I imprint: 1291 books

At its height, the Napoleonic Empire spanned much of mainland Europe. Fêted and feared by millions of citizens, Napoleon was the most powerful and famous man of his age. But following his defeat at the Battle of Waterloo the future of the one-time Emperor of France seemed irredeemably bleak. How...

The figure of the auteur continues to haunt the study of film, resisting both the poststructuralist charges that pointed to its absence and the histories of production that have described its pitfalls. In an era defined by the instability of identities and the recycling of works, Performing Authorship...

Cinema has always been a vital medium for articulating the Basque region's unique identity and politics. The first definitive study of Basque cinema, this book provides a systematic analysis of the key Basque films, directors and cinematic institutions. Its narrative moves from the romanticised Basque...

Anthems are symbolic means through which nations present themselves to the world. Accordingly, creating seven new nation states out of the bones of Yugoslavia required new anthems. Why did these new states opt for century-old national songs or, failing this, for the anthems without words? What are...

With full-frontal genitalia, erections, even actual sex featuring increasingly in films, this explicitness in presentation has caused critical consternation and accusations that such film narratives are pornographic. This book explores how, rather than being pornographic, explicit sex can be an essential...

The history of Greek cinema post-1945 is best understood through the stories of its most internationally celebrated and influential directors. Focusing on the works of six major filmmakers active from just after WWII to the present day, with added consideration of many others, this book examines the...

In terms of visual impact, television has often been regarded as inferior to cinema. It has been characterised as sound-led and consumed by a distracted audience. Today, it is tempting to see the rise of HD television as ushering in a new era of spectacular television. Yet since its earliest days,...

The Kosovo question has been a major challenge to the international order since the outbreak of war in the 1990s. Yet, Yugoslavia, Albania, the USSR, the USA and Great Britain have in fact been involved, directly or indirectly, in the question of Kosovan independence since World War II.  Ethem Ceku...

Neville Chamberlain's policy of appeasing Hitler's Germany has been widely condemned. However, historians (and politicians) have been divided about the viability of alternative courses of action. Andrew David Stedman's illuminating new study of British foreign policy before World War II systematically...

Filmmakers in the early decades of the Soviet Union sought to create a cinematic map of the new state by portraying its land and peoples on screen. Such films created blueprints of the Soviet domain's scenic, cultural and ethnographic perimeters and brought together – in many ways disparate –...

Maurice Thorez (1900–1964) was a major figure in the history of twentieth-century France and European Communism for over three decades. Under his leadership, the French Communist Party (PCF) became France's largest political party and one of the most important communist parties in the Western world....

Charles James Fox and William Pitt the Younger were the two political giants of their day - the greatest of orators, and the fiercest of rivals. But did the two men have anything in common? Each was a younger son of distinguished fathers, who themselves had been bitter rivals for power a generation...

Secret lunches, off-the-record briefings, the leaking of confidential information and tightly-organised media launches - the well-known world of modern political spin. But is this really a new phenomenon or have politicians been manipulating the press for as long as newspapers have existed? In this...

The Seven Years War (1756-1763) was the first global conflict and became the key factor in creating the British Empire. This book looks at Britain's maritime strategic, operational and tactical success (and failures), through a wide-ranging history of the Royal Navy's role in the war. By the end of...