Search Results

The narrative of a ‘people's empire’ had little currency in Britain after the mid-1950s. This chapter looks at Coronation year in 1953 as a moment that marked a post-war high-point in this narrative. The Coronation could be regarded as a notable example of the type of cultural representation that people come to imagine a shared experience of identification with the nation. The publicity which it received beforehand, the procession and ceremony on Coronation Day, and the aftermath of the ceremony, including viewings of A Queen is Crowned, all mobilized a wide variety of symbols and images of nationhood. Much of Britain, especially London, was turned into what would later be known by a term of American origin — ‘theme park’. The theme was Britishness, and there was very little about the occasion that did not make reference to ideas of national tradition and culture, marking what was perhaps the most fulsome celebration of British heritage in the history of the 20th century.

After the war, senior BBC officers sought to use broadcasting to restore the status quo, returning to their domestic mission of cultural uplift, and their imperial mission of supporting British influence overseas. The BBC remained a major presence on short wave and, although rebroadcasting by organisations like the New Zealand Broadcasting Service (NZBS) declined, use of government-subsidized BBC transcriptions increased substantially. Connections with the British world were cultivated, with improved coverage of rugby and cricket, flagship comedies such as the Goon Show, and the broadcasting of ‘media events’ including the Coronation of 1953 and the Royal Tour of 1953/4. Cooperation among public broadcasting authorities continued to be organised on a non-commercial, public-service basis. Contemporaries also assumed that radio would help encourage economic and social ‘development’ in the dependent colonies, and could be used as a tool of counterinsurgency, to suppress resistance to colonial rule.

The coronation of Louis XVI, which took place on 11 June 1775, is described in detail in this chapter where it is considered as an amalgam of several smaller rituals each with its own provenance and meaning. Apparently transgressive gestures are granted positive meaning. The role of the queen in the coronation is considered as is the meaning of tales of the king walking among the people after the ceremony.

The royal healing touch for scrofula was performed by Louis XVI after his coronation for the first time in over thirty years. This chapter examines how the ceremony was organised and by whom, drawing on the record left by a Remois woman. It delves into the history of the ceremony and of healing by touch more generally, situating this ritual in the context of contemporary medicine in order to produce an explanation of the attractions of the ritual, which drew over two thousand people to Reims to be touched by the king.

This chapter concludes its survey with examples testifying to Liverpool’s established standing as one of the main sea-ports of Britain. It reflects the striking development of transatlantic cruise lines and related changes in the working of the docks. Particular examples relate to the Liverpool Exhibition of 1886 and the preparations at the turn of the century for Edward VII’s coronation.

This chapter discusses the beginning of the Jack Rosenthal's career, as a television-serial writer with Coronation Street. It was his great good fortune to be employed by Granada as a graduate trainee working in research and promotions, at just the time the production company launched their groundbreaking serial. Rosenthal had the biggest, luckiest break a hopeful writer could have dreamt of, when he was invited to write his first-ever script for Coronation Street. His first foray into dramatic writing was episode 30 of this, the world's longest-running continuous television serial, broadcast on 17 March 1961. Although much has been written on the serial's history, Rosenthal's role in it has not been analysed, in spite of the fact that he was a member of the core team of Coronation Street writers between 1961 and 1969. He became a freelance writer in 1962, and spent a period in 1967 as the producer of Coronation Street, a role he was reluctant to take up in contrast to that of writer.

This chapter provides a profile of the television-series writer and creator Jack Rosenthal, who was born in 1931 in Cheetham Hill, Manchester, the second son of Sam and Leah. His parents were working class and Jewish, elements of his background that characterised all his work. Rosenthal was delighted to be commissioned in 1961 to write for Coronation Street, a soap opera set in a milieu he knew well. Almost everything for which his writing became famous stems from Coronation Street, including his interest in the underprivileged and the underdog, and their salty, everyday discourse and Englishness. Rosenthal's career paralleled and was integral to a formative period in the history of British television drama and he worked for the independent television company Granada before becoming a freelance writer in 1962. Throughout his career, his writing was characterised by the same kinds of comic verbal trope. Despite his many industry awards and nominations, Rosenthal's archive contains several examples of plays that were never televised or filmed.

This chapter examines media values that influence how mental distress is represented in television drama. It is less concerned with the correlations between fiction and accuracy, instead focusing on the wider questions of how and why fictional characters with mental health problems are introduced to programme narratives and their role. In particular, the chapter explores the factors that influenced the production team from Coronation Street to construct a storyline about a young woman, Carmel, who suffers from the condition erotomania. The point in the chapter is not to argue that sexual abusers are ‘in reality’ motivated by mental health problems, but, as shall be seen, that there are interesting similarities in how the two portrayals of the characters of Carmel and Trevor of Brookside were constructed. The similarities of the portrayals of Carmel and Trevor identify shared production values across different programmes in relation to specific social issues, regardless of programme and production staff members. The chapter ends with reflections on producing social issue storylines in television fiction, and by comparing and contrasting all three case studies and the values and priorities of television drama personnel.

Soap opera has traditionally focused on the home, the family, domestic tribulations and the strong woman, and, as such, has long been said to appeal to the female viewer. However, recently, the genre has tried to extend its audience by introducing several central male characters in order to attract the man in the audience and a wider range of television advertisers. This chapter begins by introducing a short history of soap opera. It considers the representation of women in the genre before looking at the changing depiction of masculinities in British prime-time shows such as Coronation Street, Emmerdale and EastEnders. It focuses on the ways in which masculine gossip, the blurring of the public and private sphere, and issues surrounding paternity can all be seen to negotiate traditional representations of hegemonic masculinity and the dominant male role. Although the chapter focuses on mapping out the key codes and conventions of the popular British soap operas, it also considers US soap operas and determines the similarities in formal and thematic elements between British and US soap operas.

