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Report
‘Architecture’
January 2019
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Chapter
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A Cultural History of Objects, Volume 5: Age of Industry (AD 1760-1900)
‘Old Corruption and New Horizons, 1714 – 1836’,
January 2019
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Chapter
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Westminster Abbey: a church in history
‘Private benefit, public finance? Student funding in late-twentieth-century Britain’
January 2019
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Chapter
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Welfare and Social Policy in Britain since 1880: essays in honour of Jose Harris
Buildings, landscapes, and regimes of materiality
November 2018
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Journal article
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Transactions of the Royal Historical Society
The phantasm of an university: imagining new landscapes in post-revolutionary Britain and Ireland
October 2018
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Journal article
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Baltic Journal of Art History
Charles Kelsall, University of Oxford, Trinity College Dublin, University of Edinburgh, University of Cambridge, enlightenment
‘The too clever by half people’ and parliament
July 2018
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Journal article
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Parliamentary History
The role of intellectuals in shaping pressure on parliament has often been neglected and still more frequently downplayed. Even intellectuals themselves have doubted their own political importance; hence Walter Bagehot's observation that ‘the too clever by half people, who live in Bohemia , ought to have no more influence in parliament, than they have in England, and they can scarcely have less’. This article considers what it is to be an intellectual in politics – and what political role intellectuals played in Victorian Britain. It concludes that intellectuals were crucial in helping to define the nature of parliament and of the political process, articulating an ideology which shaped the ways in which other groups put pressure on parliament.
Comteian positivists, parliament, Erskine May, royal commissions, intellectuals, British constitution, Jeremy Bentham, universities, Social Science Association (SSA), pressure groups, A.V. Dicey, Benthamism, Walter Bagehot
‘University Libraries’
January 2018
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Chapter
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Building for Special Collections
Which elite? Whose university? Britain’s civic university tradition and the importance of place
December 2017
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Journal article
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Scientia Danica: Series H. Humanistica 8
By any accepted measure, Britain’s universities have been the universities of an elite. But Britain did not have one elite; nor a single university system. In this essay, I attempt to go beyond a narrow focus on Oxford and Cambridge and to examine how the civic – or ‘redbrick’ – universities operated. They were, I argue, the product of a particular sort of social elite: the urban middle class of mid- to late-nineteenth century Britain. They thus reflect the fact of a divided social elite in Britain. Whilst Oxford and Cambridge were for the aristocracy, the Anglican, and the landed; the universities of the great industrial cities were intended to cater to a very different constituency. But – and this is worth stressing – it was an elite constituency nonetheless. For our purposes, this draws attention to the need for historians to recognize the existence of multiple, competing elites; and to explore what impact this has on their universities. Secondly, and still more importantly, these civic foundations foreground a theme all too often ignored in the history of universities: the importance of place. The story I set out is about geography just as much as it is history: about elites concentrated in and controlling different parts of the country and different cities, and producing different sorts of institution as a result.
place, redbrick
, geography,
university, Britain, elite, Oxbridge, students
Unlocking the Church The Lost Secrets of Victorian Sacred Space
October 2017
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Book
In Unlocking the Church, William Whyte explores a forgotten revolution in social and architectural history and in the history of the Church.
Architecture
June 2017
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Chapter
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The Oxford Handbook of Nineteenth-Century Christian Thought
This Handbook considers Christian thought in the long nineteenth century (from the French Revolution to the First World War), encompassing not only doctrine and theology, but also Christianity's mutual influence on literature and the arts, ...
Architecture, Building Designs, and Jericho
June 2017
|
Chapter
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History of Oxford University Press, 1970-2004
This fourth volume explores the press's modern history as an unsubsidized business with significant educational and cultural responsibilities, and how it maintained these through economic turbulence, political upheaval, and rapid ...
History
"The school of the wide street ... the advocates of the narrow road": the international town planning conference in London in 1910
January 2017
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Chapter
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Kult und Krise des grossen Plans im Stadtebau
‘The might-have-beens of architectural history: meritocracy, conservation, and the career of Malcolm Airs’
January 2017
|
Chapter
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Architect, Patron, and Craftsman in Tudor and Stuart England: essays for Malcolm Airs
Neo-Georgian: the other style in British twentieth-century university architecture?
