Dear Old Blighty

'So the recruiters, rolling up their sleeves, varied the appeal to pride, honour, manliness and vengeance with warnings to eschew shame, disgrace, betrayal, sloth and cowardice. From a poster showing the ruins of Belgium a woman asked, 'Will you go or must I?'' First published in 1980, Dear Old Blighty is E.S. Turner's superb account of life 'on the home front' in Britain during the Great War of 1914-1918: a time of conscription, propaganda, 'spy fever', industrial unrest in the arms factories, and grieving families turning to spiritualism. When even the blind were being recruited to serve as listening sentries for approaching Zeppelins, all were expected to contribute to the war effort; and, as Turner shows us, the means of exhortation (and the penalties for non-compliance) were many. 'No matter where you open a page, you learn something you feel you should have known.' Miles Kington, Independent

Raised by a single mother on welfare during the 1930's depression and World War II in the Scottish Highlands, Ian spends his childhood trying to get enough to eat and stay warm. During an adolescence apprenticed to a drunken blacksmith, he also begins a lifelong love affair with music-making while wavering between the strictures of the Salvation Army and the "worldly pleasures" of the outside world. Life begins to improve when Ian enters the Royal Air Force, serving five years as an aircraft engine mechanic and bandsman in the United Kingdom and then Egypt. In the latter, he experiences the consequences of the Arab "walkouts" that eventually led to the Suez Canal crisis. Most hilarious is his tale "Jig-a-Jig in the Desert" when the small military water treatment plant he supervises is invaded by Arab prostitutes. Returning to Britain, he marries his pen-pal, Mary, completes his military career and enters into civilian life, finally settling on his lifetime career as a machinist. Two daughters are born, one of whose life is saved at birth by a bottle of Scotch whisky. Despite getting established in Scotland, Ian gets "itchy feet" and thinks of emigrating. Misled by the inflated promises of an unscrupulous Government of Ontario official to choose Canada over Australia, Ian, Mary and the girls endure a winter sailing over the Atlantic in 1965, including a collision in the St. Lawrence Seaway. Ian and Mary struggle to adjust and to learn and speak "Canadian." Their daughters, however, are sounding like Canadian children within a few weeks! Misadventures in finding and keeping jobs and a suitable place to live in Canada lead Ian to conclude that he has only moved "from poverty to poverty." Will he be able to survive and eventually thrive in this new land?

In the year of her 100th birthday, Dame Vera Lynn's fascinating and life-affirming wartime memoir from the forces' sweetheart's of her adventures entertaining the troops in far-flung Burma. 'I was just twenty-seven years old when I went to Burma. It was an experience that changed my life for ever. Up until that time I had not really travelled anywhere at all, apart from one touring visit to Holland with a band I was singing with before the war, and I had certainly never been in an aeroplane. But I wanted to make a difference, to do my bit.' And she did. Written with her daughter, Virginia Lewis-Jones this is a powerful and life-affirming account of the time she spent with troops in wartime Burma. Based, in part on a diary she kept, alongside unpublished personal letters and photographs from surviving veterans and their families, it explores why it was such a life-defining event for her and shows how her presence helped the soldiers, airmen and others who heard her sing.

Punk bands have produced an abundance of poetic texts, some crude, some elaborate, in the form of song lyrics. These lyrics are an ideal means by which to trace the developments and explain the conflicts and schisms that have shaped, and continue to shape, punk culture. They can be described as the community’s collective ‘poetic voice,’ and they come in many different forms. Their themes range from romantic love to emotional distress to radical politics. Some songs are intended to entertain, some to express strong feelings, some to provoke, some to spread awareness, and some to foment unrest. Most have an element of confrontation, of kicking against the pricks. Socially and epistemologically, they play a central role in the scene’s internal discourse, shaping communities and individual identities. The Poetry of Punk is an investigation into the Anglophone punk culture, specifically in the UK and the US, where punk originated in the mid-1970s, its focus being on the song lyrics written and performed by punk rock and hardcore artists.

From the perennially young, precocious figure of 'little orphan Annie' to the physical and vocal ageing of the eighteenth-century castrato, interlinked cultural constructions of age and gender are central to the historical and contemporary depiction of creative activity and its audiences. Gender, Age and Musical Creativity takes an interdisciplinary approach to issues of identity and its representation, examining intersections of age and gender in relation to music and musicians across a wide range of periods, places, and genres, including female patronage in Renaissance Italy, the working-class brass band tradition of northern England, twentieth-century jazz and popular music cultures, and the contemporary 'New Music' scene. Drawing together the work of musicologists and practitioners, the collection offers new ways in which to conceptualise the complex links between age and gender in both individual and collective practice and their reception: essays explore juvenilia and 'late' style in composition and performance, the role of public and private institutions in fostering and sustaining creative activity throughout the course of musical careers, and the ways in which genres and scenes themselves age over time.