City authorities in recent years have competed vigorously to gain the right to host international festivals. In doing so they are heirs to a long tradition, since cities have always served as a natural location for festivals and fairs, providing settings on a scale impossible elsewhere. Cities of Culture examines the role of the Western city as the scene of staged cultural events over the last 150 years. Adopting a lively comparative perspective, it highlights the development of international festivals since London's Great Exhibition of 1851. Making extensive use of case studies and...

Following on the heels of their very successful Olympic Cities, in this book John and Margaret Gold turn to the experience of cities that stage regular cultural festivals, highlighting the nature and significance of performance, ritual and spectacle in urban life. While the focus is on the period from 1945 to the present, the history of urban cultural festivals from Antiquity to the mid-nineteenth century is included as background to the survey that follows. While cultural festivals have always been an intrinsic part of human society, it is in Europe that many of the high art forms and...

This is a key text on the very topical themes of power, defence and space.  Landscapes of Defence is an exciting collection of theoretical and empirical material from very well known contributors, desiged to help students understand how landscapes of defence fit in with some of the broader concepts of space, power and place to which they are introduced in the 1st year. The book is split into four sections, and each section contains an introduction placing the subsequent chapters in context. There is also a comprehensive introduction and afterword to tie the book's broad themes...