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The first Schweich Lectures were given by Professor S. R. Driver of Oxford University in 1908 and the British Academy celebrated the centenary of the lectures with a single lecture in 2008. This book is an amplified version of that lecture, with each of its three chapters developing a theme relevant to the occasion. The lectures, on aspects of the study of antiquity in its relationship to the Bible, were established by a gift from Constance Schweich (later Mrs Goetze) in memory of her late father, Leopold Schweich. The first chapter of this book brings together biographical information (including some previously unpublished documents) about the Schweichs, who were originally a German Jewish family with close connections to the distinguished chemist and industrialist Ludwig Mond. The donation was the first major benefaction received by the British Academy, which had been founded in 1901 but initially had no government funding. The second chapter uses archival and published sources to reconstruct the circumstances and the history of the lectureship. An Appendix lists the names of all the lecturers, their subjects, and details of the publication of their lectures. The final chapter, ‘Archaeology and the Bible — A Broken Link?’, examines broader questions about ‘biblical archaeology’, which arose in the later twentieth century in the light of developments in archaeological theory and biblical scholarship, and considers whether there is still a future for collaboration between the two disciplines. The book provides a glimpse into Jewish philanthropy in England in the Edwardian era.

Evidence — its nature and interpretation — is the key to many topical debates and concerns such as global warming, evolution, the search for weapons of mass destruction, DNA profiling, and evidence-based medicine. In 2004, University College London launched a cross-disciplinary research programme ‘Evidence, Inference and Enquiry’ to explore the question: ‘Can there be an integrated multidisciplinary science of evidence?’ While this question was hotly contested and no clear final consensus emerged, much was learned on the journey. This book, based on the closing conference of the programme held at the British Academy in December 2007, illustrates the complexity of the subject, with seventeen chapters written from a diversity of perspectives including Archaeology, Computer Science, Economics, Education, Health, History, Law, Psychology, Philosophy, and Statistics. General issues covered include principles and systems for handling complex evidence, evidence for policy-making, and human evidence-processing, as well as the very possibility of systematising the study of evidence.

These nine chapters, commissioned on the initiative of the Philosophy section of the British Academy, address fundamental questions about time in philosophy, physics, linguistics, and psychology. Are there facts about the future? Could we affect the past? Physics, general relativity and quantum theory give contradictory treatments of time. So in the search for a theory of quantum gravity, which should give way: general relativity or quantum theory? In linguistics and psychology, how does our language represent time, and how do our minds keep track of it?

These eleven chapters look at sociology in Britain from a number of intriguing perspectives. How important is it for British sociologists to be aware of the historical development of their subject in this country? How is British sociology seen by British scholars working in related fields, such as social history, social anthropology and demography? And how are British sociologists perceived by their colleagues working abroad, in particular in continental Europe? A concluding chapter by the President of the British Sociological Association identifies the recurring themes in these reflections.

This series features studies of the lives and works of some of Britain's foremost scholars. This volume of the Proceedings of the British Academy contains nineteen obituaries of recently deceased Fellows of the Academy. The scholars are: W S Allen, George Anderson, A C de la Mare, John Flemming, Patrick Gardiner, James Harris, John Hurst, Casimir Lewy, Donald MacDougall, Colin Matthew, Edward Miller, Michio Morishima, Brian Reddaway, Marjorie Reeves, C Martin Robertson, Conrad Russell, Arnold Taylor, Kathleen Tillotson, and Glanmor Williams.

This series features studies of the lives and works of some of Britain's foremost scholars. Volume 121 of the Proceedings of the British Academy contains twelve lectures delivered at the British Academy in 2002.

British pensions are in crisis. Yet in all the discussion of what exactly the crisis consists of, and how it might be addressed, attention to the history of how the crisis has come about is surprisingly lacking. History has much to tell us about how pensions have developed in Britain, how that development has shaped the crisis that we now face, and how decisions taken in the past constrain our options for the future. In this book, leading experts on the past and present of pensions in Britain debate the present crisis, and the lessons of history for those seeking to craft solutions to it that are both effective and enduring. The volume also contains a number of chapters that draw important lessons from the experience of European and North American countries over the past few decades. The book contains reactions to the second report of the Pensions Commission and the government's response to it.

