Debra Kelly - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by Debra Kelly
Liverpool University Press eBooks, Apr 1, 2003
Grant & Cutler eBooks, 2002
Liverpool University Press eBooks, Apr 1, 2003
Journal of War and Culture Studies, Jul 2, 2016
Liverpool University Press eBooks, Jan 31, 2022
This chapter analyses the evolving place of the French Restaurant in London in the first half of ... more This chapter analyses the evolving place of the French Restaurant in London in the first half of the 20th century, innovations and developments during the inter-war years and the paradoxes of dining out in London during the Second World War. It is divided into three sections: ‘Continuity and Innovation for the French Restaurant in London: the Inter-War Years’; ‘Privation, Plenty and Paradox in the French Restaurant of Second World War London’; ‘The French restaurant as cultural, social and political site: The Free French in London’. It firstly takes particular examples such as the restaurants of Marcel Boulestin and Simone Prunier and the writings of André Simon and the Wine and Food Society to represent the place of French food during London’s interwar years. It then focuses on the dining-out culture in London during the Second World War, and finally on the place of the French restaurant for a new migrant community in London, the Free French who joined de Gaulle from June 1940, bringing changes to the ‘French colony’ established in London since the late 19th century. The French restaurant in London endured during the period and acquired a new place and identity in London’s restaurant culture.
Liverpool University Press eBooks, Jan 31, 2022
The book’s focus is the establishment of the French restaurant in London in the mid- to late-nine... more The book’s focus is the establishment of the French restaurant in London in the mid- to late-nineteenth century and its subsequent development throughout the twentieth and into the first two decades of the twenty-first century. It is also concerned with the place of food as a form of cultural exchange, and how culinary practices are shared within the wider social, cultural, political and economic contexts of a diverse capital city. What happens when a modern Parisian institution arrives in London, a city with its own long-established food traditions and cultures of eating outside the home? Why is French cuisine so readily adopted by the English upper classes’ dining-out culture? Where else in the city, and by whom and when, was French cooking purveyed and consumed? What sorts of cultural exchanges are generated between the French and Londoners, and between Paris and London, by the development of the restaurant, and how do these evolve over a century and a half? British references to France and to the French are littered with associations with food from the status of haute cuisine and the restaurants and chefs associated with it to contemporary concerns about food poverty and food waste, to dietary habits and the politicisation of food, and at every level in between. Thinking about the place of the French restaurant in London restaurant and food culture over a long time span, in many and varied places and spaces in the capital, creates a more complex picture than that which may appear obvious.
Liverpool University Press eBooks, Jan 31, 2022
Liverpool University Press eBooks, Jan 31, 2022
This chapter considers how the French restaurant arrived in London bringing out aspects that have... more This chapter considers how the French restaurant arrived in London bringing out aspects that have been previously been less extensively treated in this better-known period of its history. It was indeed the era of the grand hotel restaurants, of the Entente Cordiale and the Franco-British Exhibition and the development of cultural and culinary relations between London and Paris on several different levels. Yet while Escoffier was celebrated at the Savoy, many different Frenchmen and women lived and ate in areas of London such as Soho and (what would become known as) Fitzrovia, often as political exiles and refugees in very difficult circumstances. The chapter is divided into three sections: ‘Setting the Scene: French Cuisine and Forms of Culinary, Cultural and Social Display in Nineteenth-Century London’; ‘The French Restaurant Arrives in London: Famous Names and (In)Famous places’; ‘The Expansion of the French Restaurant in London: from “foreign kickshaws” to “a notable gathering of Frenchmen” charting changes in attitudes towards French food and restaurants. The chapter ends at the outbreak of the First World War as many Frenchmen working in London’s restaurant business left to join the French forces at the Front.
