Abstract
Amongst the key features of the Cold War were the political acts of censorship, propaganda and psychological warfare. Although professionalised during the Second World War, the techniques of public persuasion were rapidly extended after 1945 into an integral part of domestic and international policy, neither of which were deemed viable without the manufactured consent of domestic populations. As Martin Medhurst argues, ‘[a] Cold War is, by definition, a rhetorical war, a war fought with words, speeches, pamphlets, public information (or disinformation) campaigns, slogans, gestures [and] symbolic actions’.1 In scholarship, the importance of propaganda was recognised by Wayne Brockriede and Robert L. Scott’s Moments in the Rhetoric of the Cold War (1970), which helped to generate a rhetorical studies approach to the history of the period. This has combined a traditional focus on political, military and economic strategies with an analysis of how these were shadowed by government efforts to control public responses at home and abroad. Although it has had little to say about the propagandistic qualities of literature, the subject of this chapter, the approach has uncovered a vast discursive framework that permeated government statement, print media, newsreel, radio, film and especially television, whose expansion coincided with the ‘red scare’ of the 1950s, and that even impacted on the academic disciplines of psychology, historiography and cultural theory. For Medhurst and others, the weapons mobilised in the battle for hearts and minds established propaganda both as ‘a generative principle of Cold War politics’ and as ‘an integral part of the modern world’.2
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Notes
Medhurst, ‘Introduction’, to Medhurst, Robert L. Ivie, Philip Wander and Robert L. Scott, Cold War Rhetoric: Strategy, Metaphor, and Ideology (New York and Westport: Greenwood Press, 1999), p. xiv.
Ibid., p. xiv; Peter Kenez, The Birth of the Propaganda State: Soviet Methods of Mass Mobilization, 1917–1929 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 4.
Kennan, ‘George Kennan’s Long Telegram, February 1946’, in Jussi Hanhimäki and Odd Arne Westad, eds, The Cold War: A History in Documents and Eyewitness Accounts (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 111, 108, 108.
Quoted in Brian Diemert, ‘Uncontainable Metaphor: George F. Kennan’s “X” Article and Cold War Discourse’, Canadian Review of American Studies, Vol. 35, No. 1 (2005), p. 30.
Harry S. Truman, ‘The Truman Doctrine, March 1947’, in Hanhimäki and Westad, eds, The Cold War, p. 117. The speech was a forerunner of NSC 68, which has been seen as ‘a blueprint for American policy in the Cold War’ (H.W. Brands, The Devil We Knew: Americans and the Cold War (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 32).
Quoted in Martin Walker, The Cold War and the Making of the Modern World, new edn (1993; London: Vintage, 1994), p. 132; quoted in John Dumbrell, President Lyndon Johnson and Soviet Communism (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2004), p. 9; quoted in Stephen E. Ambrose, Nixon: The Triumph of a Politician, 1962–1972 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989), p. 50.
Quoted in Helena Halmari, ‘Dividing the World: The Dichotomous Rhetoric of Ronald Reagan’, Multilingua, Vol. 12, No. 2 (1993), p. 153.
Quoted in Bradley Lightbody, The Cold War (London and New York: Routledge, 1999), p. 107.
See Brett Silverstein, ‘Enemy Images: The Psychology of U.S. Attitudes and Cognitions Regarding the Soviet Union’, American Psychologist, Vol. 44, No. 6 (1989), pp. 906, 903, 907.
Quoted in David Reynolds, Britannia Overruled: British Policy and World Power in the 20th Century (London and New York: Longman, 1991), p. 156.
Quoted in Andrew Defty, Britain, America and Anti-Communist Propaganda 1945–53: The Information Research Department (London and New York: Routledge, 2004), p. 36.
Churchill, ‘Iron Curtain’, in Young Hum Kim, ed., Twenty Years of Crisis: The Cold War Era (Englewood Cliffs NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1968), pp. 16, 17.
See Lowell H. Schwartz, Political Warfare against the Kremlin: US and British Propaganda Policy at the Beginning of the Cold War (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), pp. 24–9.
