British Culture and the End of Empire

Description

This book is the first major attempt to examine the cultural manifestations of the demise of imperialism as a social and political ideology in post-war Britain. Far from being a matter of indifference or resigned acceptance as is often suggested, the fall of the British Empire came as a profound shock to the British national imagination, and resonated widely in British popular culture. The sheer range of subjects discussed, from the satire boom of the 1960s to the worlds of sport and the arts, demonstrates how profoundly decolonisation was absorbed into the popular consciousness. Offers an extremely novel and provocative interpretation of post-war British cultural history, and opens up a whole new field of enquiry in the history of decolonisation. Front matter Contents General editor's introduction Notes on contributors Acknowledgements Introduction The persistence of empirein metropolitan culture Empire loyalists and ‘Commonwealth men’: the Round Table and the end of empire Coronation Everest: the Empireand Commonwealth in the‘second Elizabethan age’ Look back at empire: British theatre and imperial decline ‘No nation could be broker’: the satire boom and the demise of Britain’s world role The imperial game in crisis: English cricket and decolonisation Imperial heroes for a post-imperial age: films and the end of empire Imperial legacies, new frontiers: children’s popular literature and the demise of empire Wandering in the wake of empire: British travel and tourismin the post-imperial world Communities of Britishness: migration in the last gasp of empire South Asians in post-imperial Britain: decolonisation and imperial legacy India, Inc.? Nostalgia, memory and the empire of things Index