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This paper examines the rich possibilities for social history opened up by the cultural turn. Focusing on the interplay of myth, memory, and place, it begins with the Kymin, a hillside site outside the Welsh border town of Monmouth. In about 1800 this site was carefully remodelled to invest it with a series of meanings—urban/rural, enlightened/romantic, Welsh/English/British—through which those who visited it were able to explore and express their ambivalent identities. The eighteenth-century spa of Bath was also "symbolic territory," and in one of its iconic structures, the Circus, myth, memory, and place combined to allow the elite to examine similar issues of identity to those at the Kymin. Central to the mythical element in both sites was the notion of the hero. It was an idea that was to resurface on a grand scale in late Victorian and Edwardian Bath, as the city's historic fabric was reconfigured as a "mausoleum" to Britain's Georgian imperial heroes. The paper concludes by arguing that the identities examined in the paper were closely tied to ones of social class, and that the way forward for social history is a fusion of the cultural and the structural that emphasizes the interaction between the two. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comparative studies of the uses and changes of free time have been relatively rare in social history, especially in the 20th century. By reflecting on some of the ideas and findings generated by a new study that John Walton and Gary Cross conducted concerning the changes in the meanings and behaviors of playful crowds in the U.S. and Britain across the 20th century at Coney Island, Blackpool, Disneyland, and the Beamish Museum, this paper raises some of the possibilities and difficulties of doing a comparative social history of 20th century pleasure crowds. National and other differences will be considered in explaining why the Blackpool resort area survived much social change in the 20th century and Coney Island did not, as well as how Disneyland and the heritage site of Beamish reflected differing adaptations to middle class crowd and aesthetic sensibilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In May 1915, a wave of anti-alien rioting spread through the poorer neighborhoods of Liverpool, Manchester, London, and other English cities, resulting in the most wide-spread civic unrest in modern British history. The ostensible cause of the rioting was the sinking of the passenger liner "Lusitania" on May 7, 1915 by a German U-boat hiding off the Irish coast. This essay examines the riots in the context of neighborhood politics and family life, focusing particularly on the impact of the riots on interpersonal relations. While the German navy sank the "Lusitania," ordinary Britons ransacked, beat, and looted German neighbors who were often long-time associates and friends. Unable to stem the riots though police measures and legal action alone, the government responded to popular hostility with the internment of enemy aliens and the repatriations of large numbers of ethnic Germans. This paper draws on archival and published materials to make sense of the local and interpersonal dimensions of the "Lusitania" riots and to explore the emotional dimensions of civic expulsion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]