Drawing from archeology, history, town planning, and sociology, this study considers family homes and new neighborhoods, the products and plans for everyday life, and the family lifestyle. Information is presented chronologically and in terms of class. Chapters focus on specific periods of time between 1918 and 1969, as well as on issues like health, comfort, and happiness. Forty-nine illustrations and black and white photographs are featured. Distributed by Palgrave. Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR.

Employing numerous examples of classic British design, Designing Modern Britain delves into the history of British design culture, and thereby tracks the evolution of the British national identity.

This encyclopedia contains some 500 articles, arranged alphabetically from "abortion" to "Yeats, William Butler." Levental (British history, Boston U.) chose the material partly to reflect his own interests in social and cultural history, the history of the labor movement, and in music and art, but did not attempt to impose a universal style on contributors and included entries related to most major other aspects of 20th century British history. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

In this wide-ranging survey, Peter J. Bowler explores the phenomenon of futurology: predictions about the future development and impact of science and technology on society and culture in the twentieth century. Utilising science fiction, popular science literature and the novels of the literary elite, Bowler highlights contested responses to the potential for revolutionary social change brought about by real and imagined scientific innovations. Charting the effect of social and military developments on attitudes towards innovation in Europe and America, Bowler shows how conflict between the enthusiasm of technocrats and the pessimism of their critics was presented to the public in books, magazines and exhibitions, and on the radio and television. A series of case studies reveals the impact of technologies such as radio, aviation, space exploration and genetics, exploring rivalries between innovators and the often unexpected outcome of their efforts to produce mechanisms and machines that could change the world.

Spanning the nineteenth to twenty-first centuries, this book investigates how home is imagined, staged and experienced in western culture. Questions about meanings of ‘home’ and domestic culture are triggered by dramatic changes in values and ideals about the dwellings we live in and the dwellings we desire or dread. Deborah Chambers explores how home is idealised as a middle-class haven, managed as an investment, and signified as a status symbol and expression of personal identity. She addresses a range of public, state, commercial, popular and expert discourses about ‘home’: the heritage industry, design, exhibitions, television, social media, home mobilities and migration, smart technologies and ecological sustainability. Drawing on cross-disciplinary research including cultural history and cultural geography, the book offers a distinctive media and cultural studies approach supported by original, historically informed case studies on interior and domestic design; exhibitions of model homes; TV home interiors; ‘media home’ imaginaries; multiscreen homes; corporate visions of ‘homes of tomorrow’ and digital smart homes. A comprehensive and engaging study, this book is ideal for students and researchers of cultural studies, cultural history, media and communication studies, as well as sociology, gender studies, cultural geography and design studies.

This exceptional book is the first full-length study on the 1951 Festival of Britain. As a consciously constructed cultural and educational event, or rather series of events, the Festival provides an opportunity to see a society and a government struggling to recast national identity after the experience of World War II. Primarily an examination of how Britain and Britishness were portrayed in the 1951 Festival’s exhibitions and events, Becky E. Conekin considers the Festival’s history and historiography, its purpose, its representations of the future and the past, the role of London and the "local", the British Empire and finally its legacy.