Keith Cameron – författare

This collection of twenty essays, of which five are in French, written by leading English and French literary and historical scholars, deconstructs the ethical and political framework supporting and circumscribing the actions of a powerful elite in France between the early 1600s and the final years of Louis XIV’s reign. Reflecting a diversity of individual concerns, the essays are divided into two interrelated parts in acknowledgement of the complex tensions between codes of behaviour and political practice in the different theatrical spaces of government in the real and imaginary world. Together these contributions offer a radical double questioning of the absolute values in which were founded the authority of Church, King and nobility.

The dual political and moral theme of this study is not new, but it is one that has always been highly regarded by historians and literary specialists alike. It is in fact one of the classic preoccupations of seventeenth-century studies, to which critics must always return, and to which students must always address themselves, if they are to comprehend the intellectual core of seventeenth-century French studies.

''A forensic exploration of their compositions and recordings, and everything that has been poured into them . . . completely definitive'' MOJO ★★★★★

The story of Manic Street Preachers is unique in pop. Raging out of the stricken mining communities of south Wales in the late 80s, they were seemingly condemned to mere cult status by a cruel juncture of artistic triumph, commercial failure and personal despair. The story took a further agonising twist when the tragedy of Richey Edwards'' 1995 disappearance was followed by a remarkable rebirth, built upon ''A Design For Life'' - a hymn to the band''s working-class roots - and then the award-winning, multi-million-selling album Everything Must Go, a majestic soundtrack to history and loss. Within five years, Manic Street Preachers were playing to 60,000 at the national stadium of Wales and had their second UK Number 1 single. Subsequent output has confirmed the band as both a wellspring of restless creativity and a barometer of the cultural conversation.

Because it was music that saved them, it''s through the prism of their music that Keith Cameron tells the definitive history of Manic Street Preachers, drawing on many hours of new interviews to dive deep into 168 songs, from 1988 debut single ''Suicide Alley'' to the late day peaks of 2025 album Critical Thinking. Writing with the band''s full co-operation, his book charts the dynamic evolution of a universe in which Karl Marx and Kylie Minogue happily co-exist, that accords Rush and The Clash equal favour, and where Morrissey & Marr meet Torvill & Dean via Nietzsche and New Order in a single four-minute pop song - all in the name of what Nicky Wire himself calls ''the fabulous disaster'' of Manic Street Preachers.