See Schwartz, Political Warfare, pp. 3, 69; and John Jenks, British Propaganda and News Media in the Cold War (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006), pp. 2–3.
See Philip M. Taylor, ‘Through a Glass Darkly? The Psychological Climate and Psychological Warfare of the Cold War’, in Gary Rawnsley, ed., Cold-War Propaganda in the 1950s (Basingstoke and London: Macmillan, 1999), p. 236.
As Richard Thurlow relates, the civil service did have a version of the Truman Loyalty Security Programme between 1948 and 1955: this investigated some 135 employees, dismissing 25 and transferring 86 to positions that had no security risk (see Thurlow, The Secret State: British Internal Security in the Twentieth Century (Oxford UK and Cambridge USA: Blackwell, 1994), p. 294).
Quoted in Greenwood, Britain, p. 130; quoted in Ben Pimlott, Harold Wilson (London: HarperCollins, 1992), p. 236; quoted in Peter Jenkins, Mrs Thatcher’s Revolution: The Ending of the Socialist Era (London: Jonathan Cape, 1987), p. 288.
White, Britain, Détente and Changing East-West Relations (London and New York: Routledge, 1992), p. 142.
Johnson, A Summer to Decide, new edn (1948; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1954), p. 174.
Christopher Isherwood, Prater Violet, new edn (1946; London: Methuen, 1984), p. 75; Aldous Huxley, Ape and Essence (London: Chatto and Windus, 1949), p. 32; Compton Mackenzie, Hunting the Fairies, new edn (1949; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1959), pp. 222; L.P. Hartley, The Sixth Heaven, new edn (1946; London: Faber and Faber, 1964), p. 59; Rose Macaulay, The World My Wilderness, new edn (1950; London: Virago, 1983), pp. 28, 143.
Greene, The Third Man, in Greene, The Third Man and The Fallen Idol, new edn (1950; London: Penguin, 1976), p. 100; Marshall, The Red Danube, new edn (1947; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1956), p. 96.
Waugh, Scott-King’s Modern Europe, in Waugh, Work Suspended and Other Pieces, new edn (1946; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1967), pp. 198, 199, 223.
Waugh quoted in David Wykes, Evelyn Waugh: A Literary Life (Basingstoke and London: Macmillan, 1999), p. 146. In Waugh’s later fiction, the attack on the Yugoslav Partisans appeared in a more direct form: see Waugh, Unconditional Surrender, new edn (1961; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1964), pp. 163–7.
Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four, new edn (1949; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1954), pp. 227, 230.
Ibid., pp. 11, 11; Reilly quoted in Anthony Stewart, ‘The Prohibition of Decency in Nineteen Eighty-Four’, in Harold Bloom, ed., George Orwell’s 1984, new edn (1987; New York: Chelsea House, 2007), p. 150.
See Douglas Kerr, George Orwell (Tavistock: Northcote House, 2003), pp. 73–4.
Jameson, Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions (London and New York: Verso, 2005), p. xi. By 1957, P.H. Newby was commenting that ‘[t]here isn’t a publisher in London who’d touch utopianism these days’ and by 1984 Fay Weldon was convinced that ‘[n]o one writes about Utopias any more’ (Newby, Revolution and Roses (London: Jonathan Cape, 1957), p. 227; Weldon, Letters to Alice on First Reading Jane Austen, new edn (1984; London: Coronet Books, 1985), p. 25).
Elliott, The Shape of Utopia: Studies in a Literary Genre (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), p. 87; Hillegas, The Future as Nightmare: H.G. Wells and the Anti-Utopians (Carbondale and Edwardswille: Southern Illinois University Press, 1974), p. 3.
Wyndham, The Midwich Cuckoos, new edn (1957; London: Penguin, 2000), pp. 28, 167.
Burgess, A Clockwork Orange, new edn (1962; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972), pp. 91, 34.
