Edwardian Soap (March 23, 2000)

Setting:
The drawing room at 10 Buckingham Gate, the Bankes's townhouse in London, located near Buckingham Palace, London.
Time:
Boxing Day (December 26th) 1905
Play:
Everyone has a secret that they dread telling the family, not wishing to spoil the Christmas festivities, but once the truths start to be told, the family, staff, and friends have to subordinate their individual interests to preserve the good name of the family and protect its future
Cast:
Thomas Bankes, Tory M.P., a self-made man who has made some very bad investments in "the City" and fears for the family's financial future
Clarissa Bankes, daughter of Sir Peter Squires, Bart., who has been spending her own money indulging the bad habits of her brother, Robert Bankes
Cecily, their 19 year-old daughter, living at home, to be engaged to Sir Arthur Gentility, whom she does not love
Tom Jr., 16 year-old son, attending Eton until recently "sent down" for cheating on an exam
Robert Bankes, Celia's brother who is a charming bachelor, but also a compulsive womanizer and drinker
Sir Arthur Gentility, bachelor baronet in hot pursuit of Celia in the hopes of announcing the engagement early in 1906
Aunt Millicent, Celia's older, unmarried sister who hates everything and everyone
Michael, the Butler, who has been selling off some of the finest bottles in the wine cellar In order to bet on the horses
Milly, the young chambermaid, who is five-months pregnant after a late-summer visit from Tom Jr., before he went back to Eton
Mary, the middle-aged cook who wishes to marry a servant to a political rival of Thomas Bankes
Herbert Duckworth, barrister, colleague of Thomas Bankes
Elizabeth Duckworth, wife of Herbert, and friend of Celia Bankes

Parliamentary debate on Irish Home Rule (March 30, 2000)

Check the index for the relevant pages in Arnstein's text, but you should read chapter 11 of Britain Yesterday and Today, as well as chapter 11 of The Past Speaks. Use relevant primary source materials in the lower basement of Hayden Library, on the West side of the Microform Dept. See The Times (London) for April 12, 1912, Microfilm Reel #4 & May, Reel #5. See also House of Commons Debate--Microcard Hansard--J 301.K22, under Hansard 1360F, for debates from 1908 to 1918.

Setting:
The House of Commons, Westminster Palace, London
Time:
May 9, 1912
Play: The second reading of the Home Rule Bill for Ireland, which called for an Irish parliament as well as continued Irish representation in the House of Commons, was backed by most Liberal, Irish and Labour M.P.s, but mostly attacked by Conservatives and Unionists who dreaded Ulster's Protestants being submerged by the Catholic majority in a Ireland.

Cast:
Herbert Henry Asquith, Liberal Prime Minister
David Lloyd George, Liberal Chancellor of the Exchequeur
Winston Churchill, Home Secretary
Edward Grey, Foreign Secretary
John Redmond, Backbench Irish leader of Home Rulers
Ramsay Macdonald, Backbench Labour M.P. in support of Home Rule for Ireland
Andrew Bonar Law, Shadow Prime Minister and head of the Conservative Party
Arthur James Balfour, former Conservative Prime Minister and Backbencher
Edward Carson, an extremist Conservative Backbencher opponent of Home Rule
Mark Sykes, a moderate Conservative Backbencher opponent of Home Rule

Interwar Partisan Weeklies (April 13, 2000)

Students should read chapters 16 and 17 in Arnstein's Britain Yesterday and Today, as well as chapter 16 in his Past Speaks. To look at the actual publications, which are in Hayden Library's Microform Dept., on the west side of the lower basement, see The New Statesman and Nation, AP4.N64, Vol. 12 (1931-1949) and The Economist, HC11.E2, Vols. 124-125 (1913-1969). You might also want to look in the stacks for The Illustrated London News, AP4.I3.
Setting:
Newsrooms of The New Statesman and of The Economist
Time:
Early December, 1936
Plot:
Given the ideological tensions between the left and the right throughout Europe and the British Isles during the Great Depression, London's weeklies reacted rather predictably to the issues of domestic and foreign affairs. The leftists at The New Statesman and the right-wingers at The Economist should each, in turn, meet round a table to decide on the stories for the next week's issue, perhaps suggesting headlines and first paragraphs, with some powerful phrases to "grab" the public's attention. Possible topics are the monarchy (Edward VIII's abdication); unemployment (between 1.5 and 3 million in the 1930s); rising fascism (Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis formed in 1936); pacifism (Peace Ballot of 1935); Spanish Civil War (with Britain officially netural, but leftists supporting the Republican Forces, including anarchists, socialists, and communists), while right-wingers supported General Franco and the Nationalists. A tremendous amount of literature came out of the Spanish Civil War, including Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940) and George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia (1938).
Characters:
Editor-in-Chiefs for both weeklies
Home News Editor for both weeklies
Foreign Affairs Editor for both weeklies
Special Features Editor for both weeklies
Writers for both weeklies
Free lance writers
Advertising copywriters.

Post-Beatles British Pop (April 20, 2000)

Students might handle this in a variety of ways. In some of Professor Adelson's past classes, students have done an award's shows, with presenters characterizing the music of the award winners, who come up and say a few words, or prepared videos interviewing some of the leading pop stars; one class re-enacted the weekly B.B.C. program, Top of the Pops, another assumed the roles of three or four pop stars; another became disc jockeys playing excerpts of some songs; another provided hard copies of the some rock lyrics, regarding them as serious critics of society and the world. Students might read Arnstein on "The Permissive Society," pp. 403-407, Britain Yesterday and Today or Time Magazine (1966) and Viscount Eccles, "The Menace of Pornography," in The Past Speaks, pp. 403-411.
Setting:
London
Time:
Spring, 2000
Plot:
Up to the student imaginations and preparations.

London's Press Today (April 27, 2000)

Professor Adelson will provide students with a copy of all the leading London newspapers published on the same day in early 2000, which is the basis of the presentation. In the past, students have produced a video reporting on the different newspapers, their circulations, or dramatized a street scene, with differently dressed people reading and discussing different newspapers; a newsagent chatting with his customers who ask for different newspapers; round-table discussions of the different papers and their different readers, or depicted Londoners on the tube and reading different papers, which reveal a good deal about the person reading that paper. Each of the papers treat the news at home, abroad, the United States in their own way, with different advertising, coverage, styles of news presentation evident in the quality and cheap press.
Setting:
London
Time:
Present
Plot and characters up to the students
If you are what you read, then the following old characterization is relevant:
The Times is read by the people who run the country.
The Daily Mirror is read by the people who think they run the country.
The Guardian is read by the people who think they should run the country.
The Morning Star is read by those who think another country should run this country.
The Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country.
The Express is read by people who think the country should be run as it used to be
The Daily Telegraph is read by the people who think it is run as it used to be
The Sun is read by people who don't care who runs the country so long as she has big tits.