Chapter 10 focuses on rituals of inauguration. It is suggested that the fundamental element of Hellenistic king-making—the binding of the diadem—was carried out by the ruler himself, there being no higher power on earth than the basileus. The king then appeared in public as if (re)born for a ritual of acclamation. This ritual was initially performed by the court society and (household) troops, but could later be repeated in various cities throughout the empires (the Antigonids may again have been exceptional). It will furthermore be shown how the ceremonies of burial and apotheosis of a deceased ruler were closely entwined with the ritual of inauguration of his successor.

Although the 1953 Coronation is remembered as a watershed in British television, 3,000 people paid to watch it on a cinema screen at the Royal Festival Hall. At that time cinema was still the dominant news medium, many people did not have access to television, and screens were small and picture quality indifferent. However, even in the current era of media fidelity, diversity and ubiquity, the viewing of royal events on big screens adjacent to the “real” action has not lost its appeal–quite the contrary. An estimated one million people watched the Golden Jubilee concert on screens in the Mall, 90,000 watched the wedding ofWi11iam and Kate in Hyde Park and Trafalgar Square, while many of the millions who lined the River Thames for the Diamond Jubilee Pageant watched the event on the 50 screens along the route. What motivates people to travel to view the action on screens rather than at home? How should we understand such events and the experiences they produce? Are they mediated, or auratic? Are they a means, as Scott Mcquire suggests, of compensating for the fragmentation of community and audience? Are royal events on public screens qualitatively different to sporting or political events transmitted in a similar fashion? Does the content determine the nature of this spectatorship?

Much of the detail in Part IV derives from the Beaumonts’ tours of Switzerland (1819) and Italy (1821). On his return from Switzerland, Beaumont spent over a year experimenting with new ways of painting Mont Blanc: he reports these efforts and longs for opportunities to consult Wordsworth as he progresses. Letters from Italy describe paintings and architecture in Venice, Mantua, and Rome; Beaumont also describes the Michelangelo Tondo he brought back to London. Beaumont conveys his increased interest in sculpture and provides an account of London during the Coronation in 1821 of George IV. Part IV contains the first extant examples of Lady Beaumont’s letters to Mary Wordsworth and much discussion of the Coleridge and Wordsworth children ensues. It closes with Lady Beaumont’s announcement of Sir George’s death in February 1827.

This chapter focuses on the development and advance of the arctic fur trade to the year 1914: the decline of the shore whaling industry and the rise of the market for white fox furs; the beginning of the dispersal of trapping families along the coast; the importance of the Cape Smythe Whaling and Trading Company at Barrow, Alaska; and the activities of H. Liebes and Company, furriers of San Francisco.

During the years 1937–1943, the large and varied works of the previous decade gave way to generally smaller and more intimate pieces, as though Vaughan Williams were once again deliberately narrowing the focus of his imagination. Whether this was an attempt to consolidate his expressive vision or reflected his ongoing struggles with writer’s block is unclear, but signs of this shift were apparent well before the privations of the Second World War made them all but inevitable, as heard in works like Riders to the Sea, the Serenade to Music, and the Five Variants of “Dives and Lazarus.” Unexpectedly, however, the demands of war led him to write music that responded to it in various ways: sometimes in manners intended to raise morale (e.g., Six Choral Songs—To Be Sung in Time of War, Household Music, and incidental music for Twelfth Night), sometimes by embracing new performance opportunities (like incidental music for radio or film), and sometimes by trying to express an alternative to the horrors of the conflict in a work like the tranquil Symphony No. 5 in D Major.

This chapter critiques fan studies’ work that has treated fandom as made up of cohesive “imagined communities.” Instead, it explores a “contact zones” model of transatlantic media fandoms. Examining fan accounts of “American monoculture,” it considers how practices of “Britpicking” in fan fiction communities assert the need for allegedly “authentic” fans to engage with the presumed cultural specificity of shows such as Sherlock (despite this being a UK-US coproduction). Britpicking thus occurs alongside “Brit-fixing,” where transnational TV drama is problematically recontextualized by fans as nationally “authentic.” Furthermore, “Ameri-picking” happens around US shows such as Supernatural when fanfic is written by non-Americans, while US fans also seek to distance themselves from imputed American monoculture, demonstrating that this is akin to “mainstream” versus “subcultural” distinctions. Finally, the chapter complicates assumptions of transatlantic fandom as a US-UK system of meaning by exploring the cultural positionings of Canadian fans of the UK soap opera Coronation Street.

It was in the twentieth century, during the reign of Queen Victoria’s three successors, the King-Emperors Edward VII, George V, and George VI, that the concept of imperial India, Britain’s most important colony, was invented and promoted by means of architecture, ceremonial, and a new capital city. This chapter discusses the Victoria Memorial Hall, the Gateway of India, the building of New Delhi and the 1903 Durbar. George V’s Coronation Durbar of 1911 was accompanied in London by the Festival of Empire, the Pageant of London, and the Masque Imperial. Between the wars, the British Empire Exhibition and the Pageant of Empire of 1924 were designed to convince the British of the imperial project.