Drawing together work presented at a conference held at the British Academy, this book provides a broad overview of one of the most significant aspects of modern government. Joined-up government is a key theme of modern government. The Labour government, first elected in 1997, decided that intractable problems such as social exclusion, drug addiction and crime could not be resolved by any single department of government. Instead, such problems had to be made the object of a concerted attack using all the arms of government — central and local government and public agencies, as well as the private and voluntary sectors. This book seeks to analyse ‘joined-up government’, to consider its history, and to evaluate its consequences for British institutions such as the Cabinet, the civil service and local authorities. Is joined-up government a new idea, or merely a new label for a very old idea? What lessons can be learnt from previous attempts at joined-up government? How does it affect our traditional constitutional conceptions relating to Cabinet government, a politically neutral and non-partisan civil service, and an independent system of local government? Will it lead to the concentration of power in 10 Downing Street or is it compatible with a political system based on checks and balances?

This series features studies of the lives and works of some of Britain's foremost scholars. This volume of the Proceedings of the British Academy contains twenty-five obituaries of recently deceased Fellows of the Academy, including Michael Podro on Ernst Gombrich.

This series features studies of the lives and works of some of Britain's foremost scholars. This volume of the Proceedings of the British Academy contains nineteen obituaries of recently deceased Fellows of the Academy.

The twenty-one scholars whose obituaries are published in this book were Fellows of the British Academy (FBA) and were outstanding in their fields. The Fellows remembered for their academic achievements and leadership are: Elizabeth Anscombe, Anthony Baines, Charles Boxer, Kenneth Cameron, Francis Carsten, John Chadwick, Donald Coleman, Robert Cook, Terry Coppock, Francis Haskell, Martin Hollis, John Kent, Stephan Körner, Donald McKenzie, Kathleen Major, Michael Roberts, Robert Robins, Alan Tyson, John Varey, Glanville Williams and Vincent Wright. Also included is a chapter on James Bryce, President of the British Academy 1913–17.

The eighteen scholars whose obituaries are published in this book were Fellows of the British Academy (FBA) and were outstanding in their fields. The Fellows remembered for their academic achievements and leadership are: Frank Barlow, John Arundel Barnes, Gerald Allen Cohen, Herbert Edward John Cowdrey, Ralf Gustav Dahrendorf, Robert Arthur Donkin, Simon Frederick Peter Halliday, Arthur Thomas Hatto, Leszek Kolakowski, Peter Hugh Jefferd Lloyd-Jones, Douglas Maurice MacDowell, Michael Isaac Podro, Peter Edward Lionel Russell, Maurice FitzGerald Scott, Peter Brereton Townsend, Frank William Walbank, Michael Williams and Donald John Wiseman.

This book fully revises standard regimental history by establishing the framework and background to the regiment's role in the Great War. It tests the current theories about the British Army in the war and some of the conclusions of modern military historians. In recent years, a fascinating reassessment of the combat performance of the British Army in the Great War has stressed the fact that the British Army ascended a ‘learning curve’ during the conflict resulting in a modern military machine of awesome power. Research carried out thus far has been on a grand scale with very few examinations of smaller units. This study of the battalion of the Buffs has tested these theoretical ideas. The central questions addressed in this study are: the factors that dominated the officer-man relationship during the war; how identity and combat efficiency was maintained in the light of heavy casualties; the relative importance of individual characters to the efficiency of a battalion as opposed to the ‘managerial structures’ of the BEF; the importance of brigade and division to the performance of a battalion; the effective understanding and deployment of new weapons; the reactions of individual men to the trials of war; and the personal and private reactions of the soldiers' communities in Kent. This book adds a significant new chapter to our understanding of the British army on the Western Front, and the way its home community in East Kent reacted to experience. It reveals the way in which the regiment adjusted to the shock of modern warfare, and the bloody learning curve the Buffs ascended as they shared the British Expeditionary Force's march towards final victory.

