What is often held to be Britain's 'finest hour' – the Second World War – was not experienced so uniformly across the British Isles. On the margins, the war was endured in profoundly different ways. While D-Day or Dunkirk is embedded in British collective memory, how many Britons can recall that Finns were interned on the Isle of Man, that enemy soldiers developed British infrastructure in Orkney, or that British subjects were sent to concentration camps from Guernsey? Such experiences, tangential to the dominant British war narrative, are commemorated elsewhere in the 'other British Isles'. In this remarkable contribution to British Island Studies, Daniel Travers pursues these histories and their commemoration across numerous local sites of memory: museums, heritage sites and public spaces. He examines the way these island identities assert their own distinctiveness over the British wartime story, and ultimately the way they fit into the ongoing discourse about how the memory of the Second World War has been constructed since 1945.

A New History of the Isle of Man will provide a new benchmark for the study of the island’s history. In five volumes, it will survey all aspects of the history of the Isle of Man, from the evolution of the natural landscape through prehistory to modern times. The Modern Period is the first volume to be published. Wide in coverage, embracing political, constitutional, economic, labor, social and cultural developments in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the volume is particularly concerned with issues of image, identity and representation. From a variety of angles and perspectives, contributors explore the ways in which a sense of Manxness was constructed, contested, continued and amended as the little Manx nation underwent unprecedented change from debtors’ retreat through holiday playground to offshore international financial center.

A New History of the Isle of Man will provide a new benchmark for the study of the island’s history. In five volumes, it will survey all aspects of the history of the Isle of Man, from the evolution of the natural landscape through prehistory to modern times. The Modern Period is the first volume to be published. Wide in coverage, embracing political, constitutional, economic, labour, social and cultural developments in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the volume is particularly concerned with issues of image, identity and representation. From a variety of angles and perspectives, contributors explore the ways in which a sense of Manxness was constructed, contested, continued and amended as the little Manx nation underwent unprecedented change from debtors’ retreat through holiday playground to offshore international financial centre.

Cats with no tails, the one thousand year old Tynwald assembly, offshore finance institutions, and motorcycle road racing are all ingredients that help to define a Manx national identity. Modern, high-powered motorcycles being pushed to their limits on a course that has remained largely unchanged since 1911 is perhaps the most literal demonstration of the new meeting the old, on an island where the traditional and the modern exist peacefully and do not clash. The Isle of Man TT Races provides an excellent starting-point from which to examine the twists and turns of the island’s twentieth century history and, most importantly, the deep links between sport and society. This book examines the origins and expansion of the Isle of Man TT from the first motorcar races in 1904 up to the present day, charting the event’s acceleration from a small, domestic competition to a large-scale international event which has helped fuel the island’s reputation as the home of motorcycle road racing. In examining the links between sport and society, this book uses the TT races to look at changes in the mechanics of Manx politics, the streamlining of the Manx economy and construction of Manx national identity; it is not a history of winners and losers at the TT. It is because the TT has deep roots in the history of the island and because it has come to form a significant part of the island’s identity, that this motorcycle race continues to thrive in the present day. The TT makes the Isle of Man distinctive; others have tried and failed to replicate this event. Where else in the world can the modern motorcycle racer take in so much history and heritage at close to 200 mph?