Villages of Vision: A Study of Strange Utopias by Darley, Gillian

All over Britain and Ireland there are planned villages: for aesthetic, philanthropic or political reasons, for convenience and for ideals – the best known being Portmeirion, Port Sunlight, New Lanark and Bournville. Gillian Darley covers many hundreds of these strange and pretty arcadias built by aristocrats, industrialists and visionaries.

This revised edition includes a greatly expanded gazetteer, revised bibliography and a new introduction. The gazetteer shows, county by county, where such villages can be seen – not as museums but as evolving, living places.

"The book is no mean achievement. It spans over 250 years of development…The hare-brained, the magnificent, the withered, the bizarre notions of architectural theorists, as well as the successful, are all here in abundance" - Design Magazine

"Gillian Darley has produced an attractive book on an attractive subject…fascinating and lively" - TLS

Gillian Darley is a writer, broadcaster and prize-winning journalist, a former architectural correspondent of the Observer and Director of the Landscape Foundation until 1998. She is the former Chairman of the Society for Protection of Ancient Buildings.

She has degrees in History of Art and in Politics and Administration. Her biographies include Sir John Soane and John Evelyn (both shortlisted for the James Tate Memorial Prize) and Octavia Hill. She has written on architecture and landscape, in publications including the Financial Times and the Observer as well as the London Review of Books and the TLS.

Illustrated throughout, preface by the Guardian’s David McKie.

Reporting from Palestine is a unique book.

Barbara Board (1915-1986) was a rare woman foreign correspondent, from the age of 20 she reported from Sudan, Egypt and the Middle East.

Newsgirl in Palestine was published in 1937, and her Newsgirl in Egypt followed a year later – resulting in her being expelled from Egypt. This – her third book – was stopped because of Government war censorship then post-war paper shortages, and has lain forgotten until now.

Reporting from Palestine was written from the front line of the conflict between Jews and Arabs, Zionists and non-Zionists and Jews and the British Mandate Government. Barbara Board was there when the bombs went off, reporting mainly for the Daily Mirror.

Barbara Board interviewed everyone she could find – supporters and opponents of the Jewish underground armies, Arab landlords and peasants, Armenian and Christian minorities, refugees and British servicemen.

From the end of the fifteenth century until the 18th century Spanish Jews carried on Jewish practices in the shadow of the Inquisition. Those caught were forced to recant or be burnt at the stake in public “autos de fe”. This book describes the private lives of these secret Jews, drawing on their confessions and trial documents. This paperback edition covers the fate of the Crypto-Jews into modern times in Portugal and Spain, where traces still exist and families still carry out long-hidden Jewish traditions.


"Michael Alpert is to be congratulated on producing a book that is both scholarly and accessible. Not only does he interpret and bring to life the Inquisition files but he reveals with compassion the final years and months... of the Inquisition's victims..." - Sephardi Bulletin

"...a succinct and well-written survey.....detached and objective....wide-ranging and scholarly...it must be stressed that this is an important book covering many topics, rooted in wide-ranging study and direct archival research..." - Jewish Historical Studies

Michael Alpert is Emeritus Professor of the Modern and Contemporary History of Spain at the University of Westminster). His other books include the Penguin Classic ‘Two Spanish Picaresque Novels' and 'A New International History of the Spanish Civil War'. He writes regularly for Spanish popular history magazines on all sorts of historical subjects.

Long unavailable but in demand, this pioneering study of twentieth-century working class reading and writing in Britain helped revive a number of literary reputations, such as those of Alexander Baron and James Hanley, as well as distinguishing distinct regional literary cultures and narrative styles still existing in Britain.

Dockers and Detectives comprises five long linked chapters on:

● literature and politics
● American influences on popular fiction
● popular literature during WWII
● the novels of working class writers from Liverpool
● the novels of the Jewish East End

Dockers and Detectives was Ken Worpole’s first book, and was widely reviewed and praised on publication.

Ken Worpole is the author of a number of books on architecture, landscape and social history, including Last Landscapes and Here Comes the Sun. He writers regularly for the Guardian, Prospect, Times Higher Education Supplement and other papers.

"For many years, Ken Worpole has been one of the shrewdest and sharpest observers of the English social landscape." - The Independent

In 1849 several hundred thousand Europeans and Americans trekked across the country for the gold fields of California - the Gold Rush being a defining moment in that country’s short history.

John Clark followed the same historic roads and trails, retracing that journey through history. His travels took him through violent ghettos and even more violent hurricanes, desert sandstorms and blazing heat - cycling in areas where no sane person would choose to cycle. Along the way John Clark meets crazed war veterans, failing farmers, unemployed Mexican migrants, the washed up and those left over from the American Dream which the Gold Rush had done so much to form. His journey also took him through the wildest, the most beautiful and remotest parts of America.

