It has long been recognised that the Church played a major role in the development of towns and cities from the earliest times, a fact attested to by the prominence and number of ecclesiastical buildings that still dominate many urban areas. Yet despite this physical evidence, and the work of archaeologists and historians, many important aspects of the early stages of urbanization in England are still poorly understood. Not least, there are many unanswered questions concerning the processes by which the larger towns emerged as planned settlements during the pre-Conquest centuries. Whilst the...

The first book of its kind, this lively history of British sport since 1800 goes beyond a few great names and moments to explain how sports have changed, what they have meant to ordinary people, and reveals what is especially distinctive about British sport in particular. The British were innovators in abandoning traditional, often brutal, sports, and in establishing a code of "fair play," which spread throughout the late Victorian Empire. They were also pioneers in popular sports and in the promotion of organized commercial spectator events, with the accompanying rise of...

Manpower is the lifeblood of armies regardless of time or place. In the First World War, much of Canada's military effort went toward sustaining the Canadian Expeditionary Force, especially in France and Belgium. The job was not easy. The government and Department of Militia and Defence were tasked with recruiting and training hundreds of thousands of men, shipping them to England, and creating organizations on the continent meant to forward these men to their units. The first book to explore the issue of manpower in the Canadian Expeditionary Force, Filling the Ranks examines the...