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The author describes his arrival at Nantz, France, and his travel to England. At Nantz, a French town, the poor people who dealt in every commodity approached him and his group and offered different kinds of fruit, bread, and fresh butter for sale. The sailors, who had not seen this fare for six months, were very happy to see their native land. The author remained in Nantz for sixteen days, after which Captain S. and Mr. Peacock set out post in a carriage for England. After a week's voyage, they arrived at Calais and then reached England in one day, at the small sea-port of Dover.

This chapter analyses the changing relationship between the Hospital and Henry VIII and his ministers. It is stated that this was generally positive until the fall of Rhodes in 1522, although the prior of England, the accomplished diplomat Thomas Docwra, was regarded as a royal servant and refused permission to proceed to Rhodes. When the order failed to find a new home quickly after 1522, the king threatened to nationalise it and devote it to the defence of Calais, a threat that galvanised the grand master to come to England to meet the king. However, the difficulties created for the order by the royal breach with Rome were less easy to resolve. The order's privileges, incomes and overseas ties were assaulted by the Reformation parliament between 1529 and 1536, and while a compromise was reached between crown and order in 1537, the langue in Malta was split between those in favour of and opposed to the Henrician Reformation, its divisions perhaps prompting the crown to dissolve it in 1540.

Lanfranc allegedly wished to die of some dysentery or fever, because these illnesses neither disturb the memory nor impair speech. His wish was fulfilled: he died of a fever, postponing medication until he made confession and received the viaticum. He died at Canterbury on May 28, 1089, and was buried in the nave of the cathedral, to the west of the choir screen. This chapter chronicles Lanfranc's last years prior to his death and burial, including his continued support of William Rufus who would be proclaimed King William II, and the trial of Bishop William of Saint-Calais for his involvement in the failed rebellion against the king.

Although the Duke of Buckingham enjoyed the exercise of his local authority, his efforts to establish a coherent affinity and to extend his rule across Staffordshire and into Derbyshire were significantly flawed. In part, this may be a reflection of the fact that in 1441 he was appointed captain of Calais, an office which necessitated his periodic absence abroad from 1442 onwards. However, these absences were not frequent, and by 1442 the Earl had already had the benefit of several years in which to establish his local rule, so that the limitations of his regional policies cannot be wholly, or even largely, ascribed to this appointment. Rather, it seems that he was failing to establish his lordship as an authority which could adequately claim to represent or to control the North Midlands.

Since the last glacial maximum, some 22,000 years ago, the North Sea basin has undergone many transformational changes. Largely covered by ice at the beginning of the period, it became successively an arctic-like tundra, a ‘park-like’ landscape of extended grassland with shrubs and trees, a tundra again, and a plain with light woodland cover that was submerged eventually by the expanding North Sea (Coles 1998: 69–75). As the North Sea rose, over the last 5,000 years, to within a few metres of its current level, the interior of the sea did not alter significantly apart from changes in tidal patterns and depth. But on the periphery of the North Sea basin, the slighter sea-level changes added to the effects of marine and alluvial sedimentation and erosion and produced, regionally, periods of marine transgression—when the influence of the sea moved landwards—and marine regression, resulting in the opposite effect. The North Sea, throughout its history, has been the dynamic landscape par excellence. The history of research into the North Sea basin goes back to the 19th century, and will be discussed further below, but it was Bryony Coles’ article ‘Doggerland: a speculative survey’ (1998), which first raised the profile of the Late-glacial and early Holocene archaeology of the North Sea and inspired many of the current research activities, especially those relating to the southern North Sea basin. The renewed interest in the Mesolithic and Neolithic archaeology of the North Sea has made some significant advances, and holds the promise of even greater returns once the high-resolution reconstructions of the North Sea Plain are integrated with the archaeological finds. A series of publications has recently presented new archaeological sites. New finds from trawler fishing along the various banks in the North Sea, and from the margins (e.g. Flemming 2004; Waddington and Pedersen 2007), as well as the use of SCUBA technology (e.g. in Fisher 1995), will be discussed below. This chapter offers brief overviews of the history of North Sea research, the creation of the North Sea, and the archaeological evidence of human activity in the period from about 10,000 to 2000 cal bc.

This chapter presents three films that deal with homelessness and migration: Qu’ils reposent en révolte (Sylvain George, 2011) about migrants in Calais; Au bord du monde/On the Edge of the World (Claus Drexel, 2014) on homeless people in central Paris; and La Permanence/On Call (Alice Diop, 2016), which depicts a free medical clinic in Bobigny. In all of these films, the protagonists live at the metaphorical edge of society, and some walk other edges as well, between life and death, between physical and mental illness and health. These three directors explore what happens at these edges, far outside the realm of direct experience for most documentary film viewers. They follow characters to physical and geographical edges—national borders, riverbanks, beaches, and roadsides—and invite viewers to tiptoe up to those edges and feel the danger they pose. The films create film spaces, if ephemeral ones, where these rootless individuals do belong, where they can emerge as individuals, and where there is a potential for experiential and ecological connection with the viewer.

