The 'Land Question' occupied a central place in political and cultural debates in Britain for nearly two centuries. From parliamentary enclosure in the mid-eighteenth century to the fierce Labour party debate concerning the nationalization of land after World War Two, the fate of the land held the power to galvanize the attention of the nation.

Law and Society in England 1750–1950 is an indispensable text for those wishing to study English legal history and to understand the foundations of the modern British state. In this new updated edition the authors explore the complex relationship between legal and social change. They consider the ways in which those in power themselves imagined and initiated reform and the ways in which they were obliged to respond to demands for change from outside the legal and political classes. What emerges is a lively and critical account of the evolution of modern rights and expectations, and an engaging study of the formation of contemporary social, administrative and legal institutions and ideas, and the road that was travelled to create them. The book is divided into eight chapters: Institutions and Ideas; Land; Commerce and Industry; Labour Relations; The Family; Poverty and Education; Accidents; and Crime. This extensively referenced analysis of modern social and legal history will be invaluable to students and teachers of English law, political science, and social history.

Despite Britain entering the 20th century as the dominant world power, public discourses were imbued with a cultural pessimism and rising social anxiety. Through this study, Samuel Foster explores how this changing domestic climate shaped perceptions of other cultures, and Britain's relationship to them, focusing on those Balkan territories that formed the first Yugoslavia from 1918 to 1941. Yugoslavia in the British Imagination examines these connections and demonstrates how the popular image of the region's peasantry evolved from that of foreign 'Other' to historical victim - suffering at the hand of modernity's worst excesses and symbolizing Britain's perceived decline. This coincided with an emerging moralistic sense of British identity that manifested during the First World War. Consequently, Yugoslavia was legitimized as the solution to peasant victimization and, as Foster's nuanced analysis reveals, enabling Britain's imagined (and self-promoted) revival as civilization's moral arbiter. Drawing on a range of previously unexplored archival sources, this compelling transnational analysis is an important contribution to the study of British social history and the nature of statehood in the modern Balkans.

Squatting and the State offers a new theoretical and methodological approach for analyzing state response to squatting, homelessness, empty land, and housing. Embedded in local, national, and transnational contexts, and reaching beyond conventional property theories, this important work sets out a fresh analytical paradigm for understanding the deep, interlocking problems facing not just the traditional 'victims' of narratives about homelessness and squatting but also a variety of other participants in these conflicts. Against the backdrop of economic, social, and political crises, Squatting and the State offers readers important insights about the changing natures of property, investment, housing, communities, and the multi-level state, and describes the implications of these changes for how we think and talk about property in law.

Using a neo-Marxian perspective, Benno Engels examines the absence of urban planning in nineteenth-century England. In his analysis of urbanization in England, Engels considers the influences of property owners, inheritance laws, local government structures, fiscal crises of the local and central state, shifts in voter sentiments, fluctuating economic conditions, and class-based pressure group activity.

This collection offers new perspectives on the legacy of British colonisation by concentrating on Atlantic Canada, a region that was pivotal to safeguarding Britain's imperial ambitions, between 1750 and 1930.

Living Off-Grid in Wales addresses broad debates about the possibility of planning for a sustainable future, by an examination of rural development off the grid. Contrasting Wales’s policy on One Planet Development – a planning policy that encourages living off-grid – with a more DIY approach to living off-grid, the book presents case studies from eco-villages that imagine off-grid very differently. The text pivots on the problematic question that if planning is about the spatial reproduction of society, then why should it encourage autonomy from societal systems. The ethnographic case studies in the book comprise an ethnography of rural Wales, and the focus on eco-villages brings a fresh perspective to the anthropological literature on community by considering off-grid as a radical form of social assemblage.

This book explores the life and career of Frederick Temple Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, 1st Marquess of Dufferin and Ava (1826–1902). Dufferin was a landowner in Ulster, an urbane diplomat, literary sensation, courtier, politician, colonial governor, collector, son, husband and father. The book draws on episodes from Dufferin’s career to link the landowning and aristocratic culture he was born into with his experience of governing across the British Empire, in Canada, Egypt, Syria and India. This book argues that there was a defined conception of aristocratic governance and purpose that infused the political and imperial world, and was based on two elements: the inheritance and management of a landed estate, and a well-defined sense of ‘rule by the best’. It identifies a particular kind of atmosphere of empire and aristocracy, one that was riven with tensions and angst, as those who saw themselves as the hereditary leaders of Britain and Ireland were challenged by a rising democracy and, in Ireland, by a powerful new definition of what Irishness was. It offers a new perspective on both empire and aristocracy in the nineteenth century, and will appeal to a broad scholarly audience and the wider public.

In History of the Housing Crisis, Rebecca Searle offers a unique insight into the long history of the housing crisis, telling three stories that are central to understanding the contemporary crisis. The first explores the growth of owner occupation and how this was fostered by generations of parliamentarians as they wrested to contain the disruptive potential of democratization. The rise and fall of council housing is traced in the second story, which documents how a rent strike organized by Glasgow women forced the introduction of rent controls and council house building. Finally, the third story details the surprising legacy of the strikes, which was the boost they gave to the housing finance industry. Searle charts how successive property booms were fueled by lenders using financial mechanisms to displace risk to extend loans to lower-earning households. Rising interest rates placed strain on overextended borrowers and as boom turned to bust, wider economic turbulence ensued. Today we sit upon the largest housing bubble yet seen. As interest rates creep up, this book offers a timely intervention on how housing policy could better house the people.

While there are plenty of land law textbooks on the market, there is, in general, an absence of critical texts designed for law students to deepen their understanding of the subject. Great Debates in Land Law provides students with the contextual and critical aspects of this exciting topic. Each chapter introduces topics for debate such as “Is tenancy a property or a personal right?” and goes on to include features such as boxed discursive notes from the authors, important cases and suggestions for further reading. The Great Debates series provides engaging and accessible analysis of the more advanced legal concepts. For books in the major taught subjects, such as land law, the series is designed for use by ambitious students alongside a main course textbook. For books addressing subjects that are less often taught (such as family law), the series provides a clear and critical exposition of the key areas of debate. By focussing on particular questions and tensions underlying a subject, Great Debates titles encourage students to think critically, analyse a topic and gain additional insights. These skills and the discursive nature of the series, with an emphasis on contentious topics, are also useful for students when preparing their dissertations.