Liverpool University Press eBooks, Jan 31, 2022
This chapter considers continuity and (r)evolution, culinary competition and cultural change in t... more This chapter considers continuity and (r)evolution, culinary competition and cultural change in the London French restaurant of the ‘Global Food Capital’ that is 21st century London. It is divided into four sections: ‘Changing Contexts, Evolving Trends and the Place of the French Restaurant in London as a “Global Food Capital”’; ‘Culinary Competition and the Twenty-First Century London French Restaurant’; ‘Cultural Change and the Twenty-First Century London French Restaurant’; ‘A French Restaurant ‘Instagram’ from London in the Second Decade of the Twenty-First Century’. In the London context – away from its roots – French culinary practice and traditions could more readily open themselves up to take in new influences, allowing the surrounding culture to permeate the French restaurant and to create something new while retaining its own identity. This final chapter explores how French continuity and evolution played out in the fast-moving London restaurant scene of the early twenty first century. It examines different types of French restaurant from haute cuisine often aimed at an international audience, to large and small mid-market restaurant groups of varied ‘French’ authenticity to the neighbourhood restaurant. A number of interviews are included with contemporary restaurateurs, along with an exploration of the identities of the ‘London French’ restaurant.
French Studies, Jul 1, 2007
This synthesis begins by noting the continuing fascination that the war exerts as evidenced by it... more This synthesis begins by noting the continuing fascination that the war exerts as evidenced by its immense bibliography and a plethora of films, documentaries and exhibitions. The aim is to structure and analyse this proliferation by charting why certain types of approaches have been privileged at different historical moments, and how these approaches to the construction of the historical ‘object’ that the war represents have developed and changed over the course of a century. Three generations of historians are identified. The first, who experienced the conflict, focused on the conflict between nation states, and on military and diplomatic history. The second, writing after the Second World War, emphasized social history as the identification of power moved away from individuals to social groups, privileging a history of mass movements and of societies at war. The third, writing towards the end of the twentieth century, emphasize notions of violence and suffering, placing the war in a perspective informed by later developments in the twentieth century. The authors also communicate a real sense of the dynamism of historical debate, and in doing so provide a serious reflection on the nature and evolution of history as a discipline. Most welcome is the opening onto a comparative dimension that is sketched out here. As the authors note in the final chapter, the vast majority of histories of the First World War still remain focused on one geographical and cultural area with all the partial (in both senses) focus that this entails. This analysis goes some way to suggesting how a European history of the war might develop, while noting that a truly global perspective is still nonexistent. The recognition of the place of such varied cultural production as Churchill’s memoirs, Barbusse’s Le Feu, the British war poets, letters and postcards, painting, publications for tourist visits to the battlefields, and television history, notably in Britain, should interest those concerned with literary and cultural studies as well as historians. There is also an attention to language and cultural differences, rare among more traditional historians, and to the ways in which British, French and German national cultures have developed different ways of thinking and writing about the war, particularly around notions of victory and defeat, necessity and futility. Penser la Grande Guerre fulfils the description of both its title and subtitle. The survey of the historiography of the war is presented with authority and insight, while showing an awareness of necessary omissions. A wideranging bibliography, thematic index and index of names add to the usefulness of this aspect of the book. Beyond that, the authors provide a multi-faceted and sensitive approach to thinking about the war. Evoking Pierre Renouvin, a war veteran himself and essential in the historiography of the war in the 1920s and 1930s, the authors conclude that his readers end by feeling more intelligent and more tolerant, and posing the rhetorical question of whether there can be a better ambition for any historian. Prost and Winter have continued the work of Renouvin.
