Englands Culture Wars

Following the execution of the king in 1649, the new Commonwealth and then Oliver Cromwell set out to drive forward a puritan reformation of manners. They wanted to reform the church and its services, enforce the Sabbath, suppress Christmas, and spread the gospel. They sought to impose a stern moral discipline to regulate and reform sexual behaviour, drinking practices, language, dress, and leisure activities ranging from music and plays to football.

War has always been a topic of deep intrigue. Fighting itself can be a source of great, perhaps even the greatest, joy; out of this joy and fascination an entire culture has grown - from the war paint of tribal warriors to today’s "tiger suits," from Julius Caesar's red cloak to Douglas MacArthur's pipe, from the decorative shields of ancient Greece to modern aircraft nose art, and from the invention of chess around A.D. 600 to cyber era combat simulators.

The most terrible emergency in Britain's history, the Second World War, required an unprecedented national effort. An exhausted country had to fight an unexpectedly long war and found itself much diminished amongst the victors. The outcome of the war was nonetheless a triumph, not least for a political system that proved well adapted to the demands of a total conflict and for a population who had to make many sacrifices but who were spared most of the horrors experienced in the rest of Europe.

The history of England can be said to have begun with the arrival of Julius Caesar in 54 BC. Four hundred years later, Romano British civilization came to an end with the withdrawal of Roman military protection and the onslaught by successive waves of Germanic invasions. Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Danes, and Norsemen ravaged Britain for almost 500 years. The native Celtic peoples were displaced and driven westward into present-day Wales, where their descendants dwell to this day.

When a young man is given the chance to rewrite his future, he doesn't realize the price he will pay for giving up his past... Casablanca's stinking alleys are the only home that nineteen-year-old Youssef El-Mekki has ever known. Raised by his mother in a one-room home, he dreams of escape -...

As the intellectual fountainhead of the ideology of Hindutva, which is in political ascendancy in India today, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar is undoubtedly one of the most contentious political thinkers and leaders of the twentieth century. Accounts of his eventful and stormy life have oscillated...

If you want to discover the captivating history of England, then pay attention...There are few places that entice the imagination quite like England. Just a little island off the western coast of continental Europe, it boasts a rich history that stretches all the way back to the first modern humans. From the fearsome Celtic warriors of prehistory to the clever inventors and statesmen of the modern era, England’s story is one bursting with magnificent castles, complex kings and queens, rebellious peasants, and horrifying plagues.

“Call Me By Your Name meets Evelyn Waugh in a gorgeous novel about the generations-long aftershocks of a youthful tryst.” —Esquire From the winner of the Man Booker Prize, a masterly novel that spans seven transformative decades as it plumbs the complex relationships of a remarkable...

A triumph of narrative, empathy and research, as gripping in its handling of individual witnesses to the war - those doomed to struggle with bombing, rationing, exhausting work and above all the absence of millions of family members - as of the gigantic military, social, technological and economic forces that swept the conflict along. It is the definitive account of a drama which reshaped our country.

As the intellectual fountainhead of the ideology of Hindutva, which is in political ascendancy in India today, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar is undoubtedly one of the most contentious political thinkers and leaders of the twentieth century. Accounts of his eventful and stormy life have oscillated...

Nandamuri Taraka Rama Rao, widely known as NTR, was not merely a film star who strayed into politics and captured power in Andhra Pradesh. The actor-politician redefined the political culture in the state and scripted a new political idiom.His rather dramatic entry into politics, the profound...

As early as 2014, after the fall of Mosul, maps of ISIS showing a desire to take over South Asia started to appear on social media. But how far has that borne fruit? Or has it always been more of an ill-conceived chimera? One of the shortcomings of our understanding of ISIS in India-and indeed...

In this penetrating analysis of the role of political leadership in the Cold War's ending, Archie Brown shows why the popular view that Western economic and military strength left the Soviet Union with no alternative but to admit defeat is wrong. To understand the significance of the parts...

“An enthralling and insightful cultural history—one that shows how, over the course of one pivotal decade, love, freedom and the freedom to love gave way to fear, madness and despair.” —Malcolm Forbes, Washington Post Book Review An ingeniously orchestrated popular history brings to...

The Hanukkah story honors the heroes and heroines throughout Jewish history who have fought using both might and wisdom to overcome their foes. One of these heroes is Judah the Maccabee...

Love and hope often arrive in the strangest places and in the strangest ways. During his tour of duty in Iraq, LtCol Jay Kopelman of the U.S. Marines endured the emotional stress common for those involved in bloody battles for freedom. Although the rules forbid pets, Kopelman and his comrades...