Britain's Cold War

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.

Nicholas Barnett is Lecturer in History at Liverpool John Moores University, UK.

Introduction Chapter 1 Between West and East: Fellow Travellers and British Culture in the Early Cold War Chapter 2 "No Defence Against the H-bomb": British Society and H-bomb Hysteria in 1954 Chapter 3 Engagements with "the Thaw" Chapter 4 British public culture and the Soviet Invasion of Budapest, 1956 Chapter 5 "Russia Wins Space Race": Britain and the Launch of Sputnik, October 1957 Chapter 6 The Thriller and the Cold War Chapter 7 Accidental Nuclear War and Anti-Nuclear Campaigns Chapter 8 'The Greatest story of our lifetime': The successes and the limitations of Soviet ideology Chapter 9 The normalisation of relations Conclusion Bibliography Index