Journal of War and Culture Studies, Jun 1, 2009
The essence of the interface between intellectuals and war is choice. Of course, this is true for... more The essence of the interface between intellectuals and war is choice. Of course, this is true for members of all populations caught up in war but more so for the intellectual who enjoys a high cultural profile and who intervenes in the public space. In considering the issue of intellectuals and war, the first part of this introduction will initially focus almost exclusively on the two world wars in order to consider the case of: intellectuals whose conscription in the armed forces modified their status as intellectuals; intellectuals who contributed to the war effort by living out or adapting their role as intellectuals to a new set of circumstances; and intellectuals who opposed war. Attention is then paid to the fragmentation of intellectual communities occasioned by war, a theme extended by a consideration of intellectuals and competing claims of legitimacy in a country under foreign occupation (in this case France 1940-1945). Finally, the role of the intellectual in a covert war will be examined. It is clearly way beyond the compass of a short contribution such as this to address any of these questions in detail and, because of restricted space, only a limited number of examples of intellectuals can be given. But it is hoped that the article will provoke thoughts and raise issues that may be developed elsewhere by others. Mobilization of the intellectuals in the armed forces in two world wars Unless they were exempt on grounds of age or ill-health, French and British intellectuals were mobilized in both world wars. But although it was expected that intellectuals should contribute to the war effort by joining the armed forces, their commitment to the national cause was nonetheless questioned in some quarters on both sides of the Channel. In France, in the 1930s, many conservatives took the view that far too many intellectuals were over-sympathetic to the USSR and 'Bolshevism', while in Britain during the same period, a traditional distrust of intellectuals had been reinforced by a belief, again in conservative circles, that the left/liberal intellectuals were undermining the patriotic spirit. This view, already common currency well before the outbreak of war, had been compounded by the Oxford Union vote in 1933 not to fight for King and country. At the annual meeting of the Royal Society of St George which took place shortly afterwards, Churchill declared, 'The worst difficulties from which we suffer…come from the unwarrantable mood of self-abasement into which we have been cast by a powerful section of our own intellectuals' (Mawson 1942, quoted in Weight 2002: 44). These reservations not withstanding, when war was declared in 1939, intellectuals on both sides of the Channel were among the millions conscripted: the historian Christopher Hill, who had learned Russian during a year spent in the USSR, was transferred from the intelligence Corps to the Foreign Office; Raymond Williams was a commissioned officer in a tank unit which was in Normandy after D-Day before advancing through Belgium and Holland to Germany. E. P. Thompson served as a commissioned officer in North Africa and Italy, while his fellow historian Eric Hobsbawm remained a sergeant in the Education corps. 1 Across the Channel, André Malraux joined a tank unit, Louis Aragon was in a motorized division, André Breton worked in a medical section (Spotts 2008:9), while both Raymond Aron and Jean-Paul Sartre were allocated to meteorological units, the former based near the Belgian border, the latter, like author and future collaborationist Robert Brasillach, stationed in Alsace (Aron 1983: 162ff.; Cohen-Solal 1985: 193ff.; Pellissier 1989: 247ff.). Mobilization of intellectuals in support of the national war effort is rarely contentious. A notable exception, however, is the case of German Nobel Prize Winner Günther Grass who, in August 2006, revealed in an interview in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that he had been a member of the Waffen SS towards the end of the war (Grass 2006).
Recent readings of Le Premier Homme (published posthumously in 1994), influenced by postcolonial ... more Recent readings of Le Premier Homme (published posthumously in 1994), influenced by postcolonial theory and its emphasis on power relations between formerly colonised regions and the colonising powers, have put Camus 'in the dock' to answer for a list of offences ranging from overt racism, for example in L'Etranger, to 'special pleading' in the defence of 'French Algeria' in Le Premier Homme. This chapter argues that the ambiguities of Camus's writing and of the representation of memory in the Algerian context are more complex and intense than trial by political conviction allows. Read within a framework extending beyond postcolonial theory to memory studies, Le Premier Homme is a text of 'mediation' in the sense that Avery Gordon defines 'haunting' as a particular form of mediation, describing "the process that links an institution and an individual, a social structure and a subject, and history and a biography". A work of literary imagination that engages with memory work, Le Premier Homme is an interpretation of history and personal experience that haunts and continues to tell is much about the anxieties of contemporary postcolonial cultures.
Journal of War and Culture Studies, Oct 2, 2015
Journal of War and Culture Studies, May 1, 2010
... to acknowledge the role of industry and commerce within artistic innovation and how the large... more ... to acknowledge the role of industry and commerce within artistic innovation and how the large-scale production of the camouflage unit depended ... Max Aub, she argues, is an important case, being one of the most cosmopolitan of all Spanish avant-garde artists and 'the one who ...
