‘And So This Is What Happened’: War Stories in New Plays for Children

2005 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 317-330
Author(s):  
Adrienne Scullion

In this essay Adrienne Scullion explores the representation of war – and in particular of the Second World War – in contemporary theatre for children, considering how the narrative and performative conventions of drama communicate ideas about the conflict to young audiences. She argues that a taxonomy identified in relation to juvenile war literature – discourses of testimony and documentary, propaganda and escapism, myth and metaphor – resonates just as significantly in drama. This proposition is investigated in readings of three recent plays – Stephen Greenhorn's King Matt (TAG, 2001), David Greig's Dr Korczak's Example (TAG, 2001), and Nicola McCartney's Lifeboat (Catherine Wheels, 2002). She proposes that all three plays make different use of the conventions of telling war stories and those of theatrical performance to represent and describe war and, thereby, to explore contemporary values and expressions of citizenship – a declared goal of public policy-making in the UK. Adrienne Scullion teaches in the Department of Theatre, Film and Television Studies at the University of Glasgow.

2019 ◽  
Vol 67 ◽  
pp. 237-254
Author(s):  
André Authier

Andrew Lang will be remembered internationally for having developed the technique of X-ray topography which enables individual defects, such as dislocations, stacking faults, small angle boundaries and magnetic domains, to be imaged in many different types of materials. His interests spanned the whole range of dislocation studies and he made many important contributions to advanced instrumentation for X-ray crystallography, including pioneering experiments with a synchrotron radiation source. His career began during the last year of the Second World War when he was appointed to a research position at the Unilever Research Laboratories at Port Sunlight, Cheshire. He held research positions at the University of Cambridge, where he completed his PhD, and after a period at the Philips Laboratory in Irvington-on-Hudson in the USA, he obtained a tenured post at Harvard University. He returned to the UK in 1959 as a lecturer at Bristol University, where he was to remain for the rest of his life, being successively promoted to reader and then professor.


2006 ◽  
Vol 65 (2) ◽  
pp. 134-152
Author(s):  
Luc Vandeweyer

Hendrik Draye, opponent of the carrying out of the death penaltyIn this annotated and extensively contextualised source edition, Luc Vandeweyer deals with the period of repression after the Second World War. In June 1948, after the execution of two hundred collaboration-suspects in Belgium, the relatively young linguistics professor at the Catholic University of Leuven, Hendrik Draye, proposed, on humanitarian grounds, a Manifesto against the carrying out of the death penalty. Some colleagues, as well as some influential personalities outside the university, reacted positively; some colleagues were rather hesitant; most of them rejected the text. In the end, the initiative foundered because of the emphatic dissuasion by the head of university, who wanted to protect his university and, arguably, the young professor Draeye. The general public’s demand for revenge had not yet abated by then; moreover, the unstable government at that time planned a reorientation of the penal policy, which made a polarization undesirable. Nevertheless, Luc Vandeweyer concludes, "the opportunity for an important debate on the subject had been missed".


Author(s):  
Louçã Francisco ◽  
Ash Michael

Chapter 5 traces how free market ideology displaced the apparent consensus on economic regulation that emerged from the Depression, the New Deal, and the Second World War. Viewed as cranks within economics through the 1960s, Milton Friedman and his supporters built an apparatus of ideas, publications, students, think tanks, and rich supporters, establishing outposts in Latin America and the UK. When developed economies faltered in the 1970s, Friedman’s neoliberal doctrine was ready. With citizens, consumers, and workers feeling worked over by monopolies, inflation, unemployment, and taxes, these strange bedfellows elected Reagan in the US and Thatcher in the UK and rolled to power in academia and in public discourse with a doctrine of privatization, liberalization, and deregulation. Friedman, Eugene Fama, and James Buchanan whose radical free market views triumphed at the end of the 1970s are profiled. A technical appendix, “Skeptics and Critics vs. True Believers” explores the economic debates.