This chapter explores the ‘minor’ subjectivity of Sylvain George’s film-work, drawing on Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of minor literature and Henri Michaux’s ‘left-handed’ poetics. It claims that George’s unstable camera work, combined with the oscillation between the objectives of documentary observation and the sequences of lyrical expressionism, disrupt the traditional topographer’s position, resulting in a dynamic relation of inclusion. It closes by suggesting that this ‘minor’ mode, marked by its recurrent estrangement from the ‘real,’ is a crucial vehicle for capturing the complexity of the contemporary landscape of informal refugee camps in and around the cities of northern France.

Arthur Sullivan left for the south of France, crossing over from Calais on a “special” boat with the Prince of Wales and Reuben Sassoon. After supper with the prince in Calais, Sullivan and Sassoon continued their journey to Paris, and Sullivan then went on to Monte Carlo. By now, Sullivan's reputation as a gambler was being talked about in the press. Visits to the casino did not improve his mental state. He was still in low spirits, with the pressure of having to do another comic opera weighing on him, whereas he much preferred the idea of writing a grand opera—with William Gilbert, if that were possible. If Sullivan wanted to write a grand opera, Gilbert suggested Julian Sturgis as the “best serious librettist of the day.” This was not the reply Sullivan expected or wanted; it did nothing to lift him out of his despondency.

I joined the Intelligence Corps in autumn 1941. At that time few people were allowed into the Mansion at Bletchley Park, the nerve centre. I was fortunate enough to work in the Mansion and was one of the four founder members of the Testery, set up in October 1941 to break ‘Double Playfair’ cipher messages. Then in July 1942 the Testery was switched to breaking Tunny traffic. Before reminiscing about the breaking of the Tunny code I should like to recall Alan Turing himself. If it had not been for him everything would have been very different, and I am eternally grateful to him that I did not have to bring up my children under the Nazis. We would have entered a dark age of many years—once the Nazis had got you down, they did not let up. Here is just one example of what life was like under the Nazis. After the war I met a brave Belgian lady called Madame Jeanty. Her family was one of those who kept a safe house for Allied airmen, shot down over Europe and trying to make their way back to Britain to fly again. Helen Jeanty and her husband had a hidey-hole in their house, and had an airman in there one day when the Gestapo came calling, at the usual time of 6 a.m. They searched the house up and down but did not find him, and went away. Everybody was delighted and relieved—claps on the back or whatever the Belgians do. But the Gestapo came back again to find this celebration in progress. Her husband was arrested and taken away and she never saw him again. That sort of thing would have happened time and time again here in Britain if the Nazis had managed to invade. One reason Britain did not fall to the Nazis is that in 1941 Turing broke U-boat Enigma. The decisive effect he had on the Battle of the Atlantic can be seen from the tonnages sunk. The tonnages lost to sinkings dropped by 77% after Turing broke into U-boat Enigma in June 1941, from approximately 282,000 tonnes of shipping lost per month during the early part of 1941, to 64,000 tonnes per month by November. If Turing had not managed that, it is almost certain that Britain would have been starved into defeat.

The locale of nearly all archaeological research is land. Whether one studies landscapes, excavates sites such as monuments, cemeteries or settlements, or analyses material culture, the basis for study and debate comes nearly always from terrestrial contexts. Most land-locked archaeologists simply disregard the seas and the oceans, and where land is bordered by a saltwater landscape, this is all too often eagerly adopted as the convenient boundary of the study areas. Others, studying exotic material culture, are more interested in the terrestrial find spots than the maritime journeys of objects that have travelled long distances. Some archaeologists have studied the exploitation of the sea from the land, but rarely stray beyond the functional utilization of the sea and coast for food. A small number of archaeologists work on ships and waterside structures directly related to shipping activities, but this group of maritime archaeologists, with their own conferences and journals, have had very little impact on the thinking of their land-locked colleagues. The principal reason for choosing a sea over a landmass as the geographical centre for this archaeological study is that it provides an alternative space in which to explore the ways that people related with, and connected to, the world around them. As a part of the world that is physically unmodified and unalterable by humanity (at least until very recently), the sea offers an alluring contrast to the terrestrial landscape, with its imprint of human existence visible everywhere. This inability to change and to control the sea has, and had, profound impacts on how people engage with it. Gilles Deleuze developed this concept furthest, most notably in his study of Desert islands (1953), in which the sea is very much seen as a different space, the ‘realm of the unbound, unconstricted, and free’. The sea has since come to be seen as ‘the Deleuzian Ocean’ (Connery 2006: 497). One could say that this study offers a ‘maritime turn’ in terrestrial-dominated archaeology and, by doing so, sets out to investigate aspects of human behaviour that have been, to varying extents, disregarded, overlooked or ignored.

