Playboys and Mayfair Men

Playboys and Mayfair Men PDF Author: Angus McLaren
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421423472
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 273

Get Book

Book Description
The shocking true story of a diamond theft gone wrong. In December 1937, four respectable young men in their twenties, all products of elite English public schools, conspired to lure to the luxurious Hyde Park Hotel a representative of Cartier, the renowned jewelry firm. There, the “Mayfair men” brutally bludgeoned diamond salesman Etienne Bellenger and made off with eight rings that today would be worth approximately half a million pounds. Such well-connected young people were not supposed to appear in the prisoner’s dock at the Old Bailey. Not surprisingly, the popular newspapers had a field day responding to the public’s insatiable appetite for news about the upper-crust rowdies and their unsavory pasts. In Playboys and Mayfair Men, Angus McLaren recounts the violent robbery and sensational trial that followed. He uses the case as a hook to draw the reader into a revelatory exploration of key interwar social issues, from masculinity and cultural decadence to broader anxieties about moral decay. In his gripping depiction of Mayfair’s celebrity high life, McLaren describes the crime in detail, as well as the police investigation, the suspects, their trial, and the aftermath of their convictions.

Playboys and Mayfair Men

Playboys and Mayfair Men PDF Author: Angus McLaren
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421423472
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 273

Get Book

Book Description
The shocking true story of a diamond theft gone wrong. In December 1937, four respectable young men in their twenties, all products of elite English public schools, conspired to lure to the luxurious Hyde Park Hotel a representative of Cartier, the renowned jewelry firm. There, the “Mayfair men” brutally bludgeoned diamond salesman Etienne Bellenger and made off with eight rings that today would be worth approximately half a million pounds. Such well-connected young people were not supposed to appear in the prisoner’s dock at the Old Bailey. Not surprisingly, the popular newspapers had a field day responding to the public’s insatiable appetite for news about the upper-crust rowdies and their unsavory pasts. In Playboys and Mayfair Men, Angus McLaren recounts the violent robbery and sensational trial that followed. He uses the case as a hook to draw the reader into a revelatory exploration of key interwar social issues, from masculinity and cultural decadence to broader anxieties about moral decay. In his gripping depiction of Mayfair’s celebrity high life, McLaren describes the crime in detail, as well as the police investigation, the suspects, their trial, and the aftermath of their convictions.

Playboys and Mayfair Men

Playboys and Mayfair Men PDF Author: Angus McLaren
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421423480
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 254

Get Book

Book Description
The shocking true story of a diamond theft gone wrong offers a fascinating glimpse at the cultural currents of 1930s London. In December 1937, four young men, all products of elite English schools, lured a Cartier diamond salesman to the luxurious Hyde Park Hotel. There, the “Mayfair men” brutally bludgeoned the man and made off with eight rings that today would be worth approximately half a million pounds. The press had a field day with the story, playing to the public’s insatiable appetite for news about upper-crust rowdies and their unsavory pasts. In Playboys and Mayfair Men, Angus McLaren recounts the violent robbery and sensational trial that followed. Using the case to explore the world of interwar London, he sheds light on key social issues, from masculinity and cultural decadence to broader anxieties about moral decay. In his gripping depiction of Mayfair’s celebrity high life, McLaren describes the crime in detail, as well as the police investigation, the suspects, their trial, and the aftermath of their convictions.

White Drug Cultures and Regulation in London, 1916–1960

White Drug Cultures and Regulation in London, 1916–1960 PDF Author: Christopher Hallam
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319947702
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 249

Get Book

Book Description
This book traces the history of the London ‘white drugs’ (opiate and cocaine) subculture from the First World War to the end of the classic ‘British System’ of drug prescribing in the 1960s. It also examines the regulatory forces that tried to suppress non-medical drug use, in both their medical and juridical forms. Drugs subcultures were previously thought to have begun as part of the post-war youth culture, but in fact they existed from at least the 1930s. In this book, two networks of drug users are explored, one emerging from the disaffected youth of the aristocracy, the other from the night-time economy of London’s West End. Their drug use was caught up in a kind of dance whose steps represented cultural conflicts over identity and the modernism and Victorianism that coexisted in interwar Britain.