Author(s):  
Eric Golson

ABSTRACTIn September 1939, Portugal made a realist strategic choice to preserve the Portuguese Empire maintaining by its neutrality and also remaining an ally of Great Britain. While the Portuguese could rely largely on their colonies for raw materials to sustain the mainland, the country had long depended on British transportation for these goods and the Portuguese military. With the British priority now given to war transportation, Portugal's economy and Empire were particularly vulnerable. The Portuguese dictator Antonio Salazar sought to mitigate this damage by maintaining particularly friendly financial relations with the British government, including increased exports of Portuguese merchandise and services and permission to accumulate credits in Sterling to cover deficits in the balance of payments. This paper gives an improved set of comprehensive statistics for the Anglo-Portuguese and German–Portuguese relationships, reported in Pounds and according to international standards. The reported statistics include the trade in merchandise, services, capital flows, loans and third-party transfers of funds in favour of the British account. When compared with the German statistics, the Anglo-Portuguese figures show the Portuguese government favoured the British in financial relations, an active choice by Salazar to maintain the Portuguese Empire.


2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 265-283
Author(s):  
Alice Byrne

This article explores the UK government's first foray into cultural diplomacy by focusing on the activities of the British Council's Students Committee in the run-up to the Second World War. Students were placed at the heart of British cultural diplomacy, which drew on foreign models as well as the experience of intra-empire exchanges. While employing cultural internationalist discourse, the drive to attract more overseas students to the United Kingdom was intended to bring economic and political advantages to the host country. The British Council pursued its policy in cooperation with non-state actors but ultimately was guided by the Foreign Office, which led it to target key strategic regions, principally in Europe and the Mediterranean Basin.


Author(s):  
Dirk van Keulen

Abstract Arnold Albert van Ruler (1908-1970) was one of the leading theologians in the Dutch Reformed Church in the second half of the twentieth century. After having worked as a minister in Kubaard (1933-1940) and Hilversum (1940-1947) he was professor at the University of Utrecht (1947-1970). Van Ruler had a special place in the Dutch theological landscape. The development of his views took the opposite direction of the mainstream of Dutch protestant theology, which can be illustrated with his reception of the theology of Karl Barth. Before the Second World War Van Ruler was a Barthian theologian; after the War he distanced himself from Barth. As a result of this, some of Van Ruler’s theological views were controversial. Van Ruler himself felt somewhat lonely and complained that he was neglected by his colleagues. On the morning of December 15, 1970, Van Ruler had his third heart attack and dead sitting at his writing desk. In this contribution the reactions on Van Ruler’s death are documented. In many daily newspapers his death is mentioned and in several the significance of his work is described. During the months after his death in many ecclesiastical weekly’s and in theological journals in Memoriams were published. We find personal memories and praise for his style of theologising, which was experienced as sparkling and bright. Van Ruler’s colleagues recognised his originality. His views on theocracy, however, remained as controversial as they were during his lifetime.


Author(s):  
E. V. Khakhalkina

The “Diary” of the Soviet diplomat I. M. Maisky, who worked in London for more than ten years first as a messenger, then as the Soviet ambassador to the UK, is one of the valuable sources for the interwar period and the Second World War. The “Diary” contains records of Maisky’s conversations with the leading British politicians and public figures and his own thoughts on a wide range of issues, including the problems of the British Empire. The author of the paper analyzes the views of the Tories on the prospects for the British Empire and the Commonwealth of the postwar period and reveals the plans for the reconstruction of the Empire and its transformation while maintaining the dominant position of Britain in the format of a new relationship with the dominions and colonies. The paper shows that within the British political establishment there was no consensus on the future of the empire and, as the materials of the “Diary of diplomat” evidence, the problem of the evolution of the Empire had a close relationship with other areas of foreign and domestic policy.


2018 ◽  
Vol 62 (1) ◽  
pp. 265-271
Author(s):  
Marcin Kula

The author’s remarks on Agata Zysiak’s book Punkty za pochodzenie. Powojenna modernizacja i uniwersytet w robotniczym mieście [Points for Class Origin: Post-War Modernization and the University in a Working-Class City] (2016) primarily concern the question of social advance through education and Zysiak’s outline of this process in Poland after the Second World War. As a participant of that process — first as a student, and later as a teacher — the author suggests that it should be viewed from the perspective of historical sociology.


Author(s):  
John Lucas

In chapter three, John Lucas describes the UK jazz scene following the Second World War. Lucas describes the free and unlimited qualities of jazz and makes comparative reference to Fisher’s own personal interest in the genre. The chapter goes on to state that Fisher’s writing style can arguably be linked to the many styles of jazz piano, in that the two both adhere to imaginative thought and liberation from formal constraints. As well as music, the chapter also focuses on the significance and impact of the themes of location and belonging found in Fisher’s poetry.


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