John Burnett

Idle Hands is the first major social history of unemployment in Britain covering the last 200 years. It focuses on the experiences of working people in becoming unemployed, coping with unemployment and searching for work, and their reactions and responses to their problems. Direct evidence of the impact of unemployment drawn from extensive personal biographies complements economic and statistical analysis.

Originally published in 1986, for the second edition of this standard text (previously only covering up to 1970) in A Social History of Housing 1815–1985, John Burnett has extended his study to take account of the next fifteen years. It remains a comprehensive and important survey, covering over a century and a half of developments in housing conditions both urban and rural, public and private, and tracing the evolution of mass housing through by-law terraces, back-to-backs and the tower block to the low-rise, high-density estates of the 1980s.

Why do so many people now eat out in England? Food and the culture surrounding how we consume it are high on everyone’s agenda. England Eats Out is the ultimate book for a nation obsessed with food. Today eating out is more than just getting fed; it is an expression of lifestyle. In the past it has been crucial to survival for the impoverished but a primary form of entertainment for the few. In the past, to eat outside the home for pleasure was mainly restricted to the wealthier classes when travelling or on holiday- there were clubs and pubs for men, but women did not normally eat in public places. Eating out came to all classes, to men, women and young people after World War Two as a result of rising standards of living, the growth of leisure and the emergence of new types of restaurants having wide popular appeal. England Eats Out explores these trends from the early nineteenth century to the present. From chop-houses and railway food to haute cuisine, award winning author John Burnett takes the reader on a gastronomic tour of 170 years of eating out, covering food for princes and paupers. Beautifully illustrated, England Eats Out covers highly topical subjects such as the history of fast food; the rise of the celebrity chef and the fascinating history of teashops, coffee houses, feasts and picnics.

Idle Hands is the first major social history of unemployment in Britain covering the last 200 years. It focuses on the experiences of working people in becoming unemployed, coping with unemployment and searching for work, and their reactions and responses to their problems. Direct evidence of the impact of unemployment drawn from extensive personal biographies complements economic and statistical analysis.

Useful Toil engages freshly and directly with the `ordinary' people of the nineteenth century. John Burnett has assembled twenty seven telling extracts from the diaries and autobiographies of working people - wheelwrights and stone-masons, miners and munition workers, butlers and kitchen maids, navvies, carpenters, potters and ship assistants to list only a few. The men and women who speak in these pages concentrate on their working experiences, though they also write about their homes and their fears. They thus reveal, often unconsciously, the essence of their attitudes, values and beliefs. Burnett's broad and sympathetic introductions focus and contextualise the wealth of material. These stories provide the antithesis of `great name' history, yet they constantly touch on human experiences that are timeless and universal.

In this companion volume to Useful Toil, John Burnett has drawn extensively on over eight hundred previously unpublished manuscripts. The result is a unique record of childhood that reveals in intimate detail the trials and hard-won triumphs of nineteenth-century working-class life. Besides affording rare insights into the developing child's world of dreams, hopes and fears, they reflect a crucial period in the evolution of a family tradition; a time when, to counteract the brutalizing pressures of urbanization and industrialization, ordinary people turned to each other for support. Children have seldom had a voice in history: these writers and their experiences take their place as part of the essential fabric of our past.

What did Queen Victoria have for dinner? And how did this compare with the meals of the poor in the nineteenth century? This classic account of English food habits since the industrial revolution answers these questions and more.

A timely look at John Buchan's much-loved pre-First-World-War novel - what inspired it, its themes and metaphors - and at how much of the author's own swlf and experiences are in it.

Several of Robert Burns' poems deal with the supernatural. This book intends to help celebrate the 250th anniversary of the poet's birth, looks at the world of himself and his contemporaries and tries to understand their fears and emotions, with particular reference to 'Tam o Shanter'.

In 1998, on the lookout for adventure and willing to take a risk, John Burnett left the comforts of the mainstream and became a UN relief worker in Somalia. Held at gunpoint by a child soldier, having to watching a baby die of malaria in his arms, the experience profoundly changed the way he saw the world.

Why do so many people now eat out in England? Food and the culture surrounding how we consume it are high on everyone’s agenda. England Eats Out is the ultimate book for a nation obsessed with food. Today eating out is more than just getting fed; it is an expression of lifestyle. In the past it has been crucial to survival for the impoverished but a primary form of entertainment for the few. In the past, to eat outside the home for pleasure was mainly restricted to the wealthier classes when travelling or on holiday- there were clubs and pubs for men, but women did not normally eat in public places. Eating out came to all classes, to men, women and young people after World War Two as a result of rising standards of living, the growth of leisure and the emergence of new types of restaurants having wide popular appeal. England Eats Out explores these trends from the early nineteenth century to the present. From chop-houses and railway food to haute cuisine, award winning author John Burnett takes the reader on a gastronomic tour of 170 years of eating out, covering food for princes and paupers. Beautifully illustrated, England Eats Out covers highly topical subjects such as the history of fast food; the rise of the celebrity chef and the fascinating history of teashops, coffee houses, feasts and picnics.