"Travel books can easily degenerate into egocentric self-portraits... John knows his craft better than that. Indeed, it's hard to open the book at a random page without being plunged into some vivid and revealing conversation John's had on tour, be it with some extreme, ironic character or simply a couple of unassuming, hospitable family folks. A competent, well crafted book... readers will learn a lot from this exploration of a country."
Velovision

John Stuart Clark is a travel writer and cycling journalist as well as a cartoonist specialising in development issues. His credits include:

Travel writing: Daily Telegraph, Travel Africa, TGO, Traveler’s Europe

Cycling: Cycling Plus, Bicycle, Cycle and all major high street and specialist cycling magazines.

Comic strips: Time Out, Independent, Economist, Al Jazeera, New Internationalist, Times supplements... as well as creating and illustrating the international mass circulation development comics produced by UNICEF.

The standard work on allotment history and culture, rich in anecdote and detail on one of the last vestiges of our once everyday contact with the land. Now in its 2nd edition.

"...to all of you I recommend that classic The Allotment" - Observer

"...a wise and stimulating book" - Sunday Telegraph

Nicolas Walter helped create the surge of political dissent in Britain in the 60s and 70s. For forty years he was a key contributor to the anarchist press, as well as being editor of the New Humanist and factual accuracy was one of his passions. “Getting the facts right is not history, but it is a necessary preliminary” was his answer to the charge of supposing that history consisted of nothing more than getting the facts right. He presents anarchism as a natural response of ordinary people to the problems presented by the society into which they are born. He appeared regularly on Thought for the Day, That Was the Week That Was and other TV and radio programmes. He perfected the art of writing sharp and succinct letters so that more than 2,000 of these were published in the broadsheet and literary press in his lifetime.

Previous publications include About Anarchism, which was translated into Serbo-Croat, Turkish, Chinese and many other languages. Nicolas Walter was a third generation anarchist activist. He was the father of Natasha Walter.

The Anarchist Past and Other Essays is edited by David Goodway whose own writing on anarchism includes (with Colin Ward) Talking Anarchy, published by Five Leaves.

Five Leaves is pleased to announce a new edition of Arcadia for All - an exploration of how thousands of people from South-East England and the London hinterland built their own place in the sun, without benefit of local authority planners and building societies.

Arcadia for All includes dozens of photographs of the "plotlands", and interviews with those whose lives were changed by building their own homes.

"...the authors venture some fresh, practical and civilised answers... with consummate delicacy, skill and fairness"
- Times Literary Supplement

"Arcadia for All presents a powerful basis for a fresh analysis of town planning and building..." - New Statesman

"Arcadia for All affords a mix of fascinating information not easily available elsewhere" - Sunday Telegraph

Arcadia for All: (Ward) is the most distinguished British anarchist alive. Ward has spent long decades cheerfully advocating benign and peaceful ways to ignore both state and market. I recommend Arcadia for All. We need more books like this..." - The Independent

Dennis Hardy is Professor of Utopian History at Middlesex University. Together with Colin Ward he has written Goodnight Campers! The History of British Holiday Camps (new edition forthcoming from Five Leaves). His other books include Alternative Communities in Nineteenth-Century England; Utopian England and books on the New Towns.

Colin Ward is the chronicler of popular and unofficial uses of the landscape. His many books cover New Towns, urban regeneration and tenant participation in housing. He is the author of Cotters and Squatters: housing's hidden history; Talking Anarchy; and, with David Crouch, The Allotment: its landscape and culture. His book on Chartres is forthcoming from Five Leaves. He is also the author of Anarchism: a short introduction, forthcoming from OUP.

Arts in Society comprises a set of lucid essays on photography and painting, films, design, TV and theatre, buildings and towns – discussion points about culture in the 60s and 70s.