Barlow, The Hour of Maximum Danger, new edn (1962; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1963), p. 106; Waugh, Love Among the Ruins, in Waugh, The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold; Tactical Exercise; Love Among the Ruins, new edn (1957, 1962, 1953; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1962), p. 188. Inundated with other problems, the stranded children in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies (1954) still worry that they ‘might get taken prisoner by the reds’ (Golding, Lord of the Flies, new edn (1954; London: Faber and Faber, 1958), p. 179).
Hartley, Facial Justice, new edn (1960; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), pp. 116, 59.
Ibid., p. 207.
Ferns, Narrating Utopia: Ideology, Gender, Form in Utopian Literature (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1999), p. 109.
Pfaelzer, ‘Parody and Satire in American Dystopian Fiction of the Nineteenth Century’, Science-Fiction Studies, Vol. 7 (1980), p. 61.
Fitz Gibbon, When the Kissing Had to Stop (London: Cassell, 1960), pp. 10, 8.
Quoted in Sinfield, Literature, Politics and Culture in Postwar Britain (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989), p. 98.
Durrell, ‘Theodore Stephanides’, p. 100; Durrell, White Eagles over Serbia, new edn (1957; London: Faber and Faber, 1962), p. 80; Durrell, ‘The Ghost Train’, in Durrell, Esprit de Corps: Sketches from Diplomatic Life (London: Faber and Faber, 1957), pp. 19, 19; Durrell, ‘La Valise’, in Durrell, Stiff Upper Lip, new edn (1958; London: Faber and Faber, 1966), pp. 72, 72.
Eric Williams, Dragoman Pass (London: Collins, 1959), p. 127; Christopher Isherwood, Down There on a Visit, new edn (1962; London: Methuen, 1985), p. 263; Durrell, White Eagles, pp. 38, 39.
Pamela Hansford Johnson, An Error of Judgement, new edn (1962; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965), p. 6; Leonard Wibberley, The Mouse That Roared, new edn (1955; London: Transworld Publishers, 1959), p. 129; Rebecca West, The Birds Fall Down, new edn (1966; London: Virago, 1986), p. 345; Simon Raven, Doctors Wear Scarlet: A Romantic Tale, new edn (1960; London: Panther Books, 1966), p. 145.
Nathanson, ‘The Social Construction of the Soviet Threat: A Study in the Politics of Representation’, Alternatives, Vol. 13 (1988), pp. 455–6.
Booker, Dystopian Literature: A Theory and Research Guide (Westport and London: Greenwood Press, 1994), p. 3.
Gottlieb, Dystopian Fiction East and West: Universe of Terror and Trial (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2001), p. 17.
Quoted in Robert McMahon, The Cold War: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 132.
Macmillan, Riding the Storm 1956–1959 (London: Macmillan, 1971), p. 340.
See Anthony Cross, The Russian Theme in English Literature from the Sixteenth Century to 1980: An Introductory Survey and a Bibliography (Oxford: William A. Meeuws, 1985), p. 79.
Drabble, The Ice Age, new edn (1977; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978), pp. 46, 17.
Bainbridge, Winter Garden, new edn (1980; London: Fontana/Collins, 1981), pp. 81, 52, 46, 129.
Johnson, The Survival of the Fittest, new edn (1968; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970), p. 399; Frayn, The Russian Interpreter, new edn (1966; London: Fontana/Collins, 1978), pp. 136, 19, 140. See also Margaret Drabble, The Realms of Gold, new edn (1975; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977), p. 48.
Burgess, Honey, p. 131; Frayn, Russian Interpreter, p. 21; Mary McMinnies, The Visitors, new edn (London: The Reprint Society, 1960), pp. 44, 118; Burgess, Honey, p. 11.
Pamela Hansford Johnson, Cork Street, Next to the Hatter’s: A Novel in Bad Taste, new edn (1965; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968), p. 38; William Cooper, Memoirs of a New Man (London: Macmillan, 1966), p. 14; Keith Waterhouse, ‘All above Board’, in Waterhouse, Rhubarb, Rhubarb and Other Noises, new edn (1979; London: Sphere Books, 1981), p. 193.
May, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era (New York: Basic Books, 1988), p. 17. Macmillan believed that if the western bloc did not provide a satisfactory standard of life then ‘Communism will triumph, not by war, or even subversion, but by seeming to be a better way of bringing people material comforts’ (quoted in Greenwood, Britain, p. 167).
Brophy, Palace without Chairs (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1978), p. 29.
Carr, Harpole Report, p. 151; Kingsley Amis, Ending Up, new edn (1974; London: Penguin, 1987), pp. 165–6; David Lodge, The British Museum Is Falling Down, new edn (1965; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1983), p. 136.
Kingsley Amis, Jake’s Thing, new edn (1978; London: Penguin, 1980), p. 234; Bainbridge, Winter Garden, p. 89; Beryl Bainbridge, A Quiet Life, new edn (1976; London: Fontana Books, 1977), p. 114. See also Paul Bailey, Trespasses, new edn (1970; London: Penguin, 1989), p. 96; Weldon, Down among the Women, p. 223; and Martin Amis, Dead Babies, new edn (1975; London: Penguin, 1984), p. 197.
Wain, The Young Visitors, new edn (1965; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1969), p. 139.
Wain, Strike the Father Dead, new edn (1962; London: The Reprint Society, 1963), p. 278.
For examples, see Sid Chaplin, The Day of the Sardine, new edn (1961; Hexham: Flambard Press, 2004), pp. 111, 125–6; Keith Waterhouse, Jubb, new edn (1963; London: Grafton Books, 1986), pp. 39–42; Angela Carter, Shadow Dance, new edn (1966; London: Virago, 1994), pp. 114–15; Anthony Burgess, Inside Mr Enderby, in Burgess, Enderby, new edn (1963, 1968, 1974; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982), p. 61; Stan Barstow, Joby, new edn (1964; London: Black Swan, 1985), pp. 92–6; Pamela Hansford Johnson, The Humbler Creation, new edn (1959; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1961), pp. 76–9; Olivia Manning, The Play Room, new edn (1969; London: Virago, 1984), pp. 114–17, 157–60; and David Lodge, The Picturegoers, new edn (1960; London: Penguin, 1993), pp. 225–30. For evidence that these fears continued into the 1980s, see Pat Barker, The Man Who Wasn’t There, new edn (1989; London: Penguin, 1990), p. 28; Pat Barker, Liza’s England, new edn (1986; London: Virago, 1996), pp. 259–60; Jonathan Coe, The Dwarves of Death, new edn (1990; London: Penguin, 2001), pp. 58–9; and Bradbury, Cuts, p. 38.
Wain, Young Visitors, p. 94; Malcolm Bradbury, The History Man, new edn (1975; London: Arrow Books, 1977), p. 4; Fay Weldon, Remember Me, new edn (1976; London: Sceptre, 1979), p. 31; Anthony Powell, Books Do Furnish a Room, new edn (1971; London: Fontana Books, 1972), pp. 51, 52, 13. The ridicule of the fashionable left had also occurred before détente: see Wilson, Hemlock, p. 170; and Nancy Mitford, The Pursuit of Love, in Mitford, Love in a Cold Climate and Other Novels, new edn (1945, 1949, 1951; London: Penguin, 2000), p. 75.
Spark, The Driver’s Seat, new edn (1970; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974), p. 75.
Snow, The Malcontents, new edn (1972; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975), p. 42.
See Robert Hewison, Too Much: Art and Society in the Sixties 1960–75 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), pp. 157–68; and Jeremi Suri, Power and Protest: Global Revolution and the Rise of Detente (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 2003), pp. 1–6.
John Wain, ‘A Stranger at the Party’, in Wain, Nuncle and Other Stories, new edn (1960; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965), p. 135; Priestley, Saturn over the Water, p. 140; Bainbridge, Winter Garden, p. 78; Anthony Powell, Casanova’s Chinese Restaurant, new edn (1960; London: Fontana Books, 1970), p. 118. Several novels addressed in detail the persecution of dissident authors in the eastern bloc, as illustrated by C.J. Newman’s A Russian Novel (1973) and D.M. Thomas’s The Flute Player (1979), both inspired by English translations of such authors (see Cross, Russian Theme, p. 80).
