Bloomsbury Academic Empire, Celebrity and Excess: King Farouk of Egypt and British Culture 1936-1965

About the Author Martin Francis is Professor of War and History at University of Sussex, UK. Beginning his teaching career at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, he went on to hold positions at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth and Royal Holloway, University of London. From 2003 to 2015 he was the Henry R. Winkler Professor of Modern History at the University of Cincinnati in the United States. Product Description King Farouk of Egypt was known for his extravagant lifestyle and colourful private life, immortalised in the newspaper gossip columns, comedy sketches, song lyrics and novels of post-war Britain. Stories of his excessive life captivated the British imperial officials entangled in the era of decolonization and the wider British public became intrigued by this larger-than-life character. This book explores the narratives and representations of King Farouk found in British official and popular culture which transcended the distinction between politics and celebrity, ‘Orient’ and Europe, imperial and post-imperial worlds. Exploring Farouk as both a political and cultural figure, Francis considers diplomatic history in tandem with histories of popular culture and celebrity to study British culture during the era of decolonization in a more holistic way. Through Farouk, Francis reveals that the varied cultural and social features of post-war Britain and the reconstitution of British identity in the aftermath of empire; sexual liberalization, ‘Americanization’, consumer affluence, increased interaction with Europe, new forms of mass leisure and the emergence of celebrity culture, did not take place independently of the dismantling of imperial rule. Studying Farouk therefore sheds new light on the multiple and complex ways in which Britain emerged as a postcolonial nation and negotiated the postwar ‘age of affluence’. Review In her latest book, Maeve Heaney turns to music as a surprisingly fruitful theological response to an age marked by religious doubt and uncertainty. Her brilliant work, a groundbreaking new entry in the promising field of Theopoetics, startles us with a fresh appreciation of “musicking” as itself a profoundly theological activity.