This thesis examines the effects of the campaign for disestablishment upon the religious and social life of Monmouthshire in the period 1840-1880. From a position of strength in 1840, nonconformists intensified their efforts to redress their religious and social grievances and to support the programme of the Liberation Society founded in 1844. The main focus of this study is the increasing influence of the Baptists, the strongest Nonconformest denomination in Monmouthshire during this period. The importance of the Baptist College and those involved in its leadership under its principal Dr Thomas Thomas, is analysed through the Dissenters’ campaigns against compulsory Church rate and state-funded education. Thomas’s leadership was paramount, not only in the Baptist College but also through crane street chapel of which he was pastor in a joint appointment for thirty –seven years. His stature was publicly recognised when he was appointed President of the Baptist Union of Great Britain and Ireland in 1872. He had become leader of the Baptist churches in Monmouthshire by1857 when he was chiefly responsible for setting up the Monmouthshire English Baptist Association at Pontypool. Thomas became noteworthy as a leader not only of Monmouthshire Baptists but also in the religious and social life of the county. His relationships with other religious leaders and his influence upon them are examined. This study seeks to fil a historiographical gap in our understanding of the impact of the campaign for Disestablishment in its early phases upon the religious life of Monmouthshire. It also provides a picture of the two institutions that were essential to the development of the Dissenters’ campaign for religious equality, Pontypool Baptist College and Crane Street Chapel. From the available resources, an analysis is provided.

This thesis fills a manifest gap in the history of end-of-life care in England through an exploration of the circumstances, position and importance of the Friedenheim, Home of Peace for the Dying (1885-1981), thought to be the first proto-hospice in this country. As yet virtually unexplored in published works, the nature of this hospital and the ethos of care provided there are demonstrated through evidence drawn from a multiplicity of sources, including archival records and personal testimony. By definitively establishing the chronological evolution of the institution, its locations and facilities, discrepancies in current lists and commentaries are clarified. Analysis of the nature, scope and influence of this hospital, which offered specialised care only for the terminally ill, illustrates and informs the emergence of specialised care for the dying in England. The thesis tests the accepted primacy of the institution by an examination and comparison of coeval establishments for the sick and dying. The founder, Frances Davidson, sought to provide a place for the poor to die and the space thus provided for clinical, spiritual and social care is explored. The complexities of managing this philanthropic institution and sustaining its financial viability are exposed through consideration of its administration and evolution. Analysis of patient profiles, morbidity data and referral statistics furnishes insight into the evolving nature and place of the hospital within London’s medical and philanthropic worlds. Details of the clinical, social and spiritual attention given to the patients reveal the breadth of care provided for them. Finally, the thesis discloses links with Cicely Saunders and challenges the received assumption that the Friedenheim, by now called St. Columba’s Hospital, played no part in the establishment of the so-called ‘modern’ hospice movement. The extensive and detailed results of this research confirm and justify for the first time the Friedenheim’s accepted place as the London pioneer of dedicated institutional care for dying people and place it at the inception of specialised care in England for those at the end of life.

The aim of this thesis is to present a rounded picture of British efforts to obtain information on German science and technology, both military and civilian, after the Second World War. This endeavour was conducted for numerous reasons - to secure some form of reparations, to improve defence capabilities for any future conflict, and to ensure that Germany possessed no lasting scientific war potential - and in various ways - the examination of laboratories and factories, the confiscation of equipment and documents, and the interrogation of experts. In some cases, these same experts were detained, brought to Britain, and occasionally offered work at government research establishments or private companies, in order to exact long-term benefit for Britain from the occupation of Germany. Unsurprisingly, an endeavour of this nature encountered difficulty from multiple quarters, including public opposition in Britain, conflict with other initiatives, such as reconstruction, in Germany, and competition with foreign powers, most notably the Soviet Union. As a result, this thesis sits at the intersection between various fields of historical inquiry. It incorporates elements from the history of intelligence, such as the necessarily secretive nature of many of the exploitation operations and the involvement of high-level intelligence bodies in the direction of the programme; from diplomatic history, not least how exploitation was affected by the reconfiguration of Britain's status on the world stage as it was steadily eclipsed by the United States and the Soviet Union; from the history of science, as the programme encompassed some of the most significant technological developments of the period, including the atomic bomb, the jet engine and guided missiles; and from military history, both because the first units and individuals concerned with the initiative were military and because many of the most valuable spoils removed from Germany were of a warlike nature. Ultimately, though, the narrative presented in this thesis is primarily concerned with British policy - policy towards occupied Germany, science and technology, and the nascent Cold War - and how this evolved throughout, and was shaped by, the deeply transformative period surrounding the end of the Second World War. The story of the British exploitation of German science and technology is, therefore, a crucial, but thus far understudied, facet of Britain's adjustment to the new post-war era in 1945.

