Mike Esbester

Timothy R Hands

Hardy’s Religious Biography and its Influence on his Novels

Thomas Hardy: Distracted Preacher?

Paul Almond

This book analyses the perceived legitimacy of health and safety in post-1960 British public life. Since 2010 health and safety has appeared to be in crisis, being attacked by press, politicians and public alike, but are these claims of crisis accurate? How have understandings of health and safety changed over the past 60 years? By exploring the history, culture, and operation of health and safety in contemporary Britain, this book provides a new assessment of an understudied, but surprisingly far-reaching, part of the British political and social landscape. Combining archival research with focus group, social survey and oral history testimony, the book examines the historical background to health and safety, how health and safety has been enacted in public and in the workplace, the impact of changing economic, occupational and social structures on the operation of health and safety, and the conflicts and interests that have shaped the area.

Society, Legitimacy, and Change since 1960

Health and Safety in Contemporary Britain

Tom Crook

For more than 200 years, everyday life in Britain has been beset by a variety of dangers, from the mundane to the life-threatening. Governing Risks in Modern Britain focuses on the steps taken to manage these dangers and to prevent accidents since approximately 1800. It brings together cutting-edge research to help us understand the multiple and contested ways in which dangers have been governed. It demonstrates that the category of ‘risk’, broadly defined, provides a new means of historicising some key developments in British society. Chapters explore road safety and policing, environmental and technological dangers, and occupational health and safety. The book thus brings together practices and ideas previously treated in isolation, situating them in a common context of risk-related debates, dilemmas and difficulties. Doing so, it argues, advances our understanding of how modern British society has been governed and helps to set our risk-obsessed present in some much needed historical perspective.

Danger, Safety and Accidents, c. 1800–2000

Governing Risks in Modern Britain

Mike Esbester

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