The Culture of Male Beauty in Britain

The Culture of Male Beauty in Britain PDF Author: Paul R. Deslandes
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022677161X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 445

Get Book

Book Description
Setting the Stage: The Foundations of Modern Male Beauty -- Physiognomists and Photographers -- Beauty Experts and Hairdressing Entrepreneurs -- Artists, Athletes, and Celebrities -- Poets, Soldiers, and Monuments -- Men on Display in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries -- Brylcreem Men, Cinema Idols, and Uniforms -- Teenagers, Bodybuilders, and Models -- Youthful Rebels, Gender-Benders, and Gay Men -- Insecure Men, Metrosexuals, and Spornosexuals.

Freak to Chic

Freak to Chic PDF Author: Dominic Janes
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350172626
Category : Design
Languages : en
Pages : 309

Get Book

Book Description
In this unique intervention in the study of queer culture, Dominic Janes highlights that, under the gaze of social conservatism, 'gay' life was hiding in plain sight. Indeed, he argues that the worlds of glamour, fashion, art and countercultural style provided rich opportunities for the construction of queer spectacle in London. Inspired by the legacies of Oscar Wilde, interwar and later 20th-century men such as Cecil Beaton expressed transgressive desires in forms inspired by those labelled 'freaks' and, thereby, made major contributions to the histories of art, design, fashion, sexuality, and celebrity. Janes reinterprets the origins of gay and queer cultures by charting the interactions between marginalized freaks and chic fashionistas. He establishes a new framework for future analyses of other cities and media, and of the roles of women and diverse identities.

Balancing the self

Balancing the self PDF Author: Mark Jackson
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 1526132141
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 311

Get Book

Book Description
This electronic version has been made available under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) open access license. Many health, environmental, and social challenges across the globe – from diabetes to climate change – are regularly discussed in terms of imbalances in biological, ecological, and social systems. Yet, as contributions to this collection demonstrate, while the pressures of modernity have long been held to be pathogenic, strategies for addressing modern excesses and deficiencies of bodies and minds have frequently focused on the agency of the individual, self-knowledge, and individual choices. This volume explores how concepts of ‘balance’ have been central to modern politics, medicine, and society, analysing the diverse ways in which balanced and unbalanced selfhoods have been subject to construction, intervention, and challenge across the long twentieth century. Through original chapters on subjects as varied as obesity control, fatigue and the regulation of work, and the physiology of exploration in extreme conditions, Balancing the self explores how the mechanisms and meanings of balance have been framed historically. Together, contributions examine the positive narratives that have been attached to the ideals and practices of ‘self-help’, the diverse agencies historically involved in cultivating new ‘balanced’ selves, and the extent to which rhetorics of empowerment and responsibility have been used for a variety of purposes, from disciplining bodies to cutting social security. With contributions from leading and emerging scholars such as Dorothy Porter, Alex Mold, Vanessa Heggie, Chris Millard, and Natasha Feiner, Balancing the self generates new insights into emerging fields of health governance, subjectivity, and balance.

The English Press

The English Press PDF Author: Jeremy Black
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1472524918
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 201

Get Book

Book Description
In this succinct one-volume account of the rise and fall of the English press, Jeremy Black traces the medium's history from the emergence of the country's newspaper industry to the Internet age. The English Press focuses on the major developments in the world of print journalism and sets the history of the press in wider currents of English history, political, social, economic and technological. Black takes the reader through a chronological sequence of chapters, with a final chapter exploring possible scenarios for the future of print media. He investigates whether we are witnessing the demise or simply a crisis of the press in the aftermath of the News of the World scandal and Levinson Inquiry. A new title by one of the most eminent historians of Britain and a leading expert on the history of the press, The English Press will appeal to undergraduate students of British and media history and journalism, as well as to the general reader with an interest in the history of England and the media.

