The very recent past has seen an upswing of scholarly interest not so much in the Internet and Web themselves but in the terms in which they have been discussed and understood. This article examines a remarkable effusion of writing in the 1990s that addressed the spiritual and ethical implications of “cyberspace”. Christian critics reacted in dif…[Read more]

An account of the commissioning and building of Guildford cathedral, placing it in its religious and artistic context. The article also includes a description of the art and architecture of the building, both interior and exterior.

Preface to Guy Beiner, Forgetful Remembrance: Social Forgetting and Vernacular Historiography of a Rebellion in Ulster (Oxford University Press, 2018)

Before the publication of The Time Machine (1895), H. G. Wells’s early works provide insight into the challenges of the late Victorian educational system. Wells benefited from a unique set of educational reforms intended to provide education for the lower middle class. He did so in the capacities of a student taking examinations to earn grants f…[Read more]

While board games had been around for millennia, their popularization as a market commodity, with specilal themes and branding, had coincided with the formation of the global dominance of the British Empire as a maritime juggernaut. Early board game producers in the second half of the eighteenth century were mapmakers, and the board games shared…[Read more]

The position of the archbishop of Canterbury at the heart of the Establishment engendered requests to be patron, advocate or opponent of almost every conceivable development in national life. One such entanglement was his role as unofficial advisor to the Lord Chamberlain in the matter of the licensing of stage plays. According to the report of…[Read more]

Michael Ramsey’s time as archbishop of Canterbury (1961-74) was a crucial period of transition in evangelicals’ view of themselves and of how they should relate to the wider church. However, Ramsey has often been assumed to have been either indifferent or actively hostile to evangelical concerns. This chapter argues that this understanding of R…[Read more]

This essay explores two main themes, one major and one minor. After an examination of Michael Ramsey’s own engagement with inter-faith theology in the abstract, it briefly considers his interventions on behalf of Anglican minorities caught up in religiously inflected conflict overseas. The main preoccupation of the essay, however, is with the i…[Read more]

The friends, followers, and fans of Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, made no small contribution to the world of early modern English letters. This essay contributes to our growing understanding of the Essex circle’s literary afterlife by contextualizing BL Additional MS 18638, an early seventeenth-century manuscript containing a partial English…[Read more]

BL Additional MS 17492, the so-called Devonshire Manuscript of Henrician courtly verse, is a prime example of how social and cultural phenomena contributed to early modern manuscript culture. Among the treasures of the Devonshire MS is a series of lyrics that chronicles a fascinating courtly intrigue of the 1530s: the illicit, clandestine marriage…[Read more]

Between 1836 and 1865, a series of marriages took place within the Greek Orthodox community of London. Initially performed in homes and a converted chapel, ceremonies began to be held in the newly constructed Greek Orthodox Church from 1850 onwards. Unaware of the legal necessity of registering marriages with the government, marriages were not…[Read more]

From 1798 to 1944 the display of coats of arms in Great Britain was taxed. Since there were major changes to the role of heraldry in society in the same period, it is surprising that the records of the tax have gone unstudied. This dissertation evaluates whether the records of the tax can say something useful about heraldry in this period. The…[Read more]

This article investigates the tensions inherent within the ‘anti-modern’ element of early modernism and its relationship to Victorian and fin de siècle narratives of modernity. Using Sigmund Freud’s Totem and Taboo (1913), this essay examines how the primitive is represented in E.M. Forster’s short story ‘The Machine Stops’ (1909) and Stravinsky/N…[Read more]

This illustrates the psychiatrists who were appointed to Area Commands in the British Army during the Second World War, along with their commanding officers and other psychological staff at that Command. I found it a challenge to pin down people to places and times when researching my PhD – hopefully this will save others some trouble!

This appendix gives a brief summary of the role of some individuals who did work connected with Army psychiatry in Second World War Britain (particularly the development of schemes of officer selection and POW rehabilitation). The data was compiled from biographies, autobiographies, obituaries, census information, letters and articles published in…[Read more]

This map illustrates the locations of Command Psychiatrists, War Office Selection Boards (WOSBs), Civil Resettlement Units (CRUs), Area Psychiatrists, Emergency Medical Services (EMS) Neurosis Centres, Military Mental Hospitals, Military Mental Hospitals for Women, and Military Psychiatric Hospitals. I have made the map interactive so different…[Read more]

Military historians have debated the role of the War Office Selection Board (WOSB) in creating a “People’s Army” and democratising the British military during the Second World War. The role of these boards in reconfiguring the identity of the psychiatrist and the boundaries of their expertise in mid-twentieth century Britain, however, has been lar…[Read more]

This short paper considers the ways in which psychologists in the 20th century have put children and the playground under the metaphorical microscope.

In 1939, psychiatrists wrote to the War Office of Britain to offer up their services in the likely event of war. The response? A resounding silence. This unpromising start marked the first words (and the first silence) in a discussion of psychological science that would span the war. The ” trick cyclist ” , or psychiatrist, was a controversial…[Read more]