Contributors include:

Angela Carter on male pin ups and on make- up
John Berger on war photography and on Francis Bacon
Michael Wood on John Lennon, Roy Lichenstein, A Clockwork Orange, Bob Dylan and WC Fields
Reyner Banham on the potato crisp and on container terminals
EP Thompson on Britain’s penchant for humbug
Paul Barker on “Art Nouveau Riche” and on Kes
Paul Meyersberg on If…
Andrew Weiner on T. Rex and on Tom Jones
Dennis Potter on TV Plays
Albert Hunt on Joe Orton and on Morecambe and Wise
…and more

"Always the essays are strong and authoritative" - The Times

"These aren’t simply essays in criticism. The pieces are about how things actually work: why they are what they are." - The Guardian

"First published in 1977, this path-breaking collection of essays on modern culture from New Society magazine retains all its vigour and verve. Angela Carter writes on Sixties style, and on D H Lawrence; John Berger on Pop Art and Bacon; Dennis Potter on TV drama; Michael Wood on Dylan and Kubrick... These pieces set the gold standard for hip but heretical cultural coverage. The sheer quality of writing, and of thinking, keeps them fresh."
- Boyd Tomkin The Independent

"These days, every university seems to have a chair in Big Brother studies. But back in the Sixties, treating popular culture and mass entertainment as worthy of intelligent, passionate analysis was something of a revolutionary idea. These essays, culled from the pages of New Society and originally published in 1977, treat ice cream vans, crisp packets and cop shows on the telly like they matter. They also, with only one or two exceptions, still read extraordinarily well. While some of the predictions haven't worked out, much of the analysis (of our obsession with nostalgia, for example) is spot on, and the way in which the authors engage with their subjects is thoroughly enviable. These might be archive pieces, but they deserve to be rediscovered, and embraced, by the critics of today." - The Observer

"Arts in Society draws on an extraordinary galaxy of talent... (it) quickly became a classic... immensely enjoyable... reaches out to a broad audience rather than a specialist audience; (giving) the maverick view." - Night Waves (Radio)

Paul Barker is the former editor of New Society. He regularly contributes to Radios 4 and 3, and the national press, on social and cultural issues. He also writes regularly for Prospect.

Catalonia has been one of the major success stories of the last 25 years. Emerging from the dark days of the Franco dictatorship, when Catalan was once banned in public places, Catalonia has staked a claim as a dynamic European region with its own autonomous government, and a language policy which is the envy of many other minority languages across Europe. With the Olympic Games in 1992, Barcelona became synonymous with a stylish, modern approach to combining great public projects with private sector entrepreneurship. Barcelona will once more be the focus of world attention in 2004, when it hosts the Universal Forum of Cultures.

Catalonia brings together an account of Catalan history and culture, and the central, multi-faceted concept of nationhood. John Payne places particular emphasis on the Middle Ages and the modern period, when Catalonia has performed upon the world stage. The book concludes by reviewing the complex ideas around identity and nationhood, and the central role of the Catalan language.

"The book contains several original gems. Payne is particularly original when explaining ecology and nationalism... this thoughtful book is a thorough, loving account of Catalonia and its problems." - Times Literary Supplement

John Payne began his working life as a lecturer in English at the University of Barcelona. His first book on Catalonia was published in 1991. He is the author of Journey Up the Thames: William Morris and Modern England, published by Five Leaves.

East End 1888 is essential reading for anyone interested in social history and the history of London. Professor William Fishman shows what life was like for the labouring poor in the year of Jack the Ripper and the Matchgirls’ strike, when poverty, crime, disease and social unrest were at their height.

The communal life of the street, pubs and clubs softened the brutality of the daily grind, where the sweatshop, the ghetto, the poor tenement — and the threat of the workhouse - were ever present in an age of genuine “Victorian values”.

"In the hands of virtually any other historian this would have been a depressing book. But Bill Fishman has a gift, shared with Richard Cobb, of writing about horrible subjects in such a way as to leave you thinking that there is a God in heaven after all."
- Norman Stone, Sunday Times

"Fishman ís admirable book not merely enlightens us about a dead past, and excites our indignation on behalf of wrongs long since righted. It shows us a past in which we can all too clearly see the present." - Leon Garfield, Times Higher Educational Supplement

"A brilliantly perceptive study... a marvellous, vivid account of the poverty stricken world of the East End, not only scholarly and well documented but also very easy to read" - Spectator

William (Bill) Fishman is the chronicler of London’s East End. His other books include The Streets of East London and East End Jewish Radicals 1875–1914, recently re-issued by Five Leaves. The author is the son of an immigrant tailor, avisiting professor at Queen Mary College, University of London and former visiting professor at Columbia University and the University of Wisconsin. Now retired, he regularly leads East End walks and lectures in social history.

East End Jewish Radicals is essential reading for anyone interested in Victorian and Edwardian London or the history of the Jewish community in London, labour history and the history of immigration to this country.

Professor William Fishman describes London’s East End at a time of mass immigration from Eastern Europe to the shabby tenements of Stepney and Whitechapel. He describes the spread of libertarian and socialist ideals among the Jewish community culminating in the great strikes of 1889 and 1912. East End Jewish Radicals is published is republished for a new audience perhaps unaware of this forgotten part of London’s history.