The Cartiers

The Cartiers PDF Author: Francesca Cartier Brickell
Publisher: Ballantine Books
ISBN: 0525621636
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 673

Get Book

Book Description
“A dynamic group biography studded with design history and high-society dash . . . [This] elegantly wrought narrative bears the Cartier hallmark.”—The Economist The “astounding” (André Leon Talley) story of the family behind the Cartier empire and the three brothers who turned their grandfather’s humble Parisian jewelry store into a global luxury icon—as told by a great-granddaughter with exclusive access to long-lost family archives “Ms. Cartier Brickell has done her grandfather proud.”—The Wall Street Journal The Cartiers is the revealing tale of a jewelry dynasty—four generations, from revolutionary France to the 1970s. At its heart are the three Cartier brothers whose motto was “Never copy, only create” and who made their family firm internationally famous in the early days of the twentieth century, thanks to their unique and complementary talents: Louis, the visionary designer who created the first men’s wristwatch to help an aviator friend tell the time without taking his hands off the controls of his flying machine; Pierre, the master dealmaker who bought the New York headquarters on Fifth Avenue for a double-stranded natural pearl necklace; and Jacques, the globe-trotting gemstone expert whose travels to India gave Cartier access to the world’s best rubies, emeralds, and sapphires, inspiring the celebrated Tutti Frutti jewelry. Francesca Cartier Brickell, whose great-grandfather was the youngest of the brothers, has traveled the world researching her family’s history, tracking down those connected with her ancestors and discovering long-lost pieces of the puzzle along the way. Now she reveals never-before-told dramas, romances, intrigues, betrayals, and more. The Cartiers also offers a behind-the-scenes look at the firm’s most iconic jewelry—the notoriously cursed Hope Diamond, the Romanov emeralds, the classic panther pieces—and the long line of stars from the worlds of fashion, film, and royalty who wore them, from Indian maharajas and Russian grand duchesses to Wallis Simpson, Coco Chanel, and Elizabeth Taylor. Published in the two-hundredth anniversary year of the birth of the dynasty’s founder, Louis-François Cartier, this book is a magnificent, definitive, epic social history shown through the deeply personal lens of one legendary family.

Night Raiders

Night Raiders PDF Author: Eloise Moss
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019257678X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 288

Get Book

Book Description
Night Raiders is the first history of burglary in modern Britain. Until 1968, burglary was defined in law as occurring only between the 'night-time' hours of nine pm and six am in residential buildings. Time and space gave burglary a unique cloak of terror, since burglars' victims were likely to be in the bedroom, asleep and unawares, when the intruder crept in, prowling near them in the darkness. Yet fear sometimes gave way to sexual fantasy; eroticized visions of handsome young thieves sneaking around the boudoirs of beautiful, lonely heiresses emerged alongside tales of violence and loss in popular culture, confounding social commentators by casting the burglar as criminal hero. Night Raiders charts how burglary lay historically at the heart of national debates over the meanings of 'home', experiences of urban life, and social inequality. The book explores intimate stories of the devastation caused by burglars' presence in the most private domains, showing how they are deeply embedded within broader histories of capitalism and liberal democracy. The fear and fascination surrounding burglary were mobilized by media, state, and market to sell insurance and security technologies, whilst also popularising the crime in fiction, theatre, and film. Cat burglars' rooftop adventures transformed ideas about the architecture and policing of the city, and post-war 'spy-burglars' theft of information illuminated Cold War skirmishes across the capital. More than any other crime, burglary shaped the everyday rhythms, purchases, and perceptions of modern urban life.

English Nationalism

English Nationalism PDF Author: Jeremy Black
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 1787380831
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages :

Get Book

Book Description
Englishness is an idea, a consciousness and a proto-nationalism. There is no English state within the United Kingdom, no English passport, Parliament or currency, nor any immediate prospect of any. That does not mean that England lacks an identity, although English nationalism, or at least a distinctive nationalism, has been partly forced upon the English by the development in the British Isles of strident nationalisms that have contested Britishness, and with much success. So what is happening to the United Kingdom, and, within that, to England? Jeremy Black looks to the past in order to understand the historical identity of England, and what it means for English nationalism today, in a post-Brexit world. The extent to which English nationalism has a "deep history" is a matter of controversy, although he seeks to demonstrate that it exists, from 'the Old English State' onwards, predating the Norman invasion. He also questions whether the standard modern critique of politically partisan, or un-British, Englishness as "extreme" is merited? Indeed, is hostility to "England," whatever that is supposed to mean, the principal driver of resurgent English nationalism? The Brexit referendum of 2016 appeared to have cancelled out Scottish and other nationalisms as an issue, but, in practice, it made Englishness a topic of particular interest and urgency, as set out in this short history of its origins and evolution.