Britain’s Cold War

Britain’s Cold War
Author: Nicholas Barnett
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 307
Release: 2018-07-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 1786723735

The cultural history of the Cold War has been characterized as an explosion of fear and paranoia, based on very little actual intelligence. Both the US and Soviet administrations have since remarked how far off the mark their predictions of the other's strengths and aims were. Yet so much of the cultural output of the period – in television, film, and literature – was concerned with the end of the world. Here, Nicholas Barnett looks at art and design, opinion polls, the Mass Observation movement, popular fiction and newspapers to show how exactly British people felt about the Soviet Union and the Cold War. In uncovering new primary source material, Barnett shows exactly how this seeped in to the art, literature, music and design of the period.

Peace and Power in Cold War Britain

Peace and Power in Cold War Britain
Author: Christopher R. Hill
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 318
Release: 2018-08-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 147427935X

Peace and Power in Cold War Britain explores the ban the bomb and anti-Vietnam War movements from the perspective of media history, focusing in particular on the relationship between radicalism and the rise of television. In doing so, it addresses two questions, both of which seem to recur with each major breakthrough in communications technology: what do advances in communications media mean for democratic participation in politics and how do distinctive types of media condition the very nature of that participation itself? In answering these, the book views the ban the bomb and anti-Vietnam War movements in relation to communication power and media discourse. It highlights how these movements intersected with parts of public life that were being transformed by television themselves, shaping struggles for social change among activists and public intellectuals on the streets, in the Labour Party and in the law courts. The significance of this relationship between media and movements was complex and wide-ranging. Christopher R. Hill demonstrates that it contributed to the enrichment of democracy in Cold War Britain, with radicals serving to innovate and pioneer creative forms of political expression from both in and outside of media organisations. However, the movements increasingly succumbed to news coverage and values that revolved around human interest and violence, feeding into the revolutionary spectacle of 1968 and the turn towards identity politics.

America in the British Imagination

America in the British Imagination
Author: John F. Lyons
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Total Pages: 280
Release: 2013-12-18
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781137376794

This lively and engaging cultural history explores a series of interrelated questions about the U.S.'s influence on British society in the years following World War II. How was American culture disseminated into Britain? Why did large sections of British society embrace American customs? What picture did British citizens form of American society and politics? And how did the Cold War's end and the September 11 attacks affect that picture? Here, author John F. Lyons draws on cinema, literature, contemporary journalism, unpublished oral interviews, and a host of other sources to explore not only the ways in which American society impacted Britain, but the ways in which America's complex identity was refracted in the minds of the citizens of its closest ally.

Stress in Post-War Britain, 1945–85

Stress in Post-War Britain, 1945–85
Author: Mark Jackson
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 268
Release: 2016-12-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 1317318048

In the years following World War II the health and well-being of the nation was of primary concern to the British government. The essays in this collection examine the relationship between health and stress in post-war Britain through a series of carefully connected case studies.

America in the British Imagination

America in the British Imagination
Author: J. Lyons
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 452
Release: 2013-12-18
Genre: History
ISBN: 1137376805

How was American culture disseminated into Britain? Why did many British citizens embrace American customs? And what picture did they form of American society and politics? This engaging and wide-ranging history explores these and other questions about the U.S.'s cultural and political influence on British society in the post-World War II period.