While sailing alone one night in the shipping lanes across one of the busiest waterways in the world, John Burnett was attacked by pirates. Through sheer ingenuity and a little bit of luck, he survived, and his shocking firsthand experience became the inspiration for Dangerous Waters. Today's breed of pirates are not the colorful cutthroats painted by the history books. Unlike the romantic images from yesteryear of Captain Hook, Long John Silver, and Blackbeard, modern pirates can be local seamen looking for a quick score, highly trained guerrillas, rogue military units, or former seafarers recruited by sophisticated crime organizations. Including new, up-to-date information for the paperback edition, Dangerous Waters is both a dauntless investigation and an epic, breathtaking modern tale of the sea.

Recognizing and discriminating between fungal populations and the genetical processes that accompany them, including speciation is now a rapidly developing field that is heavily dependent upon the use of molecular markers. There was no basic text on this subject, John Burnett has provided such an account. The text describes the methodologies employed and, for the benefit of those without a background in mycology, a brief introduction to basic fungal biology. Recent findings relating to processes in fungal populations - mutation, migration, recombination, heterokaryosis, hybridization, polyploidy, and the operation of selective forces are combined with traditional fungal biology. Finally the taxonomic problems raised by fungal species are discussed, together with the processes of speciation.

Drinking has always meant much more than satisfying the thirst. Drinking can be a necessity, a comfort, an indulgence or a social activity. Liquid Pleasures is an engrossing study of the social history of drinks in Britain from the late seventeenth century to the present. From the first cup of tea at breakfast to mid-morning coffee, to an eveining beer and a 'night-cap', John Burnett discusses individual drinks and drinking patterns which have varied not least with personal taste but also with age, gender, region and class. He shows how different ages have viewed the same drink as either demon poison or medicine. John Burnett traces the history of what has been drunk in Britain from the 'hot beverage revolution' of the late seventeenth century - connecting drinks and related substances such as sugar to empire - right up to the 'cold drinks revolution' of the late twentieth century, examining the factors which have determined these major changes in our dietary habits.

Drinking has always meant much more than satisfying the thirst. Drinking can be a necessity, a comfort, an indulgence or a social activity. Liquid Pleasures is an engrossing study of the social history of drinks in Britain from the late seventeenth century to the present. From the first cup of tea at breakfast to mid-morning coffee, to an eveining beer and a 'night-cap', John Burnett discusses individual drinks and drinking patterns which have varied not least with personal taste but also with age, gender, region and class. He shows how different ages have viewed the same drink as either demon poison or medicine. John Burnett traces the history of what has been drunk in Britain from the 'hot beverage revolution' of the late seventeenth century - connecting drinks and related substances such as sugar to empire - right up to the 'cold drinks revolution' of the late twentieth century, examining the factors which have determined these major changes in our dietary habits.

In this companion volume to Useful Toil, John Burnett has drawn extensively on over eight hundred previously unpublished manuscripts. The result is a unique record of childhood that reveals in intimate detail the trials and hard-won triumphs of nineteenth-century working-class life. Besides affording rare insights into the developing child's world of dreams, hopes and fears, they reflect a crucial period in the evolution of a family tradition; a time when, to counteract the brutalizing pressures of urbanization and industrialization, ordinary people turned to each other for support. Children have seldom had a voice in history: these writers and their experiences take their place as part of the essential fabric of our past.

Useful Toil engages freshly and directly with the `ordinary' people of the nineteenth century. John Burnett has assembled twenty seven telling extracts from the diaries and autobiographies of working people - wheelwrights and stone-masons, miners and munition workers, butlers and kitchen maids, navvies, carpenters, potters and ship assistants to list only a few. The men and women who speak in these pages concentrate on their working experiences, though they also write about their homes and their fears. They thus reveal, often unconsciously, the essence of their attitudes, values and beliefs. Burnett's broad and sympathetic introductions focus and contextualise the wealth of material. These stories provide the antithesis of `great name' history, yet they constantly touch on human experiences that are timeless and universal.

What did Queen Victoria have for dinner? And how did this compare with the meals of the poor in the nineteenth century? This classic account of English food habits since the industrial revolution answers these questions and more.