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This work is an historical account of the development of sociology in Britain. It examines the institutional and intellectual issues affecting sociology during the 1920s and '30s, through the years of the Second World War and into the immediate post-war period. The work focuses on the attempt by sociologists to assert and sustain the autonomy of their discipline, within the wider field of British social science. Particular attention is paid to a series of 'acts of justification", representing crucial strategies in sustaining the institutional and intellectual boundaries of the discipline. The negotiation of resources essential to the continuity of the field is considered to be an integral feature of sociology's advocatory dimension, wherein its practitioners construct and deploy a series of programme statements, disciplinary agendas and institutional initiatives, as means of asserting the potential of sociology A detailed examination is made of significant 'moments' in sociology's development for the period in question, in order to assess the manner in which sociologists have contested prescriptions of their activities by both social scientists and non-sociologists. Among the issues examined in the course of the work are; the funding of knowledge, the wartime education debate, the deliberations of the Clapham Committee, an attempt by sociologists to construct a synoptic science of society and William Beveridge's 'Natural Bases Scheme' for the social sciences at the LSE during the inter-war period. All are portrayed as features of sociology's advocatory dimension and in terms of their relative significance in the social construction of British sociology.

This thesis considers the hitherto unexplored question of modernism and non-fictional genres. Although modernist studies have long been attentive to the implications of modernism’s “manifestos”, and recent work on modernist magazines has shed new light on forms beyond poetry and fictional prose, little attention has been afforded to other non-fictional writing. Similarly, although a growing school of criticism has emphasised the significance of “the everyday” in modernist texts, few have examined non-fiction concerned with leisure or daily life – a particularly unusual omission given the rich possibilities such texts offer for our understanding of how everyday lives relate to wider society. This thesis examines instructional texts which make radical interventions in the social and political upheavals which follow the First World War. Contra to the well-debunked yet still pervasive narratives which typify the modernist text as a work of disinterested – even isolated – genius, these examples demonstrate a broad-ranging, complex engagement with popular venues. Surveying examples of popular genres such as cookbooks, travel guides and radio programs written by a range of canonical and lesser-known modernist writers, it demonstrates how modernist writers re-appropriated the common features of such mainstream forms in order to stage various (and varied) interventions in local and national affairs. Its reading of Sylvia Townsend Warner’s Somerset (1949) and Scottish Scene: The Intelligent Man’s Guide to Albyn (1934), by Hugh MacDiarmid and Lewis Grassic Gibbon, shows how adopting the “textual codes” of travel guides provided authors with a means of writing back against the over-simplistic narratives of region and nation popular in other examples of the genre. Likewise, The Alice B Toklas Cook Book (1954) and F.T. Marinetti’s The Futurist Cookbook (1932) are read as divergent examples of texts which stage radical interventions in food practices as they relate to nationhood and conflict. Comparable interventions are also unearthed in the media. Flann O’Brien’s Cruiskeen Lawn columns (1940-66), published under the name Myles na gCopaleen, are often read in studies of Irish political and cultural consciousness. This thesis argues that they must also be read in terms of genre, demonstrating how a subversive use of headlines, bylines and other page architecture signals O’Brien’s use of the newspaper form itself to pass comment on the cultural and political life of the Republic of Ireland. Finally, this thesis turns to broadcast culture, with a chapter on radio and documentary films. Through readings of Virginia Woolf and Elizabeth Bowen's radio broadcasts, and the GPO Film Unit collaboration of Benjamin Britten and W.H. Auden, this chapter shows how irony and experiment allowed writers to turn state-sanctioned media to their own ends during the interwar years – suggesting that literary readings are crucial to understanding modernism's engagement with new media. Through these different readings, this thesis highlights the sheer diversity of modernist genres which have either received little critical attention, or whose formal specifics have been under-acknowledged. As a result, it is able to reframe modernism’s approach to several areas of twentieth-century life, approaching anew pressing areas of concern in the field – for instance, space and place, the circulation of texts, the everyday, and the commercial, lowbrow and domestic – demonstrating the critical importance of instructive genres to understanding literary modernism.

This thesis establishes why the Shell Oil Company produced a series of seventy-one posters of the British landscape in the 1930s. Through an examination of the 76 cm. x 114cm. posters that were attached to the sides and backs of the company’s delivery lorries, the thesis determines why Shell chose this form of publicity. The thesis examines the posters as historical, if ephemeral, artefacts and analyses the social, economic and cultural context of their production. Whilst there has been some historical analysis of poster design within the field of design history, the significance of the poster within these contexts has been largely neglected. The unique hybrid nature of the Shell posters as advertising based upon fine art using over fifty artists and designers makes them a unique repository of British visual culture of the 1930s. This thesis describes how Shell created three landscape poster campaigns, not through the enlightened patronage of its publicity manager, Jack Beddington, but through a complex set of circumstances that included: the cartel that was formed by the oil companies supplying Britain; the development and encouragement of motoring tourism and its effect on the countryside; the middle-class rejection of working class holiday destinations; concern about the preservation of the countryside; the effect of the ‘slump’ on the working lives of artists; economic and aesthetic arguments about the relationship between fine and commercial art and the relationship between landscape and national identity. Chapter 1 explores the background and influences that led to the creation of the posters, including the precursors of Beddington and the development of the poster as a medium. Chapter 2 investigates the inter-war debate that exposed the uneasy relationship between fine art, commercial art and industry. Chapter 3 investigates the concept of ‘place’ and uses case studies of places Shell wished to portray as destinations. Chapter 4 examines, through case studies, how the landscape, as portrayed by the posters, is represented for tourists and also the posters’ function within tourism.