May 2016
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Chapter
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Neo-Georgian Architecture 1880-1970: A Reappraisal
This publication investigates how, where, when and why the Neo-Georgian has been represented over the course of the last century. It assesses its impact as a broader cultural phenomenon through a consideration of its buildings, objects, institutions, and actors. It contends that this was not another dying gasp of Revivalism restricted to 1920s Britain but a complex assertion of national image and identity with its origins before and its influence extending beyond this 'lost' decade, well into the post-WWII period. Different ideologies have been attached to the Neo-Georgian at different times and places, particularly notions of home, nation, gender and class. The papers explore the construction, reception and historiography of 'the Georgian' throughout the late nineteenth and twentieth century - and most particularly its relationship to modernism - through discussion of a range of building types, planning (including the new concept of Civic Design) and design generally. The expansion of the public sector in the twentieth century saw Neo-Georgian embraced for a wide variety of buildings and sites. Re-interpretations and adaptations of the Georgian have been a constant theme over the past century and constitute a powerful and enduring strand in Anglophile culture across the globe. The papers consider interpretations of the Neo-Georgian not only in England but in places as diverse as New Zealand and America.
"The home of lost causeways": Oxford, experts, and the Motor Age
February 2016
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Chapter
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Resplendent Adventures with Britannia Personalities, Politics and Culture in Britain
Resplendent Adventures with Britannia is the latest addition to Wm Roger Louis’s stimulating and acclaimed series, Adventures with Britannia. It draws upon a distinguished array of writers and scholars―historians, political scientists, journalists, novelists, biographers and English literature specialists―to guide the reader through a fascinating labyrinth of British culture, history and politics. Together, they provide a unique insight into the pivotal themes―political, literary and cultural―which have shaped British state and society. The subjects covered include an assessment of Gordon at Khartoum by Richard Davenport-Hines, a new appraisal of Larkin by Joseph Epstein, an account of the Bloomsbury Group by Rosemary Hill and an analysis of the Tasmanian Genocide by Bernard Porter. Collectively, the chapters combine a rich mix of original ideas, historical and literary allusion, personality and anecdote, to provide an intellectual adventure into the mainsprings of modern British and international society.
History
Octavia Hill: the practice of sympathy and the art of housing
February 2016
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Chapter
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'Nobler Imaginings and Mightier Struggles': Octavia Hill, Social Activism and the Remaking of British Society
This volume reassesses the life and work of Octavia Hill, housing reformer, open space campaigner, co-founder of the National Trust, founder of the Army Cadet Force, and the first woman to be invited to sit on a royal commission.
History
'Some dreadful buildings in Southwark’: a tour of nineteenth-century social housing
February 2016
|
Chapter
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'Nobler Imaginings and Mightier Struggles': Octavia Hill, Social Activism and the Remaking of British Society
This volume reassesses the life and work of Octavia Hill, housing reformer, open space campaigner, co-founder of the National Trust, founder of the Army Cadet Force, and the first woman to be invited to sit on a royal commission.
History
The Ethics of the Empty Church: Anglicanism's Need for a Theology of Architecture
November 2015
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Journal article
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Journal of Anglican Studies
In this polemical paper, produced for the Churches, Communities, and Society conference at the Lincoln Theological Institute, University of Manchester, I argue that the Church of England has failed to develop a coherent or convincing theology of architecture. Such a failure raises practical problems for an institution responsible for the care of 16,000 buildings, a quarter of which are of national or international importance. But it has also, I contend, produced an impoverished understanding of architecture’s role as an instrument of mission and a tool for spiritual development. Following a historical survey of attitudes towards church buildings, this paper explores and criticizes the Church of England’s current engagement with its architecture. It raises questions about what has been done and what has been said about churches. It argues that the Church of England lacks a theology of church building and church closing, and calls for work to develop just such a thing.
