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To many in the United Kingdom, the British public school remains the disliked and mistrusted embodiment of privilege and elitism. They have educated many of the country's top bankers and politicians over the centuries right up to the present, including the present Prime Minister. David Turner's vibrant history of Great Britain's public schools, from the foundation of Winchester College in 1382 to the modern day, offers a fresh reappraisal of the controversial educational system. Turner argues that public schools are, in fact, good for the nation and are presently enjoying their true “Golden Age,” countering the long-held belief that these institutions achieved their greatest glory during Great Britain's Victorian Era. Turner's engrossing and enlightening work is rife with colorful stories of schoolboy revolts, eccentric heads, shocking corruption, and financial collapse. His thoughtful appreciation of these learning establishments follows the progression of public schools from their sometimes brutal and inglorious pasts through their present incarnations as vital contributors to the economic, scientific, and political future of the country.
An innovative investigation of the inner workings of Spotify that traces the transformation of audio files into streamed experience. Spotify provides a streaming service that has been welcomed as disrupting the world of music. Yet such disruption always comes at a price. Spotify Teardown contests the tired claim that digital culture thrives on disruption. Borrowing the notion of “teardown” from reverse-engineering processes, in this book a team of five researchers have playfully disassembled Spotify's product and the way it is commonly understood. Spotify has been hailed as the solution to illicit downloading, but it began as a partly illicit enterprise that grew out of the Swedish file-...
'A book that reaches so deeply into the human experience that to read it is to be forever changed' ELIZABETH DAY One night in October 2015, twenty-year-old Morgan Hehir went out with friends and never came home. In the aftermath of his funny, talented son's murder, Morgan's father Colin began to keep an extraordinary diary. It became a record of his family's grief, the ensuing trial, and his determined quest to uncover the shocking truth that the police had kept hidden. Inspired by this diary, About A Son is a groundbreaking work of creative non-fiction that asks vital questions about the nature of justice and pays tribute to the unbreakable bond between a father and son. SHORTLISTED FOR THE GORDON BURN PRIZE
SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2019 WAINWRIGHT BOOK PRIZE LONGLISTED FOR THE 2019 POLARI FIRST BOOK AWARD 'This is a book to get lost in . . . A disturbing trauma narrative, it's also a work of delightfully low, pants-dropping comedy, and a learned meditation' Guardian 'A brave and beautiful book, electrifying on sex and nature, religion and love. No one is writing quite like this' Olivia Laing 'Turns the nature memoir genre upon its head . . . is a book full of poetry and pathos. More than anything it is a bold and beautiful study of how to be a true modern man' Ben Myers, Spectator At a crossroads in his life, the demons Luke Turner has been battling since childhood are quick to return - depression and guilt surrounding his identity as a bisexual man, experiences of sexual abuse, and the religious upbringing that was the cause of so much confusion. It is among the trees of London's Epping Forest where he seeks refuge. Away from a society that struggles to cope with the complexities of masculinity and sexuality, Luke begins to accept the duality that has provoked so much unrest in his life - and reconcile the expectations of others with his own way of being.
Ecologies of Creative Music Practice: Mattering Music explores music as a dynamic practice embedded in contemporary ecological contexts, one that both responds to, and creates change within, the ecologies in which it is created and consumed. This highly interdisciplinary analysis includes theoretical and practical considerations – from blockchain technology and digital platform commerce to artificial intelligence and the future of work, to sustainability and political ecology – as well as contemporary philosophical paradigms, guiding its investigation through three main lenses: How can music work as a conceptual tool to interrogate and respond to our changing global environment? How have...
Reproduction of the original: The Regerenes by Anna B. Williams
David Carr was an addict for more than twenty years -- first dope, then coke, then finally crack -- before the prospect of losing his newborn twins made him sober up in a bid to win custody from their crack-dealer mother. Once recovered, he found that his recollection of his 'lost' years differed -- sometimes radically -- from that of his family and friends. The night, for example, his best friend pulled a gun on him. 'No,' said the friend (to David's horror, as a lifelong pacifist), 'It was you that had the gun.' Using all his skills as an investigative reporter, he set out to research his own life, interviewing everyone from his parents and his ex-partners to the policemen who arrested him, the doctors who treated him and the lawyers who fought to prove he was fit to have custody of his kids. Unflinchingly honest and beautifully written, the result is both a shocking account of the depths of addiction and a fascinating examination of how -- and why -- our memories deceive us. As David says, we remember the stories we can live with, not the ones that happened.
Without Beethoven, music as we know it wouldn’t exist. Who was this titan of world culture? 'You want to build a Beethoven library? There can be no better starting point... Brilliant.' John Suchet, Classic FM presenter Through 100 recordings, Lebrecht brings to life the composer as we’ve never seen him before. Unruly, offensive and hopeless in so much of his life, yes, but driven to a fault and devoted to his art, conquering deafness to compose some of the towering works of our culture. Along the way, we encounter the great musicians who have taken on the challenge of Beethoven, in all their glories and foibles. In this revealing, unique biography, Beethoven emerges as a cornerstone of the modern world. All recordings are freely available on Idagio and YouTube.
In the wake of the withdrawal of commercial journalism from local communities at the beginning of the 21st century, Hyperlocal Journalism critically explores the development of citizen-led community news operations. The book draws together a wide range of original research by way of case studies, interviews, and industry and policy analysis, to give a complete view of what is happening to communities as their local newspapers close or go into decline to be replaced by emerging forms of digital news provision. This study takes the United Kingdom as its focus but its findings speak to common issues found in local media systems in other Western democracies. The authors investigate who is produc...
In this moving novel based on true events, a teacher and a British spy discover a group of children hiding from the Nazis in WWII Munich. When their parents are taken to concentration camps, twenty-seven children are left alone, hungry, and scared. Claudia Kellner, a German elementary school teacher, discovers the group hiding in a deserted Munich railroad yard. Only able to hide two of them in her home, she is desperate to find shelter for the others. Meanwhile, British spy Peter Chesham has penetrated Third Reich territory. But his critical mission is interrupted when he discovers the orphans’ hiding place. Following through on his orders would have fatal consequences for them. But giving up could mean losing the war. Now Peter and Claudia must work together, attempting an impossible rescue operation with the children’s lives—and the fate of the world—at stake.