Liverpool University Press eBooks, Apr 1, 2003
Grant & Cutler eBooks, 2002
Liverpool University Press eBooks, Apr 1, 2003
Journal of War and Culture Studies, Jul 2, 2016
Liverpool University Press eBooks, Jan 31, 2022
This chapter analyses the evolving place of the French Restaurant in London in the first half of ... more This chapter analyses the evolving place of the French Restaurant in London in the first half of the 20th century, innovations and developments during the inter-war years and the paradoxes of dining out in London during the Second World War. It is divided into three sections: ‘Continuity and Innovation for the French Restaurant in London: the Inter-War Years’; ‘Privation, Plenty and Paradox in the French Restaurant of Second World War London’; ‘The French restaurant as cultural, social and political site: The Free French in London’. It firstly takes particular examples such as the restaurants of Marcel Boulestin and Simone Prunier and the writings of André Simon and the Wine and Food Society to represent the place of French food during London’s interwar years. It then focuses on the dining-out culture in London during the Second World War, and finally on the place of the French restaurant for a new migrant community in London, the Free French who joined de Gaulle from June 1940, bringing changes to the ‘French colony’ established in London since the late 19th century. The French restaurant in London endured during the period and acquired a new place and identity in London’s restaurant culture.
Liverpool University Press eBooks, Jan 31, 2022
The book’s focus is the establishment of the French restaurant in London in the mid- to late-nine... more The book’s focus is the establishment of the French restaurant in London in the mid- to late-nineteenth century and its subsequent development throughout the twentieth and into the first two decades of the twenty-first century. It is also concerned with the place of food as a form of cultural exchange, and how culinary practices are shared within the wider social, cultural, political and economic contexts of a diverse capital city. What happens when a modern Parisian institution arrives in London, a city with its own long-established food traditions and cultures of eating outside the home? Why is French cuisine so readily adopted by the English upper classes’ dining-out culture? Where else in the city, and by whom and when, was French cooking purveyed and consumed? What sorts of cultural exchanges are generated between the French and Londoners, and between Paris and London, by the development of the restaurant, and how do these evolve over a century and a half? British references to France and to the French are littered with associations with food from the status of haute cuisine and the restaurants and chefs associated with it to contemporary concerns about food poverty and food waste, to dietary habits and the politicisation of food, and at every level in between. Thinking about the place of the French restaurant in London restaurant and food culture over a long time span, in many and varied places and spaces in the capital, creates a more complex picture than that which may appear obvious.
Liverpool University Press eBooks, Jan 31, 2022
Liverpool University Press eBooks, Jan 31, 2022
This chapter considers how the French restaurant arrived in London bringing out aspects that have... more This chapter considers how the French restaurant arrived in London bringing out aspects that have been previously been less extensively treated in this better-known period of its history. It was indeed the era of the grand hotel restaurants, of the Entente Cordiale and the Franco-British Exhibition and the development of cultural and culinary relations between London and Paris on several different levels. Yet while Escoffier was celebrated at the Savoy, many different Frenchmen and women lived and ate in areas of London such as Soho and (what would become known as) Fitzrovia, often as political exiles and refugees in very difficult circumstances. The chapter is divided into three sections: ‘Setting the Scene: French Cuisine and Forms of Culinary, Cultural and Social Display in Nineteenth-Century London’; ‘The French Restaurant Arrives in London: Famous Names and (In)Famous places’; ‘The Expansion of the French Restaurant in London: from “foreign kickshaws” to “a notable gathering of Frenchmen” charting changes in attitudes towards French food and restaurants. The chapter ends at the outbreak of the First World War as many Frenchmen working in London’s restaurant business left to join the French forces at the Front.