architecture, Church of England, emotion, establishment, heritage, mission
Redbrick: A Social and Architectural History of Britain's Civic Universities
January 2015
|
Book
In the last two centuries Britain has experienced a revolution in higher education, with the number of students rising from a few hundred to several million. Yet the institutions that drove – and still drive – this change have been all but ignored by historians. Drawing on decade’s research, and based on work in dozens of archives, some of them used for the very first time, this is the first full-scale study of the civic universities for more than 50 years. Tracing their story from the 1780s until the 2010s, it is an ambitious attempt to write the Redbrick revolution back into history. This book argues that these institutions created a distinctive and influential conception of the university – something that was embodied in their architecture and in expressed in the lives of their students and staff. It was this model that would shape their successors founded in the twentieth century, ensuring that the normal university experience in Britain is a Redbrick one. Using a vast range of previously untapped sources, Redbrick is not just a new history, but a new sort of university history: one that seeks to rescue the social and architectural aspects of education from the disregard of previous scholars, and thus provide the richest possible account of university life.
Architecture
Scott’s office and its impact
December 2014
|
Chapter
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Sir George Gilbert Scott 1811-1878
George Gilbert Scott: an architect and his influence
January 2014
|
Edited book
The essays in this volume represent the substance of a weekend school held at Rewley House, Oxford, in May 2011 to mark the bicentenary of the birth of Sir George Gilbert Scott on 13 July 1811.
Intellectuals: The Antinomies of Sage Culture
November 2013
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Chapter
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The Victorian World
With an interdisciplinary approach that encompasses political history, the history of ideas, cultural history and art history, The Victorian World offers a sweeping survey of the world in the nineteenth century.
This volume offers a fresh evaluation of Britain and its global presence in the years from the 1830s to the 1900s. It brings together scholars from history, literary studies, art history, historical geography, historical sociology, criminology, economics and the history of law, to explore more than 40 themes central to an understanding of the nature of Victorian society and culture, both in Britain and in the rest of the world. Organised around six core themes – the world order, economy and society, politics, knowledge and belief, and culture – The Victorian World offers thematic essays that consider the interplay of domestic and global dynamics in the formation of Victorian orthodoxies. A further section on ‘Varieties of Victorianism’ offers considerations of the production and reproduction of external versions of Victorian culture, in India, Africa, the United States, the settler colonies and Latin America. These thematic essays are supplemented by a substantial introductory essay, which offers a challenging alternative to traditional interpretations of the chronology and periodisation of the Victorian years.
Lavishly illustrated, vivid and accessible, this volume is invaluable reading for all students and scholars of the nineteenth century.
History
Architecture, Building Designs, and Jericho
November 2013
|
Chapter
|
The History of Oxford University Press: Volume III: 1896 to 1970
The architecture of the Press's many homes, from the Sheldonian Theatre to the Clarendon Building to Walton Street and from Amen Corner to Ely House, has achieved great praise, but the Press frequently found its accommodation inadequate for a thriving printing and publishing business. As a result, OUP buildings, particularly in the twentieth century, were subject to frequent removal, rebuilding, expansion, and extension. By the 1970s OUP had erected new structures in Oxford, London, and across the world, and adapted historic buildings to modern use. All were intended to express the Press's identity, to symbolize its cultural and economic significance in bricks and mortar. This chapter discusses Walton Street's architecture and collegiate quadrangle, assesses its functionality as a centre of book production, and grounds it in the surrounding area of Jericho. The design and significance of the London and New York offices and of the international branches is also considered.
The History of Oxford University Press: Volume III
November 2013
|
Chapter
The Press in London, 1896–1970
November 2013
|
Chapter
|
The History of Oxford University Press: Volume III: 1896 to 1970
The London business developed out of the Bible Warehouse established to distribute Oxford Bibles, prayer books and, increasingly, academic and educational titles through London book distribution systems. Under the leadership of Henry Frowde and Humphrey Milford, the London business expanded its own publishing list significantly, acquiring the Worlds' Classics and Home University Library series, becoming the distributor for a great number of American university presses, and instigating the publishing of children's books, medical textbooks, music, and schoolbooks for English language teaching. The London business managed the promotion and distribution of Press books within the UK from Amen Corner and later from a purpose-built warehouse in Neasden, and throughout the world from a growing network of international branches. The chapter considers the impact of two world wars, changes in the London book trade, and computerization upon the London business, and assesses the growing tension between London and Oxford in the 1960s.
