Organised into sections on society, culture, politics and the economy, and embracing subjects as diverse as women novelists and village crafts, this book argues that almost everywhere we look in the countryside between the wars there were signs of new growth and dynamic development.

A richly illustrated study of the interplay of word and image in representations of the English countryside, built environment, and domestic space during the interwar period. During the 1920s and 30s, words and pictures in print were the main way in which people received ideas and entertainment, the two working together in a great variety of forms. Many books of the twenties argued against the loss of the countryside because of suburban building. But the demand for post-war building was great and, following the lead of a government report, many books appeared that showed house designs, allowing readers to design or imagine their ownership. Book designs became attractive, helped by colourful dust jackets and internal pictures. Magazines developed individual talents and special interests for both men and women. And, at the periods close, word and image were combined to publicise the growing RAF and give advice about protecting houses from bombing. In all these, words and images worked together as a complex form of art, communication, and entertainment.

This book shows how governance regimes before the 1970s suppressed rural prospects of housing improvement and created conditions for middle-class capture. Using original archival sources to reveal the intricacies of local and national policy processes, weak rural housing performances are shown to owe more to national governance regimes than local under-performance. Looking `behind the scenes' at policy processes highlights neglected principles in national governance, and shows how investigating rural housing is fundamental to understanding the national scene. With original insights and a new analytical perspective, this volume offers evidence and conclusions that challenge mainstream assumptions in public policy, housing, rural studies and planning.

"A companion edition to the Masterpiece presentation on PBS" --Jacket.

Studies writers from the 1920s with regard to their political radicalism. Draws on the works of D. H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Townsend Warner, and Patrick Hamilton, among others, to identify the decade as a time of both political activism and of deliberately transgressive behavior, particularly among women. Meets head-on the argument of earlier commentators who take for granted the post-war decade as defined by cynicism and hedonism, and looks at the work and lifestyles of those determined to find ways out of despair. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

A refreshing insight into a previously neglected area of popular British cinema – the holiday film - including historical information about the British holiday and analyses of key films from the 1900s to the recent past.

Fiction of the New Statesman is the first study of the short stories published in the renowned British journal theNew Statesman. This book argues that New Statesman fiction advances a strong realist preoccupation with ordinary, everyday life, and shows how British domestic concerns have a strong hold on the working-class and lower-middle-class imaginative output of this period.

This book offers a detailed record of one of the world's oldest environmental pressure groups. It raises questions about the capacity of pressure groups to influence policy; and finally it assesses the campaing as a major factor in the emergence of modern town and planning, and as a backdrop against which to examine current issues.

This book provides a scholarly but accessible account of British regional development during the twentieth century, focusing on the emergence and development of theNorth-South divide. Beginning with regional imbalance in the Victorian and Edwardian economies, the book goes on to discuss the effects on the First World War and its aftermath, which created a discernible split between the depressed North and West, and the relatively prosperous South. Attention is also paid to the impact of government policy on regional development during the interwar years and beyond, and factors affecting industrial location in this period.