This thesis is a study of radical manhood during the English Revolution. It examines different forms of radicalism, including that of soldiers, Levellers, Diggers, Quakers, and Ranters. By examining a plurality of radical sectaries, it acknowledges that, just as there was no one way to be a man in the seventeenth-century, there was no one way to be a radical man. Studying a variety of groups has the added benefit of allowing the thesis to explore radicalism across the period, including the Army Revolt of 1647-49 and Leveller activism in the mid-1640s, through to the spread of the Quaker Movement during the Interregnum. This enables the study of different types of radicalism; from the more formalist radicals who had a defined programme for change, such as the Levellers and the Diggers, to the more individualistic, ecstatic ministries of the Ranters and the Quakers. The thesis makes the case that all of the radical manhoods under discussion are varying forms of alternative manhood, which existed outside of, or in tension with, patriarchal manhood. These manhoods are designated alternative manhoods because they either did not relate to, or had a complicated relationship with, the household. Typical studies of manhood during the early modern period have focused on household patriarchy as the centre of male power and male identity formation; conversely, this thesis discusses alternative manhoods that were not centred on the household. The thesis’s central argument is that independence was a defining feature of manly identities. It has already been demonstrated by historians of manhood that economic independence was an important feature of early modern patriarchal manhood. This thesis argues that, in cases where economic independence was unattainable, independence remained a desirable state. Independence did not have to be economic independence, it could imply agency over actions, or the absence of a relationship of dependence on clerical authorities. Further, the focus on independence allows the thesis to study manhood in areas outside the household, such as politics, the army, and the church. Overall, discussing manhood from the perspective of independence makes it possible to discuss alternative ways that men could achieve full manhood that were unrelated to domestic patriarchy.

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My thesis works as an experiment, or rather a series of experiments, in methods of thinking about historical material. These methods come from anthropology and engage with myths and ritual, with the concept of “complementary others”, and the concept of “schismogenesis" as it has been developed by Gregory Bateson and advanced further by Marshall Sahlins. My overall goal is not to re-describe a well-researched historical event, but to explore how different ways of analysis, using different analytical frameworks, could lead to valuable explanations of the same political-cum-cultural event. The phenomenon I engage with is the last Oecumenical Council, a major religious event in the history of Councils within already schismatic societies. For this reason, I treat this Council in particular, as a ritual, unprecedented in scale and ambiguous in its inception. I am examining the structure and the return of this Event in History, and the controversies and tensions in the diachrony of East and West. I do this not only through the notion of schismo-genesis and ritual, but specifically the notion of sacrifice as developed by Maurice Bloch, in which the journey from Constantinople to Italy becomes a historical metaphor of mythical realities, regarding the Emperor John VIII Palaiologos. And finally, I explore the significance of Bessarion and complementary others within the notion of transformation and alterity. What I establish through discussions of the historical material, which span eleven centuries of history, is first of all, that there is no event without a system; that means the journey can acquire the form of the ritual. I argue that the relation between the myth and the idea of unity is dialectical in nature; the Event of a Union, which could bring peace in the one Church of Christ, from this moment of realisation becomes a fabrication, a mystery to the witnesses, and all the other myths that will be developed on the way become even more imperative and melancholic, because they seek to express a negative and unavoidable truth. The Event doesn’t portray reality any more, it exists despite it and becomes an extreme position, almost like a dream, and it justifies the vision one wished to be possible, only to show that it is untenable: the “what if it could be”; the possibility of all parts being aspirations to the whole, oecumenicity as a goal rather than unity. Overall, this thesis is about the presence of the past in the present, in relevance to the future.