Cooper, Scenes from Provincial Life, new edn (1950; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1961), p. 17.
See Conquest, A World of Difference (London and Melbourne: Ward, Lock & Co., 1955), p. 152.
For examples, see Raven, Blood of My Bone, new edn (1989; London: Grafton Books, 1990), pp. 18, 20; Spark, Territorial Rights (London: Macmillan, 1979), pp. 77–9; Phillips, The European Tribe, new edn (1987; London and Boston: Faber and Faber, 1988), pp. 94, 99; Amis, The Folks That Live on the Hill, new edn (1990; London: Penguin, 1991), p. 247; Braine, Two of Us, pp. 23, 156; Barnes, Flaubert’s Parrot, new edn (1984; London: Picador, 1985), p. 133; Lodge, Nice Work, p. 324; Burgess, Any Old Iron, pp. 305–6; McEwan, ‘Preface’ to McEwan, A Move Abroad: Or Shall We Die? and The Ploughman’s Lunch, new edn (1983, 1985; London: Picador, 1989), p. xi; Sinclair, Beau Bumbo, pp. 151–2; Sinclair, ‘Tzimtzum’, p. 52; and Malcolm Bradbury, My Strange Quest for Mensonge: Structuralism’s Hidden Hero, new edn (1987; London: Arena, 1989), p. 54.
Thomas, Ararat, new edn (1983; London: Abacus, 1984), p. 158. For further examples of Thomas’s anti-communism, see ibid., p. 125; Thomas, Swallow, pp. 271–5; Thomas, Lying Together, new edn (1990; London: Abacus, 1991), pp. 74–6; Thomas, The White Hotel, new edn (1981; London: Indigo, 1996), pp. 137–43, 167; and Thomas, The Flute-Player, new edn (1979; London: Pan Books, 1980), pp. 54–8, 72–3.
V.S. Naipaul, Guerillas (London: André Deutsch, 1975), p. 141.
Amis (‘Robert Markham’), Colonel Sun, new edn (1968; London: Pan Books, 1970), p. 182.
Mo, The Monkey King, new edn (1978; London: Abacus, 1984), pp. 186, 12. See also Lessing, Shikasta, p. 327; and Lessing, Four-Gated City, pp. 611, 667; Lodge, British Museum, pp. 53–4; Anthony Burgess, The Wanting Seed, new edn (1962; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973), pp. 52, 55, 169; Fitz Gibbon, When the Kissing, pp. 140–53, Muriel Spark, Not to Disturb, new edn (1971; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974), p. 54; Cooper, Memoirs, p. 63; Doris Lessing, Landlocked, new edn (1965; London: Panther Books, 1967), pp. 286–7; and V.S. Naipaul, In a Free State (London: André Deutsch, 1971), pp. 254–5.
Naipaul, Mystic Masseur, p. 206; Simon Raven, The Rich Pay Late, new edn (1964; London: Panther Books, 1966), p. 106; Wilson Harris, The Far Journey of Oudin (London: Faber and Faber, 1961), p. 98; Simon Raven, The Judas Boy, new edn (1968; London: Panther Books, 1969), p. 23; Simon Raven, New Seed for Old, new edn (1988; London: Grafton Books, 1989), p. 47. See also John Fowles, Mantissa (London: Jonathan Cape, 1982), p. 110; Lawrence Durrell, Livia: or Buried Alive, new edn (1978; London and Boston: Faber and Faber, 1981), p. 243; William Boyd, A Good Man in Africa, new edn (1981; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982), pp. 113, 219–20; Gerald Hanley, Drinkers of Darkness, new edn (1955; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1958), pp. 246–9; Hanley, Journey Homeward, pp. 17, 191, 306–7; Grace Nichols, Whole of a Morning Sky (London: Virago, 1986), pp. 23, 96–9; Doris Lessing, A Proper Marriage, new edn (1954; London: Panther Books, 1966), p. 99; David Lytton, The Goddam White Man, new edn (1960; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1962), p. 177; Bruce Chatwin, The Viceroy of Ouidah, new edn (1980; London: Pan Books, 1982), pp. 22, 126; John Masters, Bhowani Junction, new edn (1954; London: Sphere Books, 1983), p. 127; Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses, new edn (1988; London: Vintage, 2006), p. 537; and J.G. Ballard, The Day of Creation, new edn (1987; London: Grafton Books, 1988), pp. 15–16.
