Long remembered chiefly for its modernist exhibitions on the South Bank in London, the 1951 Festival of Britain also showcased British artistic creativity in all its forms. In Tonic to the Nation, Nathaniel G. Lew tells the story of the English classical music and opera composed and revived for the Festival, and explores how these long-overlooked components of the Festival helped define English music in the post-war period. Drawing on a wealth of archival material, Lew looks closely at the work of the newly chartered Arts Council of Great Britain, for whom the Festival of Britain provided the first chance to assert its authority over British culture. The Arts Council devised many musical programs for the Festival, including commissions of new concert works, a vast London Season of almost 200 concerts highlighting seven centuries of English musical creativity, and several schemes to commission and perform new operas. These projects were not merely directed at bringing audiences to hear new and old national music, but to share broader goals of framing the national repertory, negotiating between the conflicting demands of conservative and progressive tastes, and using music to forge new national definitions in a changed post-war world.

The shock of exile / Paul Kildea -- Britten, Paul Bunyan, and American-ness / Vicki P. Stroeher -- Collaborating with Corwin, CBS, and the BBC / Jenny Doctor -- An empire built on shingle / Justin Vickers -- Save me from those suffering boys / Byron Adams -- Britten's (and Pears's) Beloved / Louis Niebur -- Notes of unbelonging / Lloyd Whitesell -- Take these tokens that you may feel us near / Colleen Renihan -- Traces of Nō / Kevin Salfen -- Britten and the augmented sixth / Christopher Mark -- Quickenings of the heart / Philip Rupprecht -- Reviving Paul Bunyan / Danielle Ward-Griffin -- Striking a compromise / Thornton Miller -- From Boosey & Hawkes to Faber Music / Nicholas Clark -- The man himself / Lucy Walker -- Epilogue / Vicki P. Stroeher and Justin Vickers

A thematically organised overview of the musical, social and cultural contexts for the multi-faceted career of this pivotal British composer.

"This single-volume life-and-works biography of Ralph Vaughan Williams provides a contemporary reassessment of one of the twentieth century's most versatile, influential, and enduringly popular British musicians. Throughout his wide-ranging career-as composer, conductor, editor, scholar, folksong collector, teacher, author, administrator, and philanthropist-Vaughan Williams worked tirelessly to improve the standards and quality of British musical life. His compelling and original musical language-inspired in part by elements drawn from English folksong, French impressionism, Wagnerian post-chromaticism, Tudor-era sacred music, and Anglican hymnody-presented a distinctively British response to musical modernism over his sixty-year-long career, and in works ranging from art songs for amateurs to perhaps the finest symphonic cycle of the twentieth century. Alternating between biographical and analytical chapters, it draws upon previously inaccessible primary sources alongside a wealth of secondary material to craft a concise and engaging overview of Vaughan Williams's life and music"--

Long remembered chiefly for its modernist exhibitions on the South Bank in London, the 1951 Festival of Britain also showcased British artistic creativity in all its forms. In Tonic to the Nation, Nathaniel G. Lew tells the story of the English classical music and opera composed and revived for the Festival, and explores how these long-overlooked components of the Festival helped define English music in the post-war period. Drawing on a wealth of archival material, Lew looks closely at the work of the newly chartered Arts Council of Great Britain, for whom the Festival of Britain provided the first chance to assert its authority over British culture. The Arts Council devised many musical programs for the Festival, including commissions of new concert works, a vast London Season of almost 200 concerts highlighting seven centuries of English musical creativity, and several schemes to commission and perform new operas. These projects were not merely directed at bringing audiences to hear new and old national music, but to share broader goals of framing the national repertory, negotiating between the conflicting demands of conservative and progressive tastes, and using music to forge new national definitions in a changed post-war world.

Sir Arthur Bryant and National History in Twentieth-Century Britain is a significant new study of the work of the popular historian and journalist Sir Arthur Bryant (1899-1985). Since his death, scholarly interest in Bryant has focused on his Nazi sympathies in the late 1930s. Julia Stapleton broadens our understanding of the man and the writer. Stapleton illuminates Bryant's romantic ideal of his nation. She explores the historian's success in writing for a broad middlebrow audience, aided by his firsthand experience of two world wars; and she traces the decline of Bryant's authority beginning in the 1960s as the discipline of history diversified and new ties were forged between professional historians and popular readerships. Stapleton suggests that Bryant prefigured and sustained a form of nationalism that remained nascent within the British population (though not always its elites) deep into the twentieth century, as the Falklands episode and the recent resurgence of English national identity well illustrate. Twenty years after his death, when history has scaled new heights of popularity, a study of the historian whose work made perhaps the largest public impact in twentieth-century Britain could not be more timely.

This comprehensive survey of events, people and themes explores the interwoven culture, society, politics and economics of Britain at the start of the 21st century. Two hundred concise essays cover topics as diverse as pornography and the poll tax, the Blitz and New Labour.