Thanks to ever more sophisticated technologym archaeologists can identify much that is beneath the soil without having to excavate. From banging the surface of the ground with a pick in the late 19th century, through Atkinson’s revolutionary use of the “Megger–Earth Tester,” to modern-day radar survey, the value of geophysical techniques is lucidly explained with many real–life case studies.
The relationships between narrative and leadership, between rhetoric and performance, between doctrine and its voicing, are crucial to party politics and are underrated by both practising politicians and scholars. This study analyses the ‘performance of leadership’ in the UK Labour Party, and what this means for a new approach to understanding politics. The main focus of this study is the five-year leadership of Ed Miliband, 2010-2015. The fortunes of the party and the party leadership can be apprehended as a series of performed rhetorical events. A political leader’s persona is a construction that performs – rather like an actor – in the political space. The author identifies and analyses the architecture and the modalities of leadership persona construction and performance in contemporary politics.