Farrell, The Singapore Grip, new edn (1978; London: Fontana, 1979), p. 467.
For examples from these and other novels, see Spark, The Takeover, new edn (1976; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978), pp. 82–3, 144; Banks, One More River, new edn (1973; Harmondsworth: Puffin Books, 1980), p. 22; Amis, Girl, 20, p. 11; Lodge, Out of the Shelter, new edn (1970; London: Penguin, 1986), pp. 39, 217; Burgess, Honey, p. 15; Snow, Last Things, pp. 13–14; Anthony Powell, The Military Philosophers, new edn (1968; London: Fontana Books, 1971), pp. 107–8; Iris Murdoch, An Accidental Man, new edn (1971; London: Penguin, 1973), p. 127; and Frayn, End of the Morning, pp. 210–17.
Dalby, ‘Geopolitical Discourse: The Soviet Union as Other’, Alternatives, Vol. 13 (1988), pp. 435, 424.
For fears of the Soviet Union, see Barnes, Before She Met Me, new edn (1982; London: Picador, 1983), p. 24; Boyd, The New Confessions, new edn (1987; London: Penguin, 1988), p. 451; Tremain, Cupboard, p. 218; Sinclair, ‘Svoboda’, in Sinclair, Bedbugs, pp. 85–97; and Sillitoe, Life Goes On, pp. 382–4. For the denigration of communist China, see Barnes, Staring at the Sun, new edn (1986; London: Picador, 1987), pp. 89–93; Martin Amis, ‘Watford in China’ (1983), in Amis, Visiting Mrs Nabokov and Other Excursions, new edn (1993; London: Penguin, 1994), p. 44; Durrell, Quinx: or The Ripper’s Tale (London and Boston: Faber and Faber, 1985), pp. 59–64; and Raven, The Face of the Waters, new edn (1985; London: Panther Books, 1986), p. 61.
Lively, Perfect Happiness, new edn (1983; London: Penguin, 1985), p. 40; Ballard, Running Wild, new edn (1988; London: Flamingo, 1997), p. 22. See also Rose Tremain, ‘The Colonel’s Daughter’, in Tremain, The Colonel’s Daughter and Other Stories, new edn (1984; London: Arena, 1985), pp. 39, 43–5; Emma Tennant, ‘Introduction’ (1987) to Tennant, The Colour of Rain, new edn (1963; London and Boston: Faber and Faber, 1988), unpaginated; Sinclair, Blood Libels, p. 125; and Sinclair, ‘Kayn Aynhoreh’, in Sinclair, Bedbugs, pp. 101, 109, 111.
See Burgess, Any Old Iron, new edn (1989; London: Arrow Books, 1989), pp. 89–91; Boyd, New Confessions, pp. 279–80; Faulks, The Girl at the Lion D’Or, new edn (1989; London: Vintage, 1990), pp. 173–4, 194; Fitzgerald, Innocence, new edn (1986; London: Flamingo, 1987), pp. 33–43; and Ishiguru, A Pale View of Hills, new edn (1982; London: Penguin, 1983), pp. 59–60.
Lessing, Under My Skin: Volume One of My Autobiography, to 1949, new edn (1994; London: Flamingo, 1995), p. 11. Apart from the brief involvement of Kingsley Amis and Iris Murdoch with the British Communist Party, and apart from Greene’s journeys into the communist bloc, these cultural and political experiences were rare: see Amis, Memoirs, new edn (1991; London: Penguin, 1992), p. 37; Hilda D. Spear, Iris Murdoch (Basingstoke and London: Macmillan, 1995), p. 4; Ballard, Miracles of Life: Shanghai to Shepperton: An Autobiography, new edn (2008; London: Harper Perennial, 2008), pp. 10, 47–8; Carl Rollyson, Rebecca West: A Saga of the Century, new edn (1995; London: Sceptre, 1996), pp. 205, 247–56; Sillitoe, ‘National Service’, in Sillitoe, Mountains, pp. 50–8; Richard Bradford, The Life of a Long-Distance Writer: The Biography of Alan Sillitoe (London and Chester Springs: Peter Owen, 2008), pp. 245–9; and Spark, Curriculum Vitae: Autobiography, new edn (1992; London: Penguin, 1993), pp. 192–3.
