An AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award has made collaboration possible between Northumbria University and the Shipley Art Gallery, Gateshead in providing the opportunity to highlight a significant narrative in craft history. Henry Rothschild, a German émigré, ran the iconic craft outlet Primavera from 1946 to 1980. During this time, he built up an internationally significant collection of ceramics, now housed at the Shipley Art Gallery, along with a personal and business archive. By bringing this inaccessible and underused material to the fore and complementing it with interviews with Rothschild’s contemporaries, connections have emerged that were previously undiscovered. This thesis demonstrated how Rothschild’s position as a retailer, exhibitor and collector marked him as a unique character within the crafts as well as demonstrated the ways in which he utilised his position as an émigré to act outside of the confines of the traditional British standpoint. The narrative of Rothschild has been interwoven into the existing literature on craft in Britain, creating a previously unheard of account of post-war craft. Although Rothschild’s role in the post-war craft world has been remarked upon in a number of texts (Cooper, 2012; Harrod, 1995; Harrod, 1999; Buckley and Hochsherf, 2012) his wide reaching impact and contribution has never been explored in detail. This thesis considered the contradictory nature of Rothschild’s multiple roles and the resulting implications: as a retailer he was motivated to choose pieces that would sell, as an exhibitor he could allow for more creativity and daring in his curatorial choices, and as private collector he enjoyed established relationships with craftspeople. The aim of this thesis was to position Rothschild as collector, exhibitor and retailer not only within the context of British craft, but also to consider how Primavera operated within what David Kynaston calls the ‘justly iconic’ time period from 1945 to 1980 (Kynsaton, 2007). Through both his retail and exhibition activity at Primavera and beyond, craft was given a platform, made accessible to the wider public and influenced taste and fashion. His background as a German Jewish émigré emerged as key to understanding how he negotiated his position within this world. The resulting thesis confirmed and elucidated the significance of Rothschild and Primavera and called for further research into those individuals who are very much of the craft world but not always as producers or educators. As demonstrated here, such examinations have the potential to offer a narrative which is both complementary and challenging to those which dominate, and thereby contribute to the discourse on the nature of narrative based research and craft history.

This thesis offers a new perspective on the nature and experience of parent-child relationships c.1450-1620. Focusing on correspondence and family papers from selected aristocracy and gentry families, it argues that authority in parent-child relationships was renegotiated throughout the life cycle, particularly at points of tension or crisis such as marriage or death. These ‘crisis points’ are episodes which show us the negotiations that took place around domestic authority and give a personal insight into the emotional responses of parents and children and the nature of authority within early modern society. This thesis addresses a gap in knowledge about the changing reciprocal nature of this relationship over the life course. It understands ‘parent’ and ‘child’ as relational statuses experienced differently at different points throughout the life cycle. These new definitions argue that ‘parent’ and ‘child’ were not statuses that were limited to a single life stage but impacted on an individual throughout life. It reveals that individuals were motivated by societal expectation of family roles and also exhibited a range of emotional responses in reaction to perceived threats to the smooth running of family life according to the rules and structures of age, gender and status. The expectations associated with being a parent or a child continued to shape the actions and behaviour of individuals well into adulthood, as loyalty and obedience between parents and children was challenged and renegotiated. The thesis also considers how different roles within the family could overlap, leading to conflict as family members sought to manage their obligations and responsibilities as parents, children, siblings or step-relations. The personal source material is put into context with legal records and conduct literature considering the conflict between ideals of family life and its lived experience.

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In the historical record of British theatre in the latter half of the nineteenth century, the figures of London’s actor-managers are constantly present. As such, over the intervening century, they have been subjected to detailed historical enquiry by any number of different scholars in terms of their theatrical achievements, management styles, and their role in the changing nature of theatre in this period. However, despite the vast amount of extant visual material pertaining to these individuals in British, and other, collections, little attention has been paid to the image of the actor-manager in this period, and still less to the role of the body in the legacy of such figures. Given the nature of the actor’s craft as body-orientated, the explicitly visual nature of theatre in this period, and a burgeoning mass-media industry intent on the dissemination of such images, from a design history perspective this historiographical gap is surprising. Taking as its starting point the contention that the primacy of London’s actor- managers in this period was not, despite the claims of some contemporaries, an inevitable result of natural talent, but rather the outcome of carefully mediated verbal and visual discourses of theatrical and social achievements, this thesis examines how the framing of the body in such texts and images contributed to the legacy of the actor-manager as the central figure of late-Victorian theatre for a number of different audiences. It does this by using a synthetic approach which encompasses a number of distinct disciplines, including theoretical perspectives on the body, theatre historical scholarship that informs the context of the primary material, and design historical narratives of production and consumption. Ultimately, however, it is led by the depiction of actor-managers in the late nineteenth century, and the manifestation of multi-valent identities through the body, which constructed them for popular and critical consumption as artists, professionals and gentlemen of the late-Victorian era.