Ghent Planning Congress 1913: Premier Congrès International Et Exposition Comparée Des Villes
August 2013
|
Book
The Ghent congress on town planning was the first genuinely international conference to address all aspects of civic life and design. Attended by representatives of 22 governments and 150 cities, as well as by hundreds of architects, planners, politicians, and scientists, it marked the culmination of a series of events which helped to form the world of town planning at the start of the twentieth century.
Ghent illustrates three key themes for the history of town planning. First, the transactions of the congress include papers from some of the most significant theorists and practitioners of the period, such as Patrick Abercrombie, Augustin Rey, Raymond Unwin, and Joseph Stübben.
Secondly, the congress as a whole reflects just how global the business of town planning had become by 1913: papers and exhibits included studies of colonial projects as well as European designs. The delegates themselves provide wonderful evidence of a transnational process at work.
Finally, the text brilliantly illuminates the way in which town planning was critically linked to other reformist movements of the era. The whole event, like the International Union of Cities that it spawned, was the product of the peace movement. Even as war draw nearer, the International Union was being spoken of as a future world government. Significantly, one of the organisers of the event – Henri La Fontaine - won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1913.
The Premier Congrès international et exposition comparée des villes is a major publication, but it is one that is now almost impossible to obtain. This republication, a century after this seminal event, will be considerable interest not only to those who work on town-planning, but also transnational historians and writers on the peace movement more generally.
Architecture
Halls of Residence at the British Civic Universities, 1870-1970
June 2013
|
Chapter
|
Residential Institutions in Britain, 1725–1970: Inmates and Environments
‘An Essential Part of the Best Kind of University Training’
In 1943, a pseudonymous author calling himself Bruce Truscot published a critique of modern higher education. Entitled Red Brick University, it had an explosive effect on its readers and still influences the terms of debate today. Truscot wrote as an insider – he was actually Edgar Allison Peers, a distinguished professor of Spanish at Liverpool University – and he offered a devastating assessment of what he encountered in his day-to-day work there. He described the other Redbrick professors, exposing them as both underpaid and underworked. He condemned the physical fabric of the modern university, outlining buildings of ‘a hideously cheerful red-brick suggestive of something between a super council-school and a holiday home for children’. And he went on to contrast the student experience at Redbrick with the undergraduate life of Oxford and Cambridge. For Bill Jones of Drabtown – Truscot's archetypical Redbrick student – he had only pity to offer:
Poor Bill Jones! No Hall and Chapel and oak-sporting for him; no invitations to breakfast at the Master's Lodging; no hilarious bump suppers or moonlight strolls in romantic quadrangles; no all-night sittings with a congenial group round his own – his very own – fireplace. No: Bill goes off five mornings a week to Redbrick University exactly as he went to Back Street Council School and Drabtown Municipal Secondary School for Boys – and he goes on his bicycle, to save the two-penny tramfare.
Medical
The Transactions of the Royal Institute of British Architects Town Planning Conference, London, 10-15 October 1910
May 2013
|
Book
Long out of print and very difficult to obtain, this new facsimile edition of the Transactions of the 1910 Conference now makes available – for planners and historians alike – this valuable primary resource.
Architecture
Architectural History After Colvin: The Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain Symposium, 2011
January 2013
|
Book
As well as being a history tutor at St John's for more than fifty years, Howard Colvin was one of the most important historians of the twentieth century.
Architectural historians
"A pastiche or a packing case": Building in Twentieth-Century Oxford and Cambridge
January 2013
|
Journal article
|
Twentieth Century Architecture
‘The success of Sir Howard Colvin and the curious failure of architectural history’
January 2013
|
Chapter
|
Architectural History after Colvin
The 1910 Royal Institute of British Architects' Conference: a focus for international town planning?
February 2012
|
Journal article
|
Urban History
The 1910 International Town Planning Conference is rightly seen as a major moment in the development of modern urban design. It drew together more than 1,000 architects and planners from across the world. At first sight, the conference consequently appears to provide further evidence for the importance of transnational town planning networks in this period. This article, by contrast, highlights the domestic agendas which underwrote the event. It shows that the conference was considerably less successful and less international than has previously been argued. It thus stresses the limitations of the town planning movement: underscoring the continued importance of national differences and national debates.
