The book is a facsimile reprint of a rare antiquarian work, preserving its historical significance despite potential imperfections like marks and flawed pages. It aims to protect and promote important literature by making it accessible in high-quality, modern editions that remain faithful to the original text.
The book presents a captivating collection of photographs showcasing the transformation of Bexleyheath over the past century. It highlights various aspects of the area's development, capturing its evolution through time and providing a visual narrative of historical changes.
The narrative unfolds through the personal experiences of a man during the final year of World War II, drawing from his memories, letters to his mother, and official war records. It provides a poignant glimpse into the emotional and historical landscape of the time, revealing the struggles, fears, and resilience faced by soldiers. This intimate account highlights the impact of war on personal relationships and the enduring human spirit amidst chaos.
The full-colour illustrated history of this south-east London suburb. The history of this Greater London area from a well-respected local author. Illustrated in full colour with over fifty images and maps.
Tall, dark and handsome, with a manufactured name and a scrupulously designed professional image, Rock Hudson represented the Hollywood ideal of American masculinity during the 1950s and 60s; an ideal that was to be questioned and ultimately undermined during the years to follow by lurid accounts of his private life and his death from AIDS related illness. This illuminating analysis of Hudson's career reassesses the perceived disparity between his public persona and his 'true' nature. Exploring his unique qualities as a performer and exposing the role of his agent, producers and directors in the construction of his image, John Mercer unpicks Hudson's stardom to reveal a more complex star identity than has hitherto been understood. Foregrounding the ways in which Hudson's career provides insights into the nature of American popular culture and attitudes towards gender and sexuality, Mercer ultimately depicts Hudson as a star who embodied a period of transition between the old Hollywood and the new.
Gay pornography, online and onscreen, is a controversial and significantly under-researched area of cultural production. In the first book of its kind, Gay Pornography: Representations of Sexuality and Masculinity explores the iconography, themes and ideals that the genre presents. Indeed, John Mercer argues that gay pornography cannot be regarded as one-dimensional, but that it offers its audience a vision of plural masculinities that are more nuanced and ambiguous than they might seem. Mercer examines how the internet has generated an exponential growth in the sheer volume and variety of this material, and facilitated far greater access to it. He uses both professional and amateur examples to explore how gay pornography has become part of a wider cultural context in which modern masculinities have become 'saturated' by their constantly evolving status and function in popular culture.
Melodrama: Genre, Style and Sensibility is designed as an accessible overview of the, often complex, debates that emerge out of the connections between melodrama and cinema. The book identifies three distinct but connected concepts through which it is possible to make sense of melodrama; either as a genre, originating in European theatre of the 18th and 19th century, as a specific cinematic style, epitomised by the work of Douglas Sirk or as a sensibility that emerges in the context of specific texts, speaking to and reflecting the desires, concerns and anxieties of audiences. Each chapter includes overviews of key essays, analyses of significant and widely studied films and includes an annotated reading list
Mauretaniens Sklaven