In 1889, the Edinburgh-based natural scientist Patrick Geddes predicted a future in which a ‘more than earthly paradise of love’, known previously only to poets and their muses, would be realized. Similar intimations of an imminent utopia of transformed sexual relations were being felt and articulated by other young, progressive men and women in cities across Britain, intent on eradicating what they perceived to be the hypocritical sexual and social conventions of their parents. Within the current historiography, the primary setting for this late-Victorian generational revolt is often considered to be London. This thesis shifts the focus to Scotland, exploring the progressive challenge to Victorian sexual attitudes and behaviour in Glasgow and Edinburgh. It looks in detail at two married couples, Bella and Charles Pearce, and Patrick and Anna Geddes. Both were broadly-speaking feminists and socialists, committed in differing ways to heralding in a new age of egalitarian, altruistic and fraternal relations between the sexes. Both were also responsible for some of the period’s key texts on the Woman Question and the Sex Question, Bella Pearce the editor of ‘Matrons and Maidens’, the first feminist column in a socialist newspaper, and Patrick Geddes the author of 'The Evolution of Sex', a popular science book on the cause of sexual differentiation. Utilizing the methodologies of gender history and the history of sexuality, this thesis analyzes the exact nature of their sexual and gendered discourse, situating it precisely within the wider discursive field of fin de siècle feminist, socialist, scientific, medical, sociological and religious thought. However, it also aims to reflect thoughtfully on the relationship between the couples’ discourse and their subjectivity, examining the ways in which their intimate and social lives affected their ideas about sex. Overall, the thesis argues that whilst in some aspects the sexual and gendered attitudes and behaviour of late-Victorian Scottish sexual progressives were similar to those of feminists and socialists elsewhere in Britain, in other important ways they were different and distinctive. An understanding of them is therefore vital to a full appreciation of the complexities of British progressivism during this period.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the debate over Britain’s application for membership of the European Community. It explains the significant impact which short-term political calculations played in the stances adopted by individual members of the political elite. This political expediency was a major reason for the inadequacies of the debate on membership. Central to the research is a set of individual trajectories displaying the positions adopted by parliamentarians and political parties from 1959-1984 during which time Britain’s very membership of the European Community was at stake. The trajectories include a representative sample of Conservative and Labour MPs compiled using interviews, voting records, speeches and other evidence. While the aim of the thesis is to analyse whether members of the elite held views determined by concerns other than the substantive issue itself, the thesis also advances the argument that many failed to consider the long-term implications of Britain’s membership. The lack of a comprehensive debate of sufficient quality contributed substantially to later problems with Britain’s relationship with Europe. The chronological chapters analyse significant events at particular stages in the evolution of Britain’s relationship with Europe. The 1975 referendum on Common Market membership for example, is a spectacularly significant milestone – not only for Britain and Europe, but also in respect of the positions taken by Britain’s political elite, whose views were often shaped or changed as a consequence of the political machinations surrounding the issue. Analysis of this and other events including general elections and leadership changes, provide a greater understanding of why members of the political elite subordinated the issue of Britain’s future in Europe to short-term, pragmatic, party management or career considerations.

Brass Bands have become a clichéd representation of northern working-class culture. Hence, in 1974, Peter Hennessy described a band contest at the Albert Hall: A roll call of the bands is like an evocation of industrial history. From Wingates Temperance and Black Dyke Mills to more modern conglomerates [...]. Grown men, old bandsmen say, have been known to cry at the beauty of it all […]. Of all the manifestations of working-class culture, nothing is more certain than a brass band to bring on an attack of the George Orwells. Even the most hardened bourgeois cannot resist romanticizing the proletariat a little when faced with one. This stereotype, which emerged in the nineteenth century, generated the following research questions: What musical and social elements in the performance of brass band music strengthened working-class cultural identity in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries? How did bands, which thrived in large numbers in the Southern Pennines, emerge as a musical and cultural metonym of the industrial landscape? This thesis therefore examines internal and external reporting of elements of brass musicianship in brass bands that constructed working class and northern identities. An outline of music-making in the north shows how the region supported bands’ development when they began to emerge from the 1830s. Brass musicianship and musical performance strengthened working-class cultural identity. Explorations of musical performances, leisure, rational recreation, social networks, gender and region, all combine to produce a fuller understanding of the northern working class between c.1840 and 1914. Such influences – of class, gender and region – contributed to brass bands producing primary examples of working-class identity. Not only have brass bands been under-explored in the history of leisure, but they also add to the understanding of the origins of stereotypes about working-class culture and northern identity that emerged, and came under scrutiny, in this period.

This thesis employs a gendered reading of contemporary accounts in order to explore how men’s expert performances in tournaments enabled them to achieve high status manhood during the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century when England witnessed a resurgence of chivalry. In applying medieval concepts of masculinity to ideals of both kingship and nobility in the early modern period, it argues for continuity across a period of history that has often been treated as two distinct stages. The aim is to shed light on how tournaments were a fundamental aspect of Edward IV, Henry VII and Henry VIII’s kingship and masculinity, but also on other nobles and gentry men at these courts who also took this martial display seriously. By examining how men’s performances in the joust were used as a means to evaluate their suitability for royal matches, service in warfare and attendance in the privy chamber, I uncover how those few men who dominated the tiltyard were able to achieve an unrivalled masculine status and close friendship with Edward IV and Henry VIII. The emphasis on a chivalrous version of masculinity as a prevalent model for men of high status during the late medieval and early modern period has brought to the forefront of this study a new group of courtiers, who have largely been missing from the historiography.