THE ANTINOMIES OF SAGE CULTURE
January 2012
|
Chapter
|
VICTORIAN WORLD
Sacred Space As Sacred Text: Church And Chapel Architecture In Victorian Britain
November 2011
|
Chapter
|
Sacred Text -- Sacred Space
The Established Church: Past, Present and Future
July 2011
|
Book
This book offers a definitive account of the recent history and theology of the establishment of the Church of England. Written in an accessible style and at the same time rooted in serious scholarship, it offers a range of views and opinions as well as an awareness of contemporary political and social problems. It asks a number of penetrating questions, including the key issue of the extent to which churches, and particularly the Church of England, can be protected from equality legislation, while at the same time expecting to have special political and social privileges. This issue relates to the thorny problems of the reform of the House of Lords, and even to the future of the Monarchy. While there is no effort to impose a particular agenda or solution, the book is nevertheless often provocative and suggests a number of ways forward for establishment. It is intended as a lively contribution to an often-overlooked debate, which has nevertheless become increasingly important in the multi-cultural context of contemporary Britain.
Business & Economics
Classes, Cultures, and Politics: Essays on British History for Ross McKibbin
May 2011
|
Book
This book investigates those fields in British history that have been illustrated by the works of Ross McKibbin, one of the foremost historians of twentieth-century Britain. The book examines McKibbin's life and thought, and explores the implications of his arguments. One of his most important achievements has been to break down the artificial barriers that existed between ‘social’ and ‘political’ history, in order to enrich the writing of both; that legacy is reflected throughout this book. From international football to Liberal internationalism, from the hedonism of the early Labour party to the relationship between London cabbies and Thatcherism, this book attempts to explore contemporary Britain, endeavouring to be as original, sincere, rebarbative, and diverting as the historian whose work has inspired it.
History
Nationalism and the Reshaping of Urban Communities in Europe, 1848-1914
May 2011
|
Book
This book brings together a distinguished group of historians to explore the previously neglected relationship between nationalism and urban history. It reveals the contrasting experiences of nationalism in different societies and milieus. It will help historians to reassess the role of nationalism both inside and outside the nation state.
History
Transactions of the 1910 RIBA Town Planning Conference
January 2011
|
Book
‘Building the Nation in the Town: Architecture and National Identity in Urban Britain, 1848-1914’
January 2011
|
Chapter
|
Nationalism and the Reshaping of Urban Communities in Europe
‘Just William? Richmal Crompton and Conservative fiction’
January 2011
|
Chapter
|
Cultures, Classes, and Politics: essays on British history for Ross mcKibbin
Literary Criticism
‘What future for Establishment?’
January 2011
|
Chapter
|
The Established Church: past, present, and future
Restoration and Recrimination: the Temple Church in the nineteenth century
November 2010
|
Chapter
|
The Temple Church in London: History, Architecture, Art
First full-length survey of the Temple Church, from its foundation in the twelfth century to the Second World War.
Founded as the main church of the Knights Templar in England, at their New Temple in London, the Temple Church is historically and architecturally one of the most important medieval buildings in England. Its round nave, modelled on the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, is extraordinarily ambitious, combining lavish Romanesque sculpture with some of the earliest Gothic architectural features in any English building of its period. It holds one of the most famous series of medieval effigies in the country. The luminous thirteenth-century choir, intended for the burial of Henry III, is of exceptional beauty. Major developments in the post-medieval period include the reordering of the church in the 1680s by Sir Christopher Wren, and a substantial restoration programme in the early 1840s.
Despite its extraordinary importance, however, it has until now attracted little scholarly or critical attention, a gap which is remedied by this volume. It considers the New Temple as a whole in the middle ages, and all aspects of the church itself from its foundation in the twelfth century to its war-time damage in the twentieth. Richly illustrated with numerous black and white and colour plates, it makes full use of the exceptional range and quality of the antiquarian material available for study, including drawings, photographs, and plaster casts.
History
Established Churches
February 2010
|
Edited book
Two contradictory Protestant truths. Nature of church establishment in England and Scotland. Its non-existence in Wales and Northern Ireland. A confused archbishop. Prevalence of religious belief in the United Kingdom since 1851. Religion and social policy: variation in social attitudes between religious and non-religious people in the United Kingdom. Withdrawal of Prime Minister from appointing bishops 2007: de facto disestablishment? Whether religious representatives have a role in a democratic parliament. Religious pluralism and charitable regulation. The theology of Calvinism from Andrew Melvill to the Percy case. Status of the Church of Scotland Act 1921.