This chapter explores the diversity of migration regimes with reference to unaccompanied child migrants to reveal how they are forced to navigate complex legal systems, and the regulatory frameworks that are supposed to provide them with support and protection, but which all too often fail to deliver. The first section examines the role of scale in the development and implementation of migration regulations for unaccompanied youth. The chapter then considers border practices and the effects of off-shoring to process migrants applying for asylum, or as an attempt to reduce immigration. The chapter then focuses on the case of unaccompanied minors who came to Calais as part of their intended journey to the UK. The chapter argues that laws which are supposed to protect unaccompanied young people are not implemented in full, and that young people are not able to access the support which would enable them to benefit from these laws.

This chapter examines the theory and organisational practices of ensuring ‘safety’ for those participating in transnational migrant solidarity collectives. It uses ethnographic materials gained from participatory activist scholarship in Calais and London migrant solidarity collectives and assesses the ability of these groups to respond to the differentiated vulnerabilities that individuals bring to the protest camp- particularly in terms of the experiences and responses to structural oppression such as racism, sexism and homophobia. The current preference for safer spaces policies as one way of mediating conflict in activist collectives will be examined in terms of who may be left behind when individual trauma or addiction can leave people unable or unwilling to act according to the rules that these policies prescribe, and seeks different modes of collaboration that may not always feel safe or comfortable for all involved.

Even though Domesday itself is largely impersonal, there are people in Domesday who invite consideration. This chapter uses Domesday Book and other sources to consider whether there was a single mastermind, or ideas man, behind the project. The chapter considers the cases for Robert of Hereford, Osmund of Salisbury, William of St Calais, and Samson, later of Worcester, but argues that Rannulf Flambard was the most likely candidate. Land revenues, manpower, tenure, and taxation—all spheres of Rannulf’s administrative experience and success—were precisely the core functions of the Domesday data; his ability to think up and put into practice novel solutions was well recorded. The chapter shows how he had been commissioned from the start of 1088, and perhaps earlier, to put his expertise into practice in the royal service by administering abbeys and bishoprics during ecclesiastical vacancies.

This chapter first describes the attack on and fall of Calais, and the role of the Guise brothers. It then details the marriage of the dauphin, Francis, to Mary Stuart; the power that control of the Church gave to the Guise; the fundamental shift in Guise policy in France in the sixteenth century; and the growth of the Protestant Church in Paris.

This chapter discusses Churchyard’s return to combat during the final years of the Habsburg–Valois wars. It details how Churchyard served in the English-held Calais Pale and Boulonnais, and how he was present during the siege of Calais in 1558. The work focuses on Churchyard’s account of the vital role he played in negotiations for the surrender of Guînes Castle and what he would hope to achieve through emphasizing this story in his later writings. It charts Churchyard’s fortunes as a prisoner of war in 1558–9 and his eventual breaking of parole and return to England. The final section deals with Churchyard’s presence at the siege of Leith (1560) and the extent to which he composed or at least drafted literary works in the field while on military service.

This chapter focuses on the period between the battle of Poitiers (19 September 1356), when the English defeated the French army and managed to capture the French king, John II, and the ratification of the Treaty of Brétigny-Calais (24 October 1360), which concluded the first phase of the Hundred Years’ War and marked Edward III’s renunciation of the French crown in return for ample territorial concessions in northern France. The Anglo-French negotiations of 1356–60 overlapped with noticeable bureaucratic developments in England and the papal curia, where the management and record-keeping of diplomatic correspondence was increasingly administered not in the chancery, but by the privy seal office and the pope’s secretariat in the apostolic chamber. The chapter investigates how far smaller and less institutionalized departments took over the management of diplomatic correspondence not only because of administrative necessity but also owing to changing political circumstances that characterized the complex Anglo-French peace negotiations in 1356–60, first looking at the activity of the chancery and privy seal in England and then moving to the work of the papal chamber.

Over the 1430s and 1440s, a subtle but important shift occurred in the nature of urban political agency. In 1413–35, the dramatis personae in the theatre of the English urban political sector were civic governments, but in the years after 1435 collective political action was coordinated instead through informal networks of wealthy merchants. This chapter examines the causes and consequences of this shift in urban involvement in national politics, from public and corporation-based to private and mercantile. The first section examines why the Crown came to rely on mercantile resources in the years following the 1435–6 Burgundian assault on Calais and how merchants used their political leverage to influence royal policy. The second section goes on to investigate the effects that these lateral networks between members of the merchant elite had on the complexion of urban internal politics.

Typically, periods of political crisis in medieval England—such as the Barons’ War of the 1250s and 1260s or the troubles of Edward II’s reign—brought towns and their residents to the forefront of national politics, but the early years of the Wars of the Roses proved a notable exception to this rule. The first section of this chapter demonstrates that weakened links between towns, combined with the local dominance of mercantile elites in 1435–50, meant that the urban sector had neither the means nor the will to influence the brewing conflict between the duke of York and the monarchy in 1450–5. The second section, however, shows that the late 1450s saw a return to urban collective action and a ‘politicization’ of townspeople. The re-emergence of a ‘politicized’ urban sector in the Wars of the Roses proved to be a crucial factor in breaking the political stalemate of the 1450s.