British fiction and the cold war

The monograph offers a comprehensive study of the relations between the British Cold War novel and its geopolitical context. The central argument is that literary fiction of the 1945-89 period was an expressly Cold War fiction, that all British novelists produced texts which addressed or articulated Cold War concerns, and that such concerns are found in a majority of novels from these 45 years. The focus is on seven key topics: the fear of Soviet/communist infiltration; the threat of nuclear annihilation; the growth of the secret services; the weakening of the socialist movement; the decline of the British Empire; and the rise of US superpowerdom. In analysing such themes, the monographs ranges through over 60 novelists and 500 works of fiction, revealing the multiple ways in which British fiction positioned itself within the processes, ideologies and technologies of global conflict.