"Brilliantly chronicled" - AJP Taylor

"An extraordinary period described by an inspired storyteller" - Arnold Wesker

"An immensely readable work, it should attract a large and enthusiastic audience" - Paul Avrich

William (Bill) Fishman is the chronicler of London’s East End. His other books include The Streets of East London and East End 1888. The son of an immigrant tailor, Fishman is a visiting professor at Queen Mary College, University of London and has held visiting professorships at Columbia University and the University of Wisconsin. Now retired, he regularly leads East End walks and lectures on East End subjects including Jack the Ripper.

Squatters were the original householders, and this book explores the story of squatter settlements in England and Wales, from our cave-dwelling ancestors to the squeezing out of cottagers in the enclosure of the commons.

There is a widespread folk belief that if a house could be erected between sundown and sunset the occupants had the right to tenure and could not be evicted. Often enquiry into the manorial court rolls shows this to be the case. Unofficial roadside settlements or encroachments onto the 'wastes' between parishes provided space for the new miners, furnacemen and artisans who made the industrial revolution, while cultivating a patch of ground and keeping a pig and some chickens. Colin Ward's book, full of local anecdote and glimpses of surviving evidence, links the hidden history of unofficial settlements with the issues raised by 20th century squatters and the 21st century claims that 'The Land is Ours'.


"...presents a wealth of fascinating anecdote, analysis and polemic highlighting the sheer variety of ways individuals have created sustainable homes and livelihoods in nooks and crannies at the margins of society." - Regeneration and Renewal

"A word of warning. Ward's deadpan style when writing about municipal bureaucracy is as scathing as his sense of humanity is strong. Planning and housing careerists should read it at home, not at work." - Roof

"Rural squatters are now only a footnote in social history. Their families built themselves a house on some unregarded patch of land... For years, the environmental humanist Colin Ward has tried to rescue such people from the mythology of heritage museums, the indulgences of romantic novelists and the dust of local archives; and to draw lessons from them for today. Cotters and Squatters is the latest vivid instalment of his campaign."
- The Independent

"Ward is not averse to a little squalor, or at least untidiness. The modern countryside is altogether too neatly packaged and sewn-up for the benefits of the well-off, he feels. Overzealous planning laws, and what he calls "the suffocating nimbyism of the countryside lobby, with its Range Rover culture", are dismissed as an affront to rural history. His new book is an exploration of the long struggle of the rural poor to acquire and keep a roof over their heads."
- The Guardian

"The politics of land ownership is a central theme of this book, and it includes a chapter on how squatting traditions relate to current issues in planning and rural development. ...Ward provides fascinating insights into this overlooked area of architectural history."
- SPAB News (Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings)

"I recommend Cotters and Squatters as a very interesting read but above all as a broad overview of the historical background to self-building by the poor and maybe a reminder to those of us who have houses that we should be more sympathetic to those without."
- Vernacular Architecture

Colin ward is the author of many books exploring popular and unofficial uses of the landscape. Together with David Crouch he wrote The Allotment: its landscape and culture, published and reprinted several times by Five Leaves.

Journey Up The Thames follows the course of the river to its source, the same journey taken by William Morris in News From Nowhere. John Payne explores both the villages and towns he passes through and the ambiguities of life in modern England. William Morris's ideas of democracy, of craft, of technology and the countryside form the backdrop of this journey, which ends 'by this sweet stream that knows not of the sea.'

The journey covers Walthamstow, Merton, Putney, Hammersmith, Hampton Court, Runnymede, Windsor, Eton, Slough, Cookham, Reading, Abingdon, Oxford and Kelmscott.


"John Payne might not have actually found utopia anywhere up the Thames from London to Kelmscott, but his appreciation of what he calls "Morris's tone" is keen, and the obvious enjoyment he had in writing this delightful book is yours to be shared when you read it."
- Freedom

"What I valued about his upstream journey was the way he teases out a whole series of today's social issues, in particular the loss of traditional employment and the widening gulf between the poor and the affluent." - Town and Country Planning

"This is not a literary book, nor is it a book about Morris... It is a book about the plight of all people at the beginning of the 21st century... it's ideas are important and thought-provoking." - Journal of Utopian Studies

John Payne has written books on adult education. His book on the culture and history of Catalonia is forthcoming from Five Leaves.

Where Peter Mortimer first journeyed, others later followed. He was the first writer to travel and work with fishermen out on the high seas, experiencing conditions not seen on land for 200 years. The Last of the Hunters, though much sought after, has been unavailable for years. Described as ‘a minor classic’, it is now brought out in a new updated format, though containing every word of the original.

