The 2024 UK general election was notable for the absence of constitutional debate, once a theme that dominated campaigns. This article examines that quietude and asks: does the election mark a shift away from an era of territorial conflict, or are longstanding tensions merely suppressed or delayed? Is this a return to “normal” British politics, with the territorial question sidelined? And what does Labour’s limited constitutional offer suggest about the future of the Union? Focusing on campaign dynamics, the early decisions of the Starmer government, and party positioning across the UK’s nations, the article argues that the appearance of stability is misleading. While intergovernmental tone has improved, substantive reform remains limited. Structural tensions — over autonomy, funding, and representation — persist beneath the surface. With the 2026 devolved elections approaching, the post-election calm may prove temporary: a fragile equilibrium rather than a settled will.
Isabella Bird (1831–1904), explorer, geographer, naturalist, writer and photographer, published Journeys in Persia and Kurdistan in 1891. The experience of travelling was first forced upon her by her state of health. A solitary traveller, she had already published five travelogues. This sixth story is a reflection on the affirmation of identity. Her complex position—juggling with, on the one hand, the Orientalist ideology of her time and, on the other, her commitment to the Kurds, transgressing gender boundaries and adopting modes of representation that were sometimes exotic, sometimes imperialist—also enabled her to assert a voice. This Victorian traveller reveals a triple marginality: that of a literary genre, that of a woman and that of a country (Persia). She became a writer thanks to a genre on the fringes of literature (correspondence and travel writing), to which she added the status of photographer and gained renown during her lifetime. By turning her attention to Persia, she placed herself on the margins of the British Empire, at the heart of the Great Strategic Game between Russia and the United Kingdom. Journeys in Persia and Kurdistan reflects the ambiguities of a woman’s gaze, which mixed politics with adventure, and whose discourse was at once concerned with imperialist power and the search for a status under construction.
The article is dedicated to the largest event in Slovak history during the Second World War – the Slovak National Uprising (SNU) and is based on the materials from the Russian Foreign Policy Archive, published documents, memoires and scientific research. The author reconstructs the events on the eve and in the beginning of the uprising, and dwells in detail on the assistance of the USSR to the Slovak partisan movement. The work examines the positions of the Czechoslovak emigrant government, some Slovak organizations and political figures in the West, as well as that of the leadership of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia in Moscow regarding the uprising. The scale of the unfolding national liberation movement in the country is shown. The work analyzes the reasons for the failure to implement the initial plan of the rebels, talks about the leaders’ role in the uprising, their political, economic and social program. It also examines their ideas about principles of the new state and legal structure of post-war Czechoslovakia and Czech-Slovak relations. The article characterizes the actions of the Slovak Minister of War F. Chatlos, individual commanders of the Slovak army, and indicates the attitude of the Soviet leadership towards them. Particular attention is paid to the dedication of the soldiers of the Red Army and the 1st Czechoslovak Army Corps who took part in the East Carpathian operation, to the uniqueness of large-scale combat operations in difficult mountainous conditions. The work presents the real extent of assistance to the rebels from the USSR and Western allies – Great Britain and the USA. The author shows the unfoundedness of the opinions of some Slovak historians who are trying to blame the USSR for the defeat of the uprising.
Philology. Linguistics, Slavic languages. Baltic languages. Albanian languages
The Covid-19 pandemic swept across the world with incredible speed in early 2020, leading to lockdowns across the globe, and a huge collapse in output. The UK government, as elsewhere, stepped in rapidly and massively to support household incomes, most notably with the furlough scheme and an increase in benefits. As a result, household incomes were generally kept stable – and even increased for households with the least pay. This article sets out these policies and their consequences for incomes, poverty and inequality, before putting them into a longer-term context. It then moves on to examine how the expected fall in real incomes due to the surge in inflation since 2021, along with government policies announced in November 2022, will likely affect low-income households through to the middle of the decade.
John Redmond and Edward Carson together dominated the politics of Irish Home Rule and unionism between 1910 and 1918, and were major influences on Irish and British politics for an even longer period than this. Yet though contemporaries routinely viewed them together, and though they had a strong political and personal relationship, the hermeneutics of much modern Irish historical scholarship have precluded any systematic comparison. In fact, comparing Redmond and Carson provides important new illumination on the central themes of their careers, as well as on the political cultures of the multi-national union state within which they each operated.
Unlike architecture, music is mostly a marginal or infrequent aspect of utopian literature, though usually invested with solely positive connotations. It is however particularly prominent in Samuel Butler’s Erewhon but it is only described negatively, as unpleasant, discordant and even cacophonous. This is where Butler’s radical originality lies: firstly in this diversion of the laudatory, spiritualized conception of music and of its utopian associations; and secondly in the (re)appropriation of music for satiric and anti-utopian purposes. After a brief survey of the usual role and connotations of music in utopias, this paper will focus on its value and symbolism before the narrator’s stay in Erewhon. It will then address its representation in the unknown land that collapses the literal (acoustic) and social meanings of discordance with unpleasant or cacophonous music as the index to a dysfunctional world and its ethical flaws. Lastly, the article will deal with the narrator’s unstable stance and views, which, together with the generic and tonal hybridity of the text and its ironic logic, alternating between satire and (anti)utopia, make the novel go through a series of perplexing ideological fluctuations. Like the cacophonous music of Erewhon, the message conveyed is ultimately ambiguous and at times discordant.