Liverpool University Press eBooks, Jan 31, 2022
This chapter considers continuity and (r)evolution, culinary competition and cultural change in t... more This chapter considers continuity and (r)evolution, culinary competition and cultural change in the London French restaurant of the ‘Global Food Capital’ that is 21st century London. It is divided into four sections: ‘Changing Contexts, Evolving Trends and the Place of the French Restaurant in London as a “Global Food Capital”’; ‘Culinary Competition and the Twenty-First Century London French Restaurant’; ‘Cultural Change and the Twenty-First Century London French Restaurant’; ‘A French Restaurant ‘Instagram’ from London in the Second Decade of the Twenty-First Century’. In the London context – away from its roots – French culinary practice and traditions could more readily open themselves up to take in new influences, allowing the surrounding culture to permeate the French restaurant and to create something new while retaining its own identity. This final chapter explores how French continuity and evolution played out in the fast-moving London restaurant scene of the early twenty first century. It examines different types of French restaurant from haute cuisine often aimed at an international audience, to large and small mid-market restaurant groups of varied ‘French’ authenticity to the neighbourhood restaurant. A number of interviews are included with contemporary restaurateurs, along with an exploration of the identities of the ‘London French’ restaurant.
French Studies, Jul 1, 2007
This synthesis begins by noting the continuing fascination that the war exerts as evidenced by it... more This synthesis begins by noting the continuing fascination that the war exerts as evidenced by its immense bibliography and a plethora of films, documentaries and exhibitions. The aim is to structure and analyse this proliferation by charting why certain types of approaches have been privileged at different historical moments, and how these approaches to the construction of the historical ‘object’ that the war represents have developed and changed over the course of a century. Three generations of historians are identified. The first, who experienced the conflict, focused on the conflict between nation states, and on military and diplomatic history. The second, writing after the Second World War, emphasized social history as the identification of power moved away from individuals to social groups, privileging a history of mass movements and of societies at war. The third, writing towards the end of the twentieth century, emphasize notions of violence and suffering, placing the war in a perspective informed by later developments in the twentieth century. The authors also communicate a real sense of the dynamism of historical debate, and in doing so provide a serious reflection on the nature and evolution of history as a discipline. Most welcome is the opening onto a comparative dimension that is sketched out here. As the authors note in the final chapter, the vast majority of histories of the First World War still remain focused on one geographical and cultural area with all the partial (in both senses) focus that this entails. This analysis goes some way to suggesting how a European history of the war might develop, while noting that a truly global perspective is still nonexistent. The recognition of the place of such varied cultural production as Churchill’s memoirs, Barbusse’s Le Feu, the British war poets, letters and postcards, painting, publications for tourist visits to the battlefields, and television history, notably in Britain, should interest those concerned with literary and cultural studies as well as historians. There is also an attention to language and cultural differences, rare among more traditional historians, and to the ways in which British, French and German national cultures have developed different ways of thinking and writing about the war, particularly around notions of victory and defeat, necessity and futility. Penser la Grande Guerre fulfils the description of both its title and subtitle. The survey of the historiography of the war is presented with authority and insight, while showing an awareness of necessary omissions. A wideranging bibliography, thematic index and index of names add to the usefulness of this aspect of the book. Beyond that, the authors provide a multi-faceted and sensitive approach to thinking about the war. Evoking Pierre Renouvin, a war veteran himself and essential in the historiography of the war in the 1920s and 1930s, the authors conclude that his readers end by feeling more intelligent and more tolerant, and posing the rhetorical question of whether there can be a better ambition for any historian. Prost and Winter have continued the work of Renouvin.