Why did the British government declare war on Germany in August 1914? Was it because Germany posed a threat to British national security? Today many prominent historians would argue that this was not the case and that a million British citizens died needlessly in the trenches for a misguided cause. However, this book counters such revisionist arguments. It disputes the suggestion that the British government either got its facts wrong about the German threat or even, as some have claimed, deliberately ‘invented’ it in order to justify an otherwise unnecessary alignment with France and Russia. By examining the military and naval intelligence assessments forwarded from Germany to London by Britain's service attachés in Berlin, its ‘men on the spot’, this book clearly demonstrates that the British authorities had every reason to be alarmed. From these crucial intelligence documents, previously thought to have been lost, this book proves that in the decade before the First World War, the British government was kept well-informed about military and naval developments in the Reich. In particular, the attachés consistently warned that German ambitions to challenge Britain posed a real and imminent danger to national security. As a result, the book concludes that far from being mistaken or invented, the British government's perception of a German threat before 1914 was rooted in hard and credible intelligence.

Everyday aesthetic experiences and concerns occupy a large part of our aesthetic life. However, because of their prevalence and mundane nature, we tend not to pay much attention to them, let alone examine their significance. Western aesthetic theories of the last two centuries also neglect everyday aesthetics because of their almost exclusive emphasis on art. This book aims to correct this neglect by revealing how our everyday aesthetic tastes and judgments can exert a powerful influence on the state of the world and the quality of life. By analyzing a wide range of contemporary examples from our aesthetic interactions with nature, the environment, and everyday objects, as well as precedents in 18th century British aesthetics, 19th century American landscape appreciation, and Japanese culture, this book illustrates the complex nature of seemingly simple and innocuous aesthetic responses. The issues discussed include the inadequacy of art-centered aesthetics, diverse modes of practicing everyday aesthetics, the environmental ramifications of our everyday aesthetic tastes and judgments, green aesthetics, the aesthetic appreciation of the distinctive characteristics of objects and phenomena, responses to various manifestations of transience, and the aesthetic experience of moral values. The discussion of each issue explores the complex nature of everyday aesthetics, as well as the power of the aesthetic, by illuminating its serious moral, political, existential, and environmental implications that are often unrecognized.

After 1949, the British Empire in Hong Kong was more vulnerable than the lack of Chinese demand for return and the success of Hong Kong's economic transformations might have suggested. Its vulnerability stemmed as much from Britain's imperial decline and America's Cold War requirements as from a Chinese threat. It culminated in the little known ‘1957 Question’, a year when the British position in Hong Kong appeared more uncertain than any time since 1949. This is the first scholarly study that places Hong Kong at the heart of the Anglo–American relationship in the wider context of the Cold War in Asia. Unlike existing works, which tend to treat British and US policies in isolation, this book explores their dynamic interactions — how the two allies perceived, responded to, and attempted to influence each other's policies and actions. It also provides a major reinterpretation of Hong Kong's involvement in the containment of China. The author argues that, concerned about possible Chinese retaliation, the British insisted and the Americans accepted that Hong Kong's role should be as discreet and non-confrontational in nature as possible. Above all, top decision-makers in Washington evaluated Hong Kong's significance not in its own right, but in the context of the Anglo–American relationship: Hong Kong was seen primarily as a bargaining chip to obtain British support for US policy elsewhere in Asia. Using a variety of British and US archival material as well as Chinese sources, the author examines how the British and US government discussed, debated, and disagreed over Hong Kong's role in the Cold War, and reveals the dynamics of the Anglo–American alliance and the dilemmas of small allies in a global conflict.

This series features studies of the lives and works of some of Britain's foremost scholars. This volume contains sixteen obituaries of recently deceased Fellows of the Academy. Obituaries of the following scholars are included: Brian Barry; Michael Baxandall; Robert Black; Henry Chadwick; Nicolas Coldstream; Howard Colvin; Mary Douglas; Robin Du Boulay; Alan Everitt; Robert Latham; Geoffrey Lewis; Laurence Picken; Thomas Puttfarken; Karen Spärck Jones; Christopher Stead; and Denis Twitchett.

This series features studies of the lives and works of some of Britain's foremost scholars. This volume of the Proceedings of the British Academy contains sixteen obituaries of recently deceased Fellows of the Academy: Peter Birks; William Frend; John Gallagher; Philip Grierson; Stuart Hampshire; William McKane; Sir Malcolm Pasley; Ben Pimlott; Robert Pring-Mill; John Stevens; Peter Strawson; Hugh Trevor-Roper; Sir William Wade; Alan Williams; Sir Bernard Williams; and John Wymer.