Oxford University Press's
Academic Insights for the Thinking World
By Douglas Bruster
Why should we think that Shakespeare wrote lines first published in the 1602 quarto of The Spanish Tragedy, a then-classic play by his deceased contemporary Thomas Kyd? Our answer starts 180 years ago, when Samuel Taylor Coleridge—author of ‘Kubla Khan’ and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner—said he heard Shakespeare in this material.
By Jean Allain
Today is International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition, established by UNESCO “to inscribe the tragedy of the slave trade in the memory of peoples”. That tragedy was the development of, in Robin Blackburn’s words, a “different species of slavery”. One that took the artisan slavery of old (consisting in the main of handfuls of slaves working on small estates or as domestic servants) and industrialised it, creating plantations in the Americas which fed the near insatiable appetite of Europeans for sugar, coffee, and tobacco.
By Daniel Parker
It’s that time of year again; Edinburgh is ablaze with art, theatre and music from around the world. For the month of August, Edinburgh is the culture capital of the world, as thousands of musicians, street-performers, actors, comedians, authors, and artists demonstrate their art at various venues across the city. Listed in Who’s Who and Who Was Who are some of the most famous names to have performed at the festival since its inception in 1947.
By Daniel Parker
Jeremy Bentham wanted to become a Carlisle Peace Commissioner but his application was wilfully ignored by Governor Johnstone. The Carlisle Peace Commissioners set out to the United States in 1778, three years into the American Revolutionary War, to negotiate a peace treaty.
By Dr. Robert V. McNamee
In July, Electronic Enlightenment (EE) updated with materials taken from the Virginia Historical Society and the correspondence of Adam Ferguson, amongst others. These apparently disparate historical correspondences (and others already published in EE) are brought together within this unique digital framework so that students, scholars and the public can read, in this instance, “across the Atlantic”.
By Ian Duncan
One of Sir Walter Scott’s creations has been much in the news lately: his country house at Abbotsford was formally reopened to the public by Her Majesty the Queen on 3 July 2013, following a £12 million restoration.
By Nick Mayhew
At a time when governments across the world are pursuing the elusive goal of economic growth, it may be instructive to consider the historical evidence for growth in Britain.
Few could have imagined the elusive floral wonder retrieved in January 1837 from the heart of Guyana’s wildest jungles– and fewer still could have predicted the extent to which it would transform an entire continent’s cultural and aesthetic sensibilities.
By Jacob Darwin Hamblin
Fifty years ago, the United States, United Kingdom, and Soviet Union signed a pact to stop testing nuclear bombs in the atmosphere, oceans, and space. As we commemorate the treaty, we will not agree on what to celebrate. There are two sides of the story.
By Tatiana Holway
Two hundred years ago today, on 3 August 1813, Joseph Paxton turned ten. In a farm hand’s family of nine children, this was likely to have been a nonevent. A decade after that, the day would also have come and gone like any other.
The Mabinogion is the title given to eleven medieval Welsh prose tales preserved mainly in the White Book of Rhydderch (c.1350) and the Red Book of Hergest (c.1400). They were never conceived as a collection—the title was adopted in the nineteenth century when the tales were first translated into English by Lady Charlotte Guest.
By Matthew Kilburn
It’s not been easy to avoid news that the duke and duchess of Cambridge have had their first child, that the baby is a boy, and that he’s been named George Alexander Louis.
By Francesca Moore
Many of us rely on herbal remedies to maintain our health, from peppermint tea to soothe our stomachs to arnica cream for alleviating bruising. Such is the faith in these remedies that Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) has funded alternative medical treatments and specialist homeopathic hospitals.
Britons know that when the sun shines you need to take advantage of it! With so many fantastic events spanning the summer months, there are plenty of reasons to celebrate the British summertime. Come rain or shine, this Who’s Who quiz for British summer events is sure to keep your summer bright.
Was Henry VIII a “family man” so to speak? The notion seems vaguely ridiculous; by 1547, the philandering English monarch had laid claim to six wives, two of which he had executed, including the infamously-beheaded Anne Boleyn.
By Kenneth R. Johnston
What do Edward Snowden and Samuel Taylor Coleridge have in common? Both were upset by government snooping into private communications on the pretext of national security. Snowden exposed the US National Security Agency’s vast programs of electronic surveillance to the Guardian and the Washington Post, Coleridge belittled the spy system of William Pitt the Younger in his autobiography, Biographia Literaria (1817).