Journal of War and Culture Studies, Jun 1, 2009
The essence of the interface between intellectuals and war is choice. Of course, this is true for... more The essence of the interface between intellectuals and war is choice. Of course, this is true for members of all populations caught up in war but more so for the intellectual who enjoys a high cultural profile and who intervenes in the public space. In considering the issue of intellectuals and war, the first part of this introduction will initially focus almost exclusively on the two world wars in order to consider the case of: intellectuals whose conscription in the armed forces modified their status as intellectuals; intellectuals who contributed to the war effort by living out or adapting their role as intellectuals to a new set of circumstances; and intellectuals who opposed war. Attention is then paid to the fragmentation of intellectual communities occasioned by war, a theme extended by a consideration of intellectuals and competing claims of legitimacy in a country under foreign occupation (in this case France 1940-1945). Finally, the role of the intellectual in a covert war will be examined. It is clearly way beyond the compass of a short contribution such as this to address any of these questions in detail and, because of restricted space, only a limited number of examples of intellectuals can be given. But it is hoped that the article will provoke thoughts and raise issues that may be developed elsewhere by others. Mobilization of the intellectuals in the armed forces in two world wars Unless they were exempt on grounds of age or ill-health, French and British intellectuals were mobilized in both world wars. But although it was expected that intellectuals should contribute to the war effort by joining the armed forces, their commitment to the national cause was nonetheless questioned in some quarters on both sides of the Channel. In France, in the 1930s, many conservatives took the view that far too many intellectuals were over-sympathetic to the USSR and 'Bolshevism', while in Britain during the same period, a traditional distrust of intellectuals had been reinforced by a belief, again in conservative circles, that the left/liberal intellectuals were undermining the patriotic spirit. This view, already common currency well before the outbreak of war, had been compounded by the Oxford Union vote in 1933 not to fight for King and country. At the annual meeting of the Royal Society of St George which took place shortly afterwards, Churchill declared, 'The worst difficulties from which we suffer…come from the unwarrantable mood of self-abasement into which we have been cast by a powerful section of our own intellectuals' (Mawson 1942, quoted in Weight 2002: 44). These reservations not withstanding, when war was declared in 1939, intellectuals on both sides of the Channel were among the millions conscripted: the historian Christopher Hill, who had learned Russian during a year spent in the USSR, was transferred from the intelligence Corps to the Foreign Office; Raymond Williams was a commissioned officer in a tank unit which was in Normandy after D-Day before advancing through Belgium and Holland to Germany. E. P. Thompson served as a commissioned officer in North Africa and Italy, while his fellow historian Eric Hobsbawm remained a sergeant in the Education corps. 1 Across the Channel, André Malraux joined a tank unit, Louis Aragon was in a motorized division, André Breton worked in a medical section (Spotts 2008:9), while both Raymond Aron and Jean-Paul Sartre were allocated to meteorological units, the former based near the Belgian border, the latter, like author and future collaborationist Robert Brasillach, stationed in Alsace (Aron 1983: 162ff.; Cohen-Solal 1985: 193ff.; Pellissier 1989: 247ff.). Mobilization of intellectuals in support of the national war effort is rarely contentious. A notable exception, however, is the case of German Nobel Prize Winner Günther Grass who, in August 2006, revealed in an interview in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that he had been a member of the Waffen SS towards the end of the war (Grass 2006).
Recent readings of Le Premier Homme (published posthumously in 1994), influenced by postcolonial ... more Recent readings of Le Premier Homme (published posthumously in 1994), influenced by postcolonial theory and its emphasis on power relations between formerly colonised regions and the colonising powers, have put Camus 'in the dock' to answer for a list of offences ranging from overt racism, for example in L'Etranger, to 'special pleading' in the defence of 'French Algeria' in Le Premier Homme. This chapter argues that the ambiguities of Camus's writing and of the representation of memory in the Algerian context are more complex and intense than trial by political conviction allows. Read within a framework extending beyond postcolonial theory to memory studies, Le Premier Homme is a text of 'mediation' in the sense that Avery Gordon defines 'haunting' as a particular form of mediation, describing "the process that links an institution and an individual, a social structure and a subject, and history and a biography". A work of literary imagination that engages with memory work, Le Premier Homme is an interpretation of history and personal experience that haunts and continues to tell is much about the anxieties of contemporary postcolonial cultures.
Journal of War and Culture Studies, Oct 2, 2015
Journal of War and Culture Studies, May 1, 2010
... to acknowledge the role of industry and commerce within artistic innovation and how the large... more ... to acknowledge the role of industry and commerce within artistic innovation and how the large-scale production of the camouflage unit depended ... Max Aub, she argues, is an important case, being one of the most cosmopolitan of all Spanish avant-garde artists and 'the one who ...