Lessing, The Good Terrorist, new edn (1985; London: Grafton Books, 1986), p. 364; Lessing, The Making of the Representative for Planet 8, new edn (1982; London: Granada, 1983), p. 34; Lessing, Fifth Child, p. 124.
See Lessing, The Wind Blows away Our Words and Other Documents Relating to the Afghan Resistance, new edn (1987; New York: Vintage Books, 1987), p. 167.
Sillitoe, The Lost Flying Boat, new edn (1983; London: Panther Books, 1984), p. 123; Anita Brookner, Latecomers, new edn (1988; London: Grafton Books, 1989), p. 200; Bradbury, Why Come to Slaka? (1986; London: Arena, 1987), p. 50; Bruce Chatwin, Utz, new edn (1988; London: Picador, 1989), p. 78; Muriel Spark, The Only Problem, new edn (1984; London: Triad/Grafton, 1985), p. 153. See also Sinclair, Blood Libels, pp. 52–3; Thomas, Swallow, pp. 252–7; Thomas, Summit (London: Victor Gollancz, 1987), pp. 134, 145; Anthony Burgess, The End of the World News, new edn (1982; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1983), pp. 85–90; Anthony Burgess, Any Old Iron, new edn (1989; London: Arrow Books, 1989), p. 312; Jeanette Winterson, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, new edn (1985; London: Vintage, 1991), p. 121; Rose Tremain, The Swimming Pool Season, new edn (1985; London: Sceptre, 1986), pp. 25, 57, 120–1; and Phillips, European Tribe, pp. 86, 90, 95, 115.
Fitzgerald, The Beginning of Spring, new edn (1988; London: Flamingo, 1989), p. 70.
J.L. Carr, The Battle of Pollocks Crossing, new edn (1985; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1986), p. 10; D.M. Thomas, Birthstone, new edn (1980; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982), p. 59; Fay Weldon, The Heart of the Country, new edn (1987; London: Vintage, 1987), p. 165; Amis, Folks That Live, p. 15. See also Muriel Spark, Loitering with Intent, new edn (1981; London: Triad Granada, 1982), p. 47; Fay Weldon, ‘Christmas Tree’, in Weldon, Watching Me, Watching You: A Collection of Short Stories, new edn (1981; London: Coronet Books, 1982), p. 11; Barry Unsworth, Stone Virgin, new edn (1985; London: Penguin, 1986), p. 45; and Lodge, Changing Places, p. 114.
Snow, In Their Wisdom, new edn (1974; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977), p. 280; Angela Carter, ‘Bath, Heritage City’ (1975), in Carter, Nothing Sacred, p. 75; Alan Sillitoe, ‘Arnold Bennett: The Man from the North’, in Sillitoe, Mountains, p. 116. For further examples, see Cooper, Provincial Life, p. 180; Kingsley Amis, I Like It Here, new edn (1958; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968), p. 123; Amis, Take a Girl, p. 102; Amis, Crime of the Century, p. 24; L.P. Hartley, My Sister’s Keeper (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1970), p. 160; L.P. Hartley, Eustace and Hilda, new edn (1952; London: Faber and Faber, 1965), p. 151; Lessing, Summer, p. 98; and Beryl Bainbridge, Harriet Said, new edn (1972; London: Penguin, 1992), p. 9.