Christopher Isherwood’s 1938 autobiographical novel Lions and Shadows is often read in light of its subtitle as the story of “an education in the ‘twenties.” Yet Isherwood’s early work is more than a simple interwar bildungsroman. Lions and Shadows is a narratively complicated account of a privileged, queer youth in interwar England and an exposition of the effects of the Great War on an entire generation. The autobiographical novel provides veiled descriptions of the queer cultures of Cambridge and London in the 1920s, and records the early artistic development of several members of what has come to be called “The Auden Generation,” including Edward Upward, W.H. Auden, and Stephen Spender. In this project, I explore how and why Christopher Isherwood obscures his sexuality in Lions and Shadows, looking in particular at his friendships with Edward Upward and W.H. Auden and at the fictional work that the former friendship produced, The Mortmere Stories. Chapter 1 provides background information on homosexuality in England during Isherwood’s lifetime, focusing on how class and privilege affect the experience and expression of homosexuality. Chapter 2 analyzes the obsession with the Great War that pervades Lions and Shadows, concentrating on how the Great War affected ideas of masculinity and male sexuality. Finally, Chapter 3 explores the relationship between Isherwood’s social and sexual discomfort and the production and content of The Mortmere Stories, which tend to poke fun at sexual foibles and the proclivities of the upper classes. / text

This thesis examines patterns of mortality in interwar south Wales and assesses the relative influences of various social factors in determining those patterns. Chapters on income, expenditure, housing, environment, diet and medical services describe and evaluate the material conditions of life for working-class families in the different communities of interwar south Wales. A consideration of the effects of economic depression on these material aspects of people’s lives is an integral aspect of these chapters. The impact of unemployment and poverty is assessed so as to understand their significance in the everyday lives of working-class people. In this way, the thesis addresses the shortcomings in the historiography of the ‘healthy or hungry’ nature of the interwar period by anchoring the consequences of unemployment in the realities of everyday experience. The second section of the thesis consists of demographic studies of mortality and infant mortality. Various mortality indicators are examined so as to identify patterns of mortality in the different communities of south Wales. These mortality indicators are disaggregated according to age, sex, social class, occupation and location. The specific patterns revealed by this analysis are examined in the light of the material aspects of working-class life outlined in the first section of the thesis so as to determine the social determinants of mortality and the precise effects of economic depression on patterns of mortality. This detailed and systematic examination of mortality in interwar south Wales addresses the weaknesses in the Welsh historiography that has consisted of impressionistic interpretations of the effects of economic depression on standards of health. Therefore, the thesis examines the levels and trends of mortality in interwar south Wales and considers the factors that determined them. Secondly, it assesses the extent to which the economic depression of the interwar period affected these patterns of mortality.

This thesis examines the roots of antisemitic rhetoric expressed by Polish nationalists between 1918 and 1939. I argue that nationalist rhetoric and political campaigns during this period focused on calling for Poles to defend themselves against Jewish economic and political domination. The first half of this work utilizes pamphlets, books, newspaper articles, and other written works wherein Polish nationalists, in particular members of the National Democratic Party(NDP), expressed a fear of Polish Jews and called for their eviction from the country. Fear that Poland, a country that had been partitioned by surrounding empires for the past two centuries, would not last long as an independent country were central in the rhetoric of these authors. In their eyes, Jews threatened Poland’s already compromised political and economic position. Throughout the 1930s, the NDP and other nationalist groups began to call for Jews to emigrate. The second half of this thesis uses three Polish counties (Siedlce, Sokołów Podlaski, and Węgrów) as a case study to examine the effects of the NDP’s campaign of boycotting Jewish businesses. All three counties had large Jewish populations concentrating in mostly urban areas. I undertake this study by examining reports produced by the Starosta Powiatowy, a state official in charge of describing political activities, crimes, and other major events in a given county. The reports revealed that there was a correlation between the increase in the NDP agitating for boycotts in 1936 and increased reports of Jewish families being terrorized by people breaking their windows. By examining these dynamics, I illuminate some of the political, cultural, and economic forces that contributed to the rise of antisemitism in interwar Poland. In addition to emphasizing the NDP’s language of national self-defense, thesis also highlights some of the impacts of this rhetoric.

This dissertation supplements previously conducted research on aviation in interwar Britain by providing a necessary examination of the appearance of aerial warfare on British cinema screens between 1927 and 1939. It examines the presentation of the First World War, military aviators, the Royal Air Force, bombing, and aerial warfare to the British public. More specifically, it examines the connections between flying, aerial warfare, cinema, and the popular imagination in interwar Great Britain. It uses feature films, specifically Hell’s Angels, The Dawn Patrol, Things to Come, documentaries like RAF, The Gap, and The Warning, and newsreels. In additional to examining cinematic sources, it also extensively utilizes film press books, scripts, programmes, and British Government documents to determine the motives for producing these pictures, what influenced their writing, how they were promoted to the British public, and how cinema reviewers responded to them. It reveals that the cinema helped shape British perceptions of aerial warfare (and the First World War) during the interwar period, providing insight into how the British state and military interacted with the nation’s mass media complex. In doing so, it highlights the important, and often underappreciated, symbiotic relationship between mass culture and government policy.

This thesis examines the role of New Zealand Truth within interwar society. It seeks to identify the audience, market niche, and style of the paper. Its essential concern is with using theoretical models to inform a discussion on the ideas and values expressed in the paper, especially those of moderation, exploitation, excess, and immorality. What it attempts to show is that, although, Truth was a newspaper which depended on deviance for much of its news, it was deeply concerned, and alarmed, at the extent of breeches of mores and laws. However, the thesis will also show that Truth was more than a "scandal rag": it was very much a sports paper as well.