The Cold War and British Debates over the Boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics

This article examines the debate precipitated by the Thatcher government's (unsuccessful) attempt to secure a British boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Aware that it faced a struggle to win over the autonomous British Olympic Association, but with Thatcher in particular keen to support the United States, the government's case that the invasion required a specific response in the form of a boycott was steadily overshadowed as the public debate increasingly focused on arguments over human rights and détente and the use of state power.

"'That great little man": Dvorak and Wagner'

A study of Wagner's impact on Czech music in the later nineteenth century and Dvorak in particular

Missing Links, Cultural Modernity and the Dead: Anatomically Modern Humans in the Great Cave of Niah (Sarawak, Borneo)

The Great Cave of Niah in Sarawak (northern Borneo) came into the gaze of Western Science through the work of Alfred Russell Wallace, who came to Sarawak in the 1850s to search for ‘missing links’ in his pioneering studies of evolution and the natural history of Island Southeast Asia and Australasia. The work of Tom and Barbara Harrisson in the 1950s and 1960s placed the Great Cave, and particularly their key find, the ‘Deep Skull’, at the nexus of the evolving archaeological framework for the region: for decades the skull, dated in 1958 by adjacent charcoal to c.40,000 BP, was the oldest fossil of an anatomically modern human anywhere in the world and thus critical to ideas about human evolution and dispersal. Although several authorities later questioned the provenance and antiquity of the Deep Skull, renewed investigations of the Harrisson excavations since 2000 have shown that it can be attributed securely to a specific location in the Pleistocene stratigraphy, with direct U-series dating on a piece of the skull indicating an age for it of c.37,500 BP and the first evidence for associated human activity at the site going back to c.50,000 BP. The new work also indicates that the skull is part of a cultural deposit, perhaps a precursor to the long tradition in Borneo of processing of the dead and secondary burial. These indicators of cultural complexity chime with the complexity of the subsistence behaviour of the early users of the caves discussed by Philip Piper and Ryan Rabett in chapter ten of this volume.

Centres, Peripheries and Party Systems: nested secession processes in Great Britain and Ireland

The seminal work of Lipset and Rokkan, which explores how party systems evolved organically from nineteenth-century roots, has generally been applied in states which have enjoyed a long-standing territorial identity. Their model's emphasis on stability and predictability can, however, be reconciled with circumstances where the very identity of the state itself is an issue. This article explores the capacity of the model to explain party divisions in three nested contexts: the pre-1922 United Kingdom, which encountered problems with its Celtic peripheries, and especially with Ireland; independent Ireland, where a unique party system developed, largely in response to a broader historical and geographical context; and Northern Ireland, where party politics fossilised in the 1880s, and began to unfreeze only in the 1970s. The article argues that the Lipset–Rokkan model casts valuable light on these processes, which in turn contribute to the theoretical richness of the model.

Re-Envisioning the Artist Hero Through Two Cole Porter Biopics

Songwriter Cole Porter is unusual in having had two biopics based on his life: Night and Day (1946) starring Cary Grant, and De-Lovely (2004), starring Kevin Kline. The differences in the treatment of the character of Cole Porter between the films are striking, and indicate a change in the way that society envisions its artists, and the very act of creativity. Night and Day was conceived partly as a showcase of Porter's songs, but also as a means of providing inspiration to soldiers returning wounded from World War II, based on Porter's recovery from a traumatic riding accident. It depicts Porter as an everyman following a trajectory of achievement, from having little to great success, which was positioned as easy to emulate. De-Lovely, on the other hand, is about the relationship between Porter and his wife Linda, and the way that his creativity was influenced by his changing relationships with various people. Drawing on the work on biopics of scholars such as G.F.Custen, together with research into the shifting ideas of how creativity operates and is popularly understood, this article uses these biopics as case studies to examine the representation of changing concepts of the artist and the act of creativity through Hollywood film. It also considers how these changing conceptions and representations connect to shifts in American society.

Censoring the 1970s: The BBFC and the Decade that Taste Forgot

This book is a study of the British Board of Film Censors in the 1970s. In permitting and refusing specific material to be shown on cinema screens the BBFC were dictating patterns of taste and helping shape and determine notions of acceptability. Contentious and controversial texts like A Clockwork Orange (1971), Straw Dogs (1971) The Devils (1971) and Life of Brian (1979) have been used to draw attention to the way in which the BBFC operated in the 1970s. While it is true to say that these films encountered major censorship problems, what of the hundreds of other films which were being classified at the same time? Did all films struggle with the British censors in this period, and can these famous examples be fitted into broader patterns of censorship policy and practice?

In studying over 250 film files from the BBFC archive, this work reveals how 1970s films such as Vampire Circus (1971), Confessions of a Window Cleaner (1974) and Carry on Emmannuelle (1978) also ran in to trouble with the film censor. This work explores the complex process of negotiation and compromise which affected all film submissions in the 1970s and the way in which the BBFC actively, and often sympathetically, negotiated with film directors, producers and distributors to assign the correct category to each film. The lack of any defined formal censorship policy in this period allowed the BBFC to work alongside the film industry and push cultural, social and artistic boundaries; however it also left the Board open to accusations of favouritism, subjectivity and personal bias.

This work is not simply a study of controversial films and contentious issues, but rather engages with wider issues of changing permission, legal struggles, the influence of the media and the legislative and governmental controls which both helped and hindered the BBFC in this important post-war decade. The approach used within this work focuses on historical and archival research, making it importantly inter-textual and offering a great deal to scholars from a number of associated disciplines, including history, social policy, media and communications and politics.