Fay Weldon, ‘Geoffrey and the Eskimo Child’, in Weldon, Watching Me, p. 173; Keith Waterhouse, Thinks, new edn (1984; London: Grafton Books, 1986), p. 88; Kingsley Amis, Old Devils (London: Hutchinson, 1986), p. 33; Jonathan Coe, The Accidental Woman, new edn (1987; London: Sceptre, 1989), p. 43.
Bradbury, Rates of Exchange (London: Secker & Warburg, 1983), p. 50.
Stoker, Dracula, new edn (1897; Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), pp. 28, 21.
Booker, ‘Writing for the Wretched of the Earth: Frantz Fanon and the Radical African Novel’, in Dubravka Juraga and Booker, eds, Rereading Global Socialist Cultures after the Cold War: The Reassessment of a Tradition (Westport and London: Praeger, 2002), p. 148.
Ballard, Millennium People, new edn (2003; London: Harper Perennial, 2004), p. 29; Burgess, Honey, p. 45; Jean Rhys, ‘Tigers are Better-Looking’, in Rhys, Tigers are Better-Looking: With a Selection from The Left Bank (London: André Deutsch, 1968), p. 68; Shelagh Delaney, ‘Vodka and Small Pieces of Gold’, in Delaney, Sweetly Sings the Donkey, p. 120. For other criticisms of free-world discourse or of propaganda in general, see Alan Sillitoe, Travels in Nihilon (London: W.H. Allen, 1971), p. 45; Priestley, Saturn, pp. 51–2, 172; Rayner Heppenstall, The Woodshed, new edn (1962; London: Jupiter Books, 1968), p. 64; William Golding, ‘Tolstoy’s Mountain’, in Golding, The Hot Gates and Other Occasional Pieces, new edn (1965; London: Faber and Faber, 1970), p. 124; Wesker, ‘Visit’, pp. 150, 152; David Storey, A Temporary Life, new edn (1973; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978), p. 59; Drabble, Ice Age, p. 248; Thomas, Summit, p. 28; Amis, I Like It, pp. 47–50; Fay Weldon, The Shrapnel Academy, new edn (1986; London: Coronet Books, 1987), pp. 67–8; Lessing, Shikasta, pp. 111–14, 120–1, 294; Lessing, The Sirian Experiments: The Report by Ambien II, of the Five, new edn (1981; St Albans and London: Granada, 1982), pp. 309, 312; and Lessing, Documents Relating to the Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Empire, new edn (1983; London: Panther Books, 1985), pp. 15–19, 63, 102, 156–8.
Few authors envisaged the ending of the Cold War: see Jonathan Coe, A Touch of Love, new edn (1989; London: Sceptre, 1990), pp. 31–2; Thomas, Swallow, pp. 271–5; Thomas, Summit, pp. 94–5; Ballard, ‘The Life and Death of God’ (1976), in Ballard, Complete Short Stories, p. 843; and Kingsley Amis, ‘The 2003 Claret’ (1958), in Amis, Collected Short Stories, new edn (1980; London: Penguin, 1983), p. 182.
Huntington, ‘The Clash of Civilizations?’, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 72, No. 3 (1993), pp. 22–49.
Kovačević, Narrating Post/Communism: Colonial Discourse and Europe’s Borderline Civilization (London and New York: Routledge, 2008), p. 2. Acting as a kind of literary border police, Bradbury’s Doctor Criminale (1992), Bel Mooney’s Lost Footsteps (1993), D.B.C. Pierre’s Ludmila’s Broken English (2006) and Rose Tremain’s The Road Home (2007) imagine east Europeans travelling to the West and, for the most part, make sure they return at the end of the narratives. The other novels referred to here are Barnes’s The Porcupine (1992), Barker’s Double Vision (2003) and de Bernières’s A Partisan’s Daughter (2008).
Banerjee, ‘Postethnicity and Postcommunism in Hanif Kureishi’s Gabriel’s Gift and Salman Rushdie’s Fury’, in Joel Kuortti and Jopi Nyman, eds, Reconstructing Hybridity: Post-Colonial Studies in Transition (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2007), p. 314.
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© 2013 Andrew Hammond
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Hammond, A. (2013). Literary Containment. In: British Fiction and the Cold War. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137274854_2
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