The focus of this thesis is the complex relationship between women and the category 'leisure', a relationship which is only infrequently addressed within the historiography of leisure and only partially understood within the existing frameworks of that field. The research draws upon feminist scholarship to establish a fluid theoretical structure within which the leisure experiences of women may be better conceptualised, and re-thinks the methodologies necessary to access those experiences within a defined historical period: that of 1920-1960. Throughout, 'leisure' is approached less as self-defined, discrete activity, and more as a mutable category, open to changing meanings and inseparable from its contextual and historical background. To this end, the nature of 'leisure' is itself problematised: the study challenges definitions of the concept as directly oppositional to work/workplace and explores the problems inherent in the notion that leisure constitutes a reward for paid labour. Indeed, the sources suggest that 'leisure' and 'work' often interacted within women's lives and that notions of leisure as something 'earned' had a fundamental impact upon women's experiences over the life cycle. The thesis is built around interviews with Manchester women from working-class and lower middle-class backgrounds. However, it also uses local newspaper evidence, women's magazines and the contemporary work of a number of researchers with an interest in leisure during the period. The study examines changing experiences of leisure and shifting perceptions of the concept across social classes and over the historical period. It presents a picture of leisure at the local level, whilst suggesting a chronology of leisure which has implications for our understanding of the national experience. The fundamental originality of the project rests in its approach; it offers a holistic, life cycle based, approach to a field which largely consists of research of a topic-based nature. The central findings concern the role of life cycle stage in determining the relationship of women to leisure across both period and social classes. In particular, the thesis explores how the transition from youth to adulthood impacted upon women's ideas of appropriate leisure behaviour and entitlement, and asserts that a contrast may be drawn between the personal leisure of youth, and the 'family' leisure of adulthood.

This thesis investigates how relations between the government of Britain, Ireland and Northern Ireland changed in the early years of the Northern Ireland Troubles until the collapse of the Sunningdale executive in May 1974. Specifically this research looks at the three relations studying many of the important aspects of intergovernmental relations within the three jurisdictions at the time and using a wide range of examples to demonstrate how the primary driver in relations between all three jurisdictions moved from economic to political, security and intelligence by 1972 and how these relationships grew and developed before their eventual collapse in the months following the Ulster Workers’ Council Strike. Primarily this study is based on archive research in London, Dublin and Belfast at the official national archives of the three states. However it has also made use of interviews with officials. It includes new insight into negotiations for membership of the EEC, Territorial Seas Delimitation, the Arms Crisis, British relations with Terence O’Neill (and the Northern Ireland government’s opinion of the British), the preparations for internment and Direct Rule, the origins of the Northern Ireland Office and the Irish government’s relations with Northern Ireland’s nationalists. This thesis, using recently released sources, challenges a number of conclusions from previously published research, particularly into North-South relations after 1966, and Britain’s preparations for sending British troops in support of the Northern Ireland government. Significantly, this PhD also demonstrates a long series of British attempts at the end of 1972 and throughout 1973 to tease the Irish government into increasing their border security operations. In doing so it explains the Sunningdale Agreement in the context of a relationship between the Cosgrave and Heath governments that went far beyond what was known at the time and was dependent to a far greater extent on security cooperation than has previously been accepted.

Denmark, being a much smaller country than Britain, has, in absolute terms, a smaller housing problem. Nevertheless, there are surely lessons to be learned from the highly successful system which the Danish people and Government have worked out for themselves. A housing society, or some equivalent organization, provided for each separate region or sub-region in Great Britain might offer a solution to the difficult [sic.] that design for our working-class housing is under the controls of councils of very varying degrees of technical knowledge, which then have to be prodded and supervised to some extent by various Government departments. The housing society seems an admirable compromise, provided that it can be kept on the completely non-profit making basis that is successfully secured in Denmark. Ian Bowen, Housing Policy in Denmark, The Architects' Journal, August 4, 1949, p.133 A generation of competent technicians and fearless, idealistic politicians [in Britain] have been able to make a contribution which will persist as a good example of the capabilities of the present and as an incomparable field of study for others who are working in planning. Aage Jedich, Report from Holme-Tranbjerg Council Committee's visit to England, 12.07.19631 A comparison of the housing provided by two cities within separate nation states may encourage a mutually admiring gaze from each position. Comparisons have provided a tool in learning about new housing practices, understanding one's own position from a different vantage point and throwing light on areas that may have remained unquestioned until a visit abroad revealed different approaches to a similar problem. As the quotes above suggest, professional groups involved in the provision of housing and urban planning in post-war Denmark and Britain held each other's national strategies in high regard as they contemplated their local problems of creating spaces for effective urban communities. It will become clear for the cities studied in this thesis that local councillors, public officials and social housing providers at times sought to explore the wider areas of learning that practices abroad could offer. Yet the main approach adopted in this thesis is the comparative historical approach: the thesis studies the origins and history of social housing systems in Arhus, Denmark, and Newcastle, Britain. The comparison creates contrasts and similarities between the two cities through an urban social history approach. The key theme explored in the work is the notions of local democratic culture arising within the social housing systems of the two cities covering most of the twentieth century, but with an emphasis on the period 1945-1979. The introduction will discuss themes running through the work and will consider how the structure of the thesis allows for the comparison to illuminate aspects of the local political culture of the two cities that was directly affected by and affected in turn the local provision of social housing. Like most Western European cities in the twentieth century Arhus and Newcastle faced the problems of providing adequate housing for large groups of working people as the cities grew or older housing types became outdated. The study examines the options and strategies that were explored and adopted by the housing authorities in the two cities to recover from slumps in housing provision. It is clear that each city approached housing provision through different groups of facilitators: in Arhus, as in Denmark in general, the housing association was the primary generator of social housing, while Newcastle followed the British pattern — providing social housing through the municipality. Thus the agency of provision was different in the two cases from the outset. How the mediating influence of housing associations between the Arhusian Council and residents in social housing contrasted with the direct provision of council housing in Newcastle is a key issue for the the...

