Each of us can tell our personal story via a CV (curriculum vitae), so why not a nation? This is The National CV of Britain, a pioneering document which summarises the achievements of the Influential Islanders in a brief, upbeat and rigorous way, never before attempted. Britain has made a wildly disproportionate contribution to civilisation and this work celebrates the fact with verve and intellectual fireworks. The CV sets out to make the story of Britain easy and fun to access, for young and old alike, with a fully interactive format. Itself just 30 pages long, the CV comes with an inbuilt database over ten times as long. This is The National CVpedia of Britain. Click on a CV claim that seems to you improbable and you will be whisked to the evidence behind it. Browse, delve, imbibe, devour - whatever way you want to interact with the CV, you will find an abundance of facts, figures and delightful anecdotes to interest and astound. The National CV of Britain is a unique forward-looking history that has the Influential Islanders ‘Applying for the future’. This is a fully interactive book, and we recommend it to be used with a Kindle Touch, Kindle Fire or iPad.

The Queen's Diamond Jubilee and the Olympics look set to make 2012 as successful as the royal weddings of 2011 when it comes to creating a surge of patriotism across our once self-assured land. But despite the latest wave of nostalgic British pride, Britain is in the midst of an identity crisis, with British values and identity the butt of scorn and sneers. Motivated by the sense that the notion of Britishness has been hijacked, and intrigued by the ever-vexed question of British identity and what it really means, Peter Whittle has set out to examine what's actually wrong with being British. With his trademark wit and insight, Whittle explores how, despite being chipped away at from all sides for the past five decades, pride in being British has shown an amazing ability to survive.

In a work of unusual ambition and rigorous comparison, Roberto Romani considers the concept of 'national character' in the intellectual histories of Britain and France. Perceptions of collective mentalities influenced a variety of political and economic debates, ranging from anti-absolutist polemic in eighteenth-century France to appraisals of socialism in Edwardian Britain. Romani argues that the eighteenth-century notion of 'national character', with its stress on climate and government, evolved into a concern with the virtues of 'public spirit' irrespective of national traits, in parallel with the establishment of representative institutions on the Continent. His discussion of contemporary thinkers includes Montesquieu, Voltaire, Hume, Millar, Burke, Constant, de Staël and Tocqueville. After the mid-nineteenth century, the advent of social scientific approaches, including those of Spencer, Hobson and Durkheim, shifted the focus from the qualities required by political liberty to those needed to operate complex social systems, and to bear its psychological pressures.

Extensively revised and updated, the fifth edition of British Civilization includes new illustrations, devolution, more debate and cultural material and covers right up to 2001.

Explores the origins and foundations of music education across five continents.