A riveting account of the pre-First World War years The Age of Decadence is an enormously impressive & enjoyable read' Dominic Sandbrook Sunday Times A magnificent account of a less than magnificent epoch' Jonathan Meades Literary Review The folk-memory of Britain in the years before the Great War is of a powerful contented orderly & thriving country She commanded a vast empire She bestrode international commerce Her citizens were living longer profiting from civil liberties their grandparents only dreamt of & enjoying an expanding range of comforts & pastimes The mood of pride & self-confidence is familiar from Elgar's Pomp & Circumstance marches newsreels of George V's coronation & the London's great Edwardian palaces Yet things were very different below the surface In The Age of Decadence Simon Heffer exposes the contradictions of late-Victorian & Edwardian Britain He explains how despite the nation's massive power a mismanaged war against the Boers in South Africa created profound doubts about her imperial destiny He shows how attempts to secure vital social reforms prompted the twentieth century's gravest constitutional crisis & coincided with the worst industrial unrest in British history He describes how politicians who conceded the vote to millions more men disregarded women so utterly that female suffragists' public protest bordered on terrorism He depicts a ruling class that fell prey to degeneracy & scandal He analyses a national psyche that embraced the motor-car the sensationalist press & the science fiction of H G Wells but also the Arts & Crafts of William Morris & the nostalgia of A E Housman & he concludes with the crisis that in the summer of 1914 threatened the existence of the United Kingdom
- a looming civil war in Ireland He lights up the era through vivid pen-portraits of the great men & women of the day
- including Gladstone Parnell Asquith & Churchill but also Mrs Pankhurst Beatrice Webb Baden-Powell Wilde & Shaw
- creating a richly detailed panorama of a great power that through both accident & arrogance was forced to face potentially fatal challenges A devastating critique of prewar Britain disturbingly relevant to the world in which we live' Gerard De Groot The Times You won't put it down A really riveting read' Rana Mitter BBC Radio 3 Free Thinking


...

The splendid finale to Eric Hobsbawm's study of the nineteenth century THE AGE OF EMPIRE covers the area of Western Imperialism & examines the forces that swept the world to the outbreak of World War One- & shaped modern society ...

THE AGE OF EXTREMES is eminent historian Eric Hobsbawm's personal vision of the twentieth century Remarkable in its scope & breathtaking in its depth of knowledge this immensely rewarding book reviews the uniquely destructive & creative nature of the troubled twentieth century & makes challenging predicitions for the future ...

What happened to the European mind between 1605 when an audience watching Macbeth at the Globe might believe that regicide was such an aberration of the natural order that ghosts could burst from the ground & 1649 when a large crowd perhaps including some who had seen Macbeth forty-four years earlier could stand & watch the execution of a king? Or consider the difference between a magus casting a star chart & the day in 1639 when Jonathan Horrock & William Crabtree watched the transit of Venus across the face of the sun from their attic successfully testing its course against Kepler's Tables of Planetary Motion in a classic case of confirming a scientific theory by empirical testing In this turbulent period science moved from the alchemy & astrology of John Dee to the painstaking observation & astronomy of Galileo from the classicism of Aristotle still favoured by the Church to the evidence-based collegiate investigation of Francis Bacon & if the old ways still lingered & affected the new mind set
- Descartes's dualism an attempt to square the new philosophy with religious belief; Newton the man who understood gravity & the laws of motion still fascinated to the end of his life by alchemy
- by the end of that tumultuous century the greatest ever change in the mental outlook of humanity' had irrevocably taken place

...

With heart-wrenching reporting & incisive analysis In These Times magazine has charted a staggering rise in inequality & the fall of the American middle class Here in a selection from four decades of articles by investigative reporters & progressive thinkers is the story of our age It is a tale of shockingly successful corporate takeovers stretching from Reagan to Trump but also of brave attempts to turn the tide from the Seattle global justice protests to Occupy to the Fight for 15 Featuring contributions from Michelle Chen Noam Chomsky Tom Geoghegan Juan Gonzalez David Moberg Salim Muwakkil Ralph Nader Frances Fox Piven Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor Slavoj Zizek & many others The Age of Inequality is the definitive account of a defining issue of our time ...

The return of the beautiful Countess Olenska into the rigidly conventional society of New York sends reverberations throughout the upper reaches of society Newland Archer an eligible young man of the establishment is about to announce his engagement to May Welland a pretty ingenue when May's cousin Countess Olenska is introduced into their circle The Countess brings with her an aura of European sophistication & a hint of scandal having left her husband & claimed her independence Her sorrowful eyes her tragic worldliness & her air of unapproachability attract the sensitive Newland & almost against their will a passionate bond develops between them But Archer's life has no place for passion & with society on the side of May & all she stands for he finds himself drawn into a bitter conflict between love & duty ...

Widely regarded as one of Edith Wharton's greatest achievements The Age of Innocence is not only subtly satirical but also a sometimes dark & disturbing comedy of manners in its exploration of the 'eternal triangle' of love Set against the backdrop of upper-class New York society during the 1870s the author's combination of powerful prose combined with a thoroughly researched & meticulous evocation of the manners & style of the period has delighted readers since the novel's first publication in 1920 In 1921 The Age of Innocence achieved a double distinction
- it won the Pulitzer Prize & it was the first time this prestigious award had been won by a woman author
...

Please note this is a region 2 DVD & will require a region 2 (Europe) or region Free DVD Player in order to play Martin Scorsese one of the great directors of our time directs Oscar-winner Daniel Day-Lewis Michelle Pfeiffer & Winona Ryder in a brilliant adaptation of Edith Wharton&s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel A ravishing romance about three wealthy New Yorkers caught in a tragic love triangle The Age Of Innocence chronicles the grandeur & hypocrisy of high society in the 1880&s Newland Archer (Daniel Day-Lewis) is an upstanding lawyer who secretly longs for a more passionate life Engaged to the lovely but ordinary socialite May Welland (Winona Ryder) Newland resigns himself to a life of quiet complacency But when May&s unconventional cousin Countess Ellen Olenska (Michelle Pfeiffer) returns to New York amid social & sexual scandal Newland becomes captivated by her mysterious authority & outstanding beauty Now he must choose between May & the world he knows & Ellen & the world he dreams of having A spellbinding portrait of hidden romance & regret The Age Of Innocence is a timeless masterpiece interwoven with intrigue suspicion guilt & passion ...

278 pages 19 Line drawings black & white; 15 Tables black & white; 19 Illustrations black an Komninos Nicos (Aristotle University of Thessalonki Greece) ...

' How are you?' said Mathieu 'I thought you were dead' Following a Parisian philosophy teacher through the cafes & bars of Montparnasse over two days in the sweltering summer of 1938 Sartre's searing novel explores what it truly means to be free ...