Modernism, Modernization and Europeanization in West African Architecture, 1944–94
January 2010
|
Chapter
|
Europeanization in the Twentieth Century
33 Built Environment and Design, 3601 Art History, Theory and Criticism, 3301 Architecture, 36 Creative Arts and Writing
Modernism, Modernization and Europeanization in West African Architecture, 1944–94
January 2010
|
Chapter
|
Europeanization in the Twentieth Century
The Englishness of English Architecture: Modernism and the Making of a National International Style, 1927-1957
April 2009
|
Journal article
|
Journal of British Studies
Toward the end of 1955, the architectural historian and critic Nikolaus
Pevsner gave the annual Reith Lectures on BBC radio. “The Englishness
of English Art” argued that there was a characteristically English approach
to architecture, one that placed a premium on rationality and reasonableness rather
than on mere decorative show. It was this approach that made him so optimistic
about the future of English architecture, for it suggested, Pevsner concluded, that
“England seems predestined to play a leading part in modern architecture.”1
Pevsner’s lectures were just the latest in a long debate about Englishness and its
relationship to the modern movement in architecture, perhaps even the last gasp of
an argument that went back three decades.2 The arrival of modernism in England
had been firmly resisted by those who saw it as a foreign invasion. By contrast, those
like Pevsner, who advocated the adoption of the modern movement, made a concerted
attempt to establish its English identity. They sought to show that modernism
and Englishness were entirely compatible. More than this, they came to argue that
modernism was in fact indigenous to England. In Charles Jencks’s terms, they created
a myth of English modernism: one that was to prove highly persuasive and hugely important. It was this myth that not only helped enable the acceptance of modernism
in England but also shaped architecture itself. It was this myth, too, that reshaped
architectural historiography and helped to inspire the preservation movement. Perhaps
most important, it was this myth that allowed many to reimagine Englishness
itself and, in the years between 1927 and 1957, come to articulate a modern and
modernist version of England.
The Modernist Moment at the University of Leeds, 1957-1977
March 2008
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Journal article
|
Historical Journal
Between 1957 and 1977 the University of Leeds engaged in a massive programme of rebuilding. Employing the architects Chamberlin, Powell, and Bon, Leeds transformed itself – becoming, in the words of one commentator, ‘Our first contemporary urban university’. Previously ignored by historians, this development in the history of the university illustrates a number of important themes. In the first place, it exemplifies the significance of architecture in defining higher education. Secondly – and more particularly – it shows how both academics and architects hoped to use Brutalist architecture to express the modernity of the University of Leeds. Thus the decision to employ avant-garde designers in the late 1950s and the resolution to dismiss them twenty years later both came from the same modernizing impulse. Thirdly, it shows how personal connection secured architectural patronage in this period. The Development Plan also highlights the way in which architects of the British modern movement used universities as laboratories in which to experiment with ideas about community and proper urban design. The modernist moment at Leeds, then, can be seen as representative of wider trends in British building, not least because it lasted for such a short period of time.
Redefining Christian Britain Post-1945 Perspectives
June 2007
|
Book
"Redefining Christian Britain" brings together distinguished writers from a number of fields - history, sociology, theology - to reassess the role of Christianity in Britain. This is an area that has been of increasing public debate and interest in recent years, but the debate has followed rather predictable grooves. This book seeks to do something different, by looking at the impact of Christianity over a wide range of areas of national life - religion and the media, religious art, religion in literature, religion in schools, religion and economics and so on. The book has been born out of a frustration at existing writing on religious change in Britain, which has tended to over-concentrate on church attendance figures, rather than look at the more diffuse and dynamic influence of religion on public and private life. "Redefining Christian Britain" will open up new areas of inquiry including religious architecture, church music, debates on sexuality and women's ordination, public rituals like royal weddings, the 'sacred' memory of World War II, multicultural education, and the role of Christian narrative in children's literature. Many of these topics are areas of current debate in the media. Some have been the subject of specific academic studies. But no book, until now, has attempted to bring them all together. The book is organised around three themes: authenticity, generation and virtue. These themes offer a distinct and original conceptual framework within which to address the study of modern Christianity.