The essays presented here for submission for the degree of PhD by publication were published between 1998 and 2006 and (with one exception) consist of sole-authored studies in cultural history focused on the development of tourist culture in the period 1800-1914. Cultural history as a field of academic study is a rich area for interdisciplinary research and these case studies draw on a wide range of disciplines — anthropology, cultural geography, the history of medicine, visual culture, media and literature for theoretical and methodological support. Together, they constitute a coherent examination of the material and cultural factors influencing the development and expansion of tourist culture across the European continent and an exploration of its role in the formation of the social and cultural identities of people and places in the period 1800-1914, in different contexts and from different perspectives. The essays fall into two main groups. The first focuses on material and cultural factors influencing the growth of tourism in central Europe: its relationship to the development of urban culture and nationalism in the region and to the discourses and practices relating to health and leisure that supported the spa trade. A particular concern is the contribution of a developing tourist culture to the formation of cultural identities within the Habsburg Monarchy in an era of growing nationalism. For the state, tourism represented an opportunity to counteract its growing weakness by capitalising on the imperial image (a key element in touristic images of Vienna), to bolster the image of the Monarchy abroad and attract valuable foreign currency. At the same time the growth of tourism contributed to that weakness by reinforcing perceptions of cultural distinctiveness in areas influenced by growing national and regional self-consciousness. The second group of essays focuses on the production of tourists and the creation of a market for different types of tourism through an examination of the discourses influencing tourist motivations and behaviours, the experience and performance of place and the broader question of how and why tourists were attracted to particular places. A theme running through both sets of essays is that of the way that the spread of tourist culture, geographically and socially, contributed to the formation of cultural identities as particular social groups incorporated tourist practices into their lifestyles, and the places they visited acquired distinctive tourist images. Key factors in this process were the media and cultural industries responsible for the production and dissemination of travel-related forms of literature and visual culture. These industries helped to shape tourism as an economic and social institution by influencing the way in which particular places were produced for tourists and the manner in which they were perceived, experienced and performed as, for example, in case of the relationship between the British and different parts of continental Europe.

This thesis examines architectural taste and patronage in Newcastle upon Tyne between 1870 and 1914. During this period, the city experienced dramatic expansion as the wealth generated in industry, finance and retail was channelled into commercial and public architecture. The overall aim is to determine whether Newcastle formed a distinctive architectural culture. Newcastle's economic and social profile gave rise to specific patterns of taste and patronage. The thesis explores the cultural networks that shaped the built form of the city, arguing that architectural patronage in Newcastle was dominated by a cultural oligarchy. This group formed an 'architectural culture', a relatively self-contained community in which particular styles and architects were favoured above others. Newcastle was a major centre of industry, finance and retail, and played a significant role in the national economy. The thesis seeks to reposition Newcastle within the context of the dynamic forces that were reshaping Britain's built environment. As the period progressed, the distinctive patterns of taste and patronage within the city were eroded by the increasingly national economy, the influence of the metropolis and the more active role played by the centralised state. The thesis relates the architectural culture under study to the national mainstream, thus shedding light on the relationship between provincial architecture and the metropolis. The thesis employs a range of methodological strategies in order to bring the different facets of architecture into focus. With clearly defined geographical and temporal boundaries, it seeks to clarify the economic, social and cultural factors that underpin architectural production, thus offering a new insight into architectural patronage.

This research fills a gap in seventeenth century English social history. In studies of the early modem period, women are generally situated within the formal structures of marriage and the family, where their relationship to the masculine is the defining feature of their position. This thesis examines women's relationships with other women operating outside the expected range of relationships and look at groupings that were not based around the formal social structure of the time. It demonstrates that women in early modern England created and used networks which provided functions beyond their maternal and familial obligations. It also shows that these networks had an impact on wider society, inspiring strong reactions from both supporters and detractors. This study provides a functional, descriptive and developmental analysis of women's networks and locates their sphere of influence within early modem society. It asks questions about the different types of women's networks that existed in the early modem period, how they were organised and what environmental conditions helped to create them. It looks at the individuals who made up the networks and what effect age, social and marital status and religion had on the form and nature of these networks. It examines the impact of the networks on the women and what effect opposition had on them and on their networks. The research also questions whether women were conscious of their networks; if they were able to recognise their potential power and ability to influence events in their communities. The period considered by the thesis includes significant developments in the organisation of women's networks and it therefore also examines why a number of them chose to become formally organised and officially recognised during the seventeenth century.