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The British strategic bombing campaign against Germany between May 1940 and April 1945 has featured prominently in the British psyche since the end of World War II. There is rarely a month that passes when a new book is not published or a documentary features on television, which eulogises or criticises Royal Air Force (RAF) Bomber Command operations. However, what has yet to be fully explored is how the British people felt about the bombing of Germany during the war itself. The aim of this thesis is to identify the views of the British public between 1940 and 1945 towards the bombing of Germany and to attempt to understand why such views were held. The thesis takes a chronological approach, with each chapter focusing on a different period. Within each chapter, a number of themes are considered. Firstly, the role of the Publicity Department at the Air Ministry and developments in policies and practices regarding the dissemination of information to the media. Secondly, the operational activities of Bomber Command. Thirdly, an investigation into how media outlets in Britain portrayed the campaigns, most notably the national press and the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). Finally, and most significantly, the public's response. This fourth theme calls upon a vast array of social investigation material, most notably Mass-Observation diary submissions and surveys, in order to analyse the views of the public. It can be determined that throughout the conflict, despite continual media coverage, the bombing of Germany never featured as one of the most popular topics of interest amongst the public. Thus, despite a number of small spikes in interest, caused by major raids or events, it can be concluded that the public were, for the most part, unenthusiastic about the actions of Bomber Command between 1939 and 1945.

This research challenges the norms of undergraduate recruitment promotion practice responding to political, economic, social and technological drivers in a competitive environment. The practical problem is defined from a marketing practitioner standpoint working with core approaches which do not represent nuanced subject and audience needs, instead leaving them on the margins of the institutional recruitment offer. Marginalised students are represented by those who did not attend private or high-achieving state schools, including, but not restricted to, those identified by widening participation policy. Marginalised subjects are represented by selected arts and humanities courses without overt links to specific professions. These aspects of marginalisation triangulated from an elite institution perspective create a framework for investigating the problems created by core promotional practice, and for developing solutions. The use of a case study supported by design-based research methods allows for practical research outputs in a live environment. Mixed methods are employed to gather data from a small sample of insider sources (nine students and seven tutors) and general public sources (1,923 online reader responses to 31 news articles and forum posts). The insider and public accounts provide an alternative marketing intelligence corpus to normative large-scale quantitative data. This is used to inform design principles incorporated into a prototype package of three promotional resources and a sustainable strategy. The success of the challenge to promotional practice norms materialises not simply through public-facing practical solutions as initially anticipated, but also though the collaborative processes of the enquiry, improving professional relations between marketing administrative and academic staff. The alternative approaches realised through this research can be summarised as a move towards small-scale market intelligence gathering and resource production to meet the nuanced needs of marginalised subjects and audiences, and an alteration to professional practice which acknowledges academics as marketing partners. These outputs are now employed within routine practice within the boundaries of the original study, and have the potential to be generalisable through wider discussions among HE marketing practitioners.

N-linked protein glycosylation is the enzymatic transfer of a carbohydrate glycan to an asparagine residue of a polypeptide, catalysed by an N-oligosaccharyl transferase(OTase). Bacterial N-glycosylation is best understood in the foodborne pathogen Campylobacter jejuni, in which a heptasaccharide glycan is built at cytoplasmic face of the inner membrane, flipped to the periplasm and transferred to a polypeptide enbloc. C. jejuni encodes each of the proteins required for the N-glycosylation pathway in a single genetic region, termed the pgl locus. Homologues of the gene encoding the C. jejuni OTase, PglB, are found in all Campylobacter species, three Helicobacter species, and more distantly related ε- and δ-Proteobacteria species such as Wolinella succinogenes, Desulfovibrio desulfuricans and Nitratiruptor tergarcus. A small numberof Campylobacter species and all three pglB-containing Helicobacter species have two distinct pglB genes, pglB1 and pglB2, along with homologues of other C. jejuni pgl genes. The work presented in this thesis investigated the N-glycosylation system of a bacterial species encoding two distinct PglBs, C. concisus. The roles of the two PglB enzymes in C. concisus were investigated using an in vitro OTase assay, and the structure of a C. concisus N-glycan elucidated by mass spectrometry. The work in this thesis also expands our knowledge of C. jejuni N-glycosylation by investigating the full scope of N-glycosylation using an in silico method to predict the total C. jejuni N-glycoproteome. This was followed by experimental validation of these predictions, in which three novel C. jejuni N-glycoproteins were identified, bringing the number of reported C. jejuni NCTC 11168 N-glycoproteins to 57. One of these novel N-glycoproteins, Cj0633, is the most extensively N-glycosylated bacterial glycoprotein reported to date, with the addition of up to eight N-glycans when expressed in the presence of the C. jejuni pgl machinery. In the final investigation presented in this thesis, a method to identify bacterial N-glycoproteins using anti-glycan antisera to immunoprecipitate N-glycoproteins was developed. These data expand our knowledge of C. concisus N-glycosylation and provide valuable insight into the full scope of N-glycosylation in C. jejuni.

This thesis investigates routine physiotherapy management of patients with subacute and chronic non specific low back pain. In a pragmatic multi-centre trial patients were randomised to receive a course of physiotherapy treatment or advice following a bio-psychosocial model. Disease specific, patient specific and generic measures were used to assess outcome. The 286 patients recruited in the trial had, on average, minimal to moderate low back pain disability. Patients reported enhanced perceptions of benefit in the physiotherapy group but there was no evidence of a long term effect in any other outcomes. There were no differences between the groups in NHS costs although patients in the physiotherapy group incurred significantly higher out of pocket expenses. Further analysis of the outcome data confirmed that the primary outcome measure (Oswestry Disability Index) was the most responsive instrument because it was able to detect deterioration as well as improvement. As the trial demonstrated no additional benefit of physiotherapy over brief advice, it was important to investigate the effectiveness of the latter. A systematic review found limited evidence that brief bio-psychosocial advice was more effective in reducing fear avoidance and improving back beliefs in patients with acute and subacute low back pain compared with traditional medical advice. There was no direct evidence to support the use of brief bio-psychosocial advice (2 sessions or less) for reducing pain or disability. This thesis describes research that has contributed to European guidelines for the management of chronic low back pain and reviews extensively the literature that seeks to evaluate physiotherapy practice. The clinical implication of this research is that for patients with non specific low back pain of mild severity, brief advice is likely to be as effective as prolonged physiotherapy intervention. The extent to which a single session of advice is more effective than no intervention needs further assessment.