History
Oxford Jackson: Architecture, Education, Status, and Style 1835-1924
August 2006
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Book
In the late nineteenth century one man changed Oxford forever. T. G. Jackson built the Examination Schools, the Bridge of Sighs, worked at a dozen colleges, and restored a score of other Oxford icons. He also built for many of the major public schools, for the University of Cambridge, and at the Inns of Court. A friend of William Morris, he was a pioneering member of the arts and crafts moment. A distinguished historian, he also restored dozens of houses and churches
- and ensured the survival of Winchester Cathedral. As an architectural theorist he was a leader of the generation that rejected the Gothic Revival and sought to develop a new and modern style of building.
Drawing on extensive archival work, and illustrated with a hundred images, this is the first in-depth analysis of Jackson's career ever written. It sheds light on a little-known architect and reveals that his buildings, his books, and his work as an arts and craftsman were not just important in their own right, they were also part of a wider social change. Jackson was the architect of choice for a particular group of people, for the 'intellectual aristocracy' of late Victorian England. His
buildings were a means by which they could articulate their identity and demonstrate their distinctiveness. They reformed the universities and the schools whilst he refashioned their image.
Essential reading for anyone interested in Victorian architecture and nineteenth-century society, this book will also be of interest to all those who know and love Oxford or Cambridge.
History
"Redbrick's Unlovely Quadrangles": Reinterpreting the Architecture of the Civic Universities
May 2006
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Chapter
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History of Universities XXI/1
How do Buildings Mean? Some Issues of Interpretation in the History of Architecture
May 2006
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Journal article
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History and Theory: studies in the philosophy of history
Despite growing interest from historians in the built environment, the use of architecture as evidence remains remarkably under-theorized. Where this issue has been discussed, the interpretation of buildings has often been likened to the process of reading, in which architecture can be understood by analogy to language: either as a code capable of use in communicating the architect's intentions or more literally as a spoken or written language in its own right. After a historiographical survey, this essay, by contrast, proposes that the appropriate metaphor is one of translation. More particularly, it draws on the work of Mikhail Bakhtin to suggest that architecture—and the interpretation of architecture— comprises a series of transpositions. As a building is planned, built, inhabited, and interpreted, so its meaning changes. The underlying logic of each medium shapes the way in which its message is created and understood. This suggests that the proper role of the historian is to trace these transpositions. Buildings, then, can be used as a historical source, but only if the historian takes account of the particular problems that they present. In short, architecture should not be studied for its meaning, but for its meanings. As historians we are always translating architecture: not reading its message, but exploring its multiple transpositions.
In 1984 Hertford celebrated seven hundred years as an Oxford College. Such a monumental event deserved commemoration, and was marked despite the fact that Hertford was actually founded in 1874. This celebration was not the product of deceit or ignorance — merely creative accountancy. Although nominally a Victorian foundation, the college can claim an admittedly erratic descent from the original Hart Hall, which dates from around 1284. Over the years, it was associated with other academic halls; absorbed by Exeter College; refounded — briefly — as Hertford College; replaced by Magdalen Hall; and then, in 1874, it took the form we know today. This confusion of origins is reflected in the college's fabric. As Hertford's first historian put it, ‘Since its establishment the history of the College has been written largely in its buildings.' Above all, this means T. G. Jackson's work: his ‘Bridge of Sighs', his staircase — the ‘bastard child of Blois’ as Pevsner puts it, his chapel, hall, and accommodation blocks. All share a common free classicism. But, as a series of neglected, ignored, and previously undiscovered drawings reveal, this classicism was not set in stone from the start. There were near-Gothic alternatives too. This variant Hertford was not included in Sir Howard Colvin's Unbuilt Oxford, and it deserves further research. It gives an insight into T. G. Jackson's ways of working. It offers a vision of a wholly different Hertford. Above all, it reveals a truly Victorian dilemma: the. response of historicists to their historical context; the search for an appropriate style.
"Rooms for the torture and shame of scholars": the New Examination Schools and the architecture of reform
January 2001
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Journal article
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Oxoniensia
Which elite? Whose university? Britain’s civic university tradition and the importance of place