Anglo-American Relations: End of a Special Relationship?

Obama's election in 2008 as the United States’ first self-styled Pacific President drew a hearty round of ‘end of the affair’ editorials about Anglo-American relations. His first term was littered with ‘snubgates’, serious irritations in policy areas regarded as being core to the special relationship, and indications of an accelerating US departure from Europe with his premier foreign-policy strategy declared to be a pivot to Asia. His return for a second term in 2013 augers a continuation of first-term adjustments in US foreign policy and greater domestic focus given a divided Congress and a bitterly split and war-weary United States with domestic priorities to the fore. Doomsayers - or so-called terminalists - have been repeatedly gainsaid by the Lazarus-like quality of the relationship in the past but can the Anglo-American special relationship survive in the Obama environment? This article suggests it can and sets out the author's rather unfashionable argument in four parts: the weight of history; the canons of international-relations theory; the importance of considering interest and sentiment in explaining the special relationship's resilience; and a relativist argument that suggests the United States still really does have no better ally than the United Kingdom.     

Colonial Cottage to State House: One Century of Housing Styles in Gisborne,New Zealand

The small New Zealand city of Gisborne, with its roots in the lute Wth century, contains house styles characteristic of New Zealand's urban residential history. Small cottages, Colonial bungalows, simple Colonial Georgian and Regency styles, Victorian Gothic style houses, “villas,” “Bay Villas,” “California Bungalows” and “State Houses” are all found in Gisborne. Questions of the origin of each style and whether these styles display any distinctive New Zealand characteristics are addressed in this study.     

Village Plans in County Durham: A Preliminary Statement

THIS paper examines some facets of rural settlement-morphology within co. Durham and demonstrates the way in which all villages involve particular combinations of universal structural components. These provide grounds for a logical classification and a framework within which to explore the origins of some of the plan-types that can be identified. A close analysis of the most regular series, the two-row plans, indicates that a strong measure of deliberate ordering was involved and evidence is presented to suggest that some villages, which were first mapped in the 19th century, possess a plan-type that developed before 1200. Furthermore there are grounds for arguing that there may be traces of village-regulation, such is as found in Scandinavia and has been described by G. C. Homans. A possible date for the imposition of this regularity would be the years immediately after the widespread devastations in the north at the end of the 11th century.     

The Late Saxon Town of Thetford: An Interim Report on the 1964–6 Excavations

Abstract

Reigate stone was one of the most important building stones used in London and along the Thames littoral in the Middle Ages but, despite this, its use has been largely ignored by archaeologists. This introductory essay attempts to look at both the geology and documented history of the stone quarries, and at the Battersea and other Thames-side sites from which the stone was distributed.