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Grief and its concomitant loneliness are common problems in the social process of ageing. Using case study accounts, this paper describes the perceptions of four elderly bereaved people and their experiences of loneliness following conjugal bereavement. Case study accounts provide an opportunity to explore, describe and interpret data that may not yield to a simple analysis. In this paper the accounts include a collection of information on the respondents' experience of loss in the form of ‘durable biographies’ (Walter, 1996) that were typical, revelatory and critical. The respondents took part in semi‐structured interviews about their experiences as part of a larger ethnographic study. This paper reflects on their comments and raises a number of interesting theoretical and practical issues to do with loneliness following conjugal bereavement. The paper points out that bereavement research is dominated by psycho‐analytical conceptualisations which place emphasis on the ‘grief work’ hypoThesis, with less attention paid to bereavement models that highlight the social impact of loss on older people.

This paper reports on an action research study whose aim was to elicit the health needs of older people as part of a wider health needs assessment exercise. The sample consisted of twelve older people (n=12) who lived in East Lancashire. Focus groups were used to identify perceived health needs. The majority of older people in the sample expressed concern about access to primary care, lengthy out‐patient department appointments and poor transport facilities to access health resources. An indirect consequence of their perceived health needs was reduced socialisation due to fear of going out, particularly at night. The findings raise issues to do with developing a more considered view of methods for eliciting the views, beliefs and attitudes of older people about health needs. The study has implications for primary care trusts and statutory services regarding the provision of health care to older people.

March TUE.23 — FRI.26. Junior introductory course to special library and information work.

All items listed may be borrowed from the Aslib Library, except those marked, which may be consulted in the Library.

ARIES, PHILIPPE. Un lexique par phrases descriptives. Bulletin de l'A.I.D., vol. 5, no. 4, 1966, p. 99–101.

All items listed may be borrowed from the Aslib Library, except those marked, which may be consulted in the Library.

According to our favourite but unreliable history book, James I slobbered at the mouth and was “a bad king”, but it is somewhat doubtful whether this is a fair summing up of this frequently foolish monarch. He had his points, and he certainly had opinions he did not hesitate to voice. On the smoking of tobacco he wrote: “It is a custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs …” and much more besides, to the same effect, but he was quite unsuccessful in checking the growth of a habit (pleasant or pernicious, as you prefer) that during the last half‐century has reached dimensions far exceeding anything dreamed of by the wisest fool in Christendom. Right up to the present time, however, there has persisted in various places and among various classes of people, the feeling that there was something inherently near‐evil in tobacco smoking and there have long been organized movements to discourage the habit, although the grounds for these activities have often been rather vague. Smoking was said to stunt a boy's growth, it was a waste of money, and anyway it was something done purely for pleasure and must therefore by Victorian standards be “wrong”, or at least not quite proper.

The quote above was taken from the actor Brendan Gleeson, who struck a chord with Irish people in his outburst about the lack of care shown to the old and vulnerable during the years preceding the economic downturn in 2008. In the Irish case, it has always been the marginalised and poorest who have suffered at the hands of the pride and greed of the ruling elite. This chapter will establish an understanding of the ideologically driven and often tragic economic planning undertaken in the Irish state since Independence in 1922. The chapter will outline the problems associated with political elites which then became manifest in the socio-economic life of the country. These problems were political, but also cultural, and shaped the difficulties that have befallen the Irish state in almost every decade of its history.