Fishing is dangerous and unpredictable. Lives are often lost. This is a harsh, macho and dangerous world of thirty-foot long rust buckets about which most of us know nothing. Peter Mortimer lived the life, working on six separate boats over a six months’ period, winning respect from the fishermen and developing his own respect for people whose working conditions are primitive, and whose job security is non-existent. North Shields fishermen often work with unprotected machinery for 18 hour days, exposed on open decks to the harsh elements and the vagaries of the North Sea.

This new edition contains an Afterword which brings us up to date with the people of the distinctive North Shields fishing community, and how the changes in fisheries’ policy have affected them. Peter Mortimer was born in Nottingham and has lived in the North East for more than 30 years. He edits IRON Press and runs Cloud Nine Theatre Company. He has written more than 20 plays, and his book Broke Through Britain became a best-seller. His play RIOT and travel book Cool for Qat document the 1930s South Shields Yemeni riots and their relevance to Western attitudes to Muslims today.

"Both starkly graphic and descriptive as the moment demands. A compelling book." - Newcastle Evening Chronicle

includes a new introduction by Colin Ward

The London Years is the autobiography of a remarkable man and a window into a long-forgotten world.

Rudolf Rocker was a German Catholic who moved to London to became the acknowledged leader of the Yiddish-speaking Jewish anarchists. Rocker introduced this mass movement to world literature, lecturing on Shakespeare, Cervantes and Tolstoy; organised demonstrations of up to 25,000 against the contemporary Russian pogroms, edited Yiddish political and cultural journals; set up properly instituted Jewish trade unions.

Rocker established the Jewish Bakers’ union in a community action where housewives would only buy bread with a union label. In 1912 he organised a famous general strike of Jewish tailors which abolished the sweatshop system. This happened at a time of mass immigration by impoverished Jews, who were persecuted by a right-wing press and an 'anti-alien' movement which brought in the first anti-immigration controls. The London Years chronicles this vanished world.

The Jewish anarchist movement came to an end in 1914, Rocker was arrested as an 'enemy alien' and his journals were closed down. After the war Rocker was active in the ferment of Weimer Germany before leaving for the USA where he was active in the Jewish anarchist movement until his death in 1958. In the USA Rocker was mainly involved with the Yiddish anarchist magazine Frei Arbeter Shtimme which lasted until the 1970s and whose adherents included the young Noam Chomsky.

with a foreword by David Blunkett MP

The Streets of East London is an illustrated guide to the most vibrant area of London. For 25 years this has been a classic text, and steady seller in many London shops. Suitable for tourists, historians, and anyone interested in the history of London.

The Streets of East London talks about the East End, from the Huguenots of the seventeenth century to the Bangladeshis of today.

William (Bill) Fishman talks about the areas poverty and attempts to relieve it, the successive waves of immigration, crime – including Jack the Ripper and the Krays, the radical movement and ends with suggested walking tours.

The Streets of East London is crammed with historic photographs, and more recent images by Nicholas Breach.

William (Bill) Fishman is a Visiting Professor at Queen Mary College, University of London.

Of all political views anarchism is the most ill-represented.

In Talking Anarchy, Colin Ward discusses the ups and downs of the anarchist movement including the many famous characters who he worked with, such as:

Herbert Read
Alex Comfort
Noam Chomsky
George Orwell

Already published in Italian. German and Spanish editions in preparation. Accessible anarchist history and theory for students and politics buyers.


The authors:

Colin Ward has been a journalist and editor for sixty years, most famously editing the journal Anarchy. He has also been a columnist for New Statesman, New Society, Freedom and Town and Country Planning. OUP are publishing his Anarchism: a short introduction in 2004. Colin Ward's books include anarchist solutions to everything from vandalism to what to do after the motor age, as well as celebrating unofficial uses of the landscape, from holiday camps to squatter communities. The Allotment: Its Landscape and Culture; Cotters and Squatters: Housing's Hidden History; Arcadia for All: The Legacy of a Makeshift Landscape; and Chartres: The Making of a Miracle (coming 2004) are available from Five Leaves.

"Talking Anarchy is perhaps the closest thing to be found to a biography of Colin Ward... a welcome insight into the life of one of the great anarchist propagandists." - Freedom

Colin Ward is a widely published UK anarchist writer with 30 books to his name. Colin Ward's books are regularly reviewed by TLS, The Guardian and other broadsheets as well as specialist journals.

David Goodway teaches history in the School of Continuing Education, University of Leeds. He is the author of London Chartism, 1838-1848 and has edited For Anarchism; Herbert Read Reassessed and collections of Alex Comfort's and Herbert Read's anarchist writings.