Cynicism in British post-war culture: Ignorance, dust and disease

Abstract

Cynicism is a neglected subject for investigation in post-war British cultural history, perhaps due to its apparent omnipresence. Kieran Curran aims to rectify this omission by lucidly connecting together literature, music and film as common avatars of the cynic sensibility. Transcending barriers between high and low culture, Curran maps cynicism from 1950 (the end of post-war austerity) to 1987 (the year of the break-up of the Smiths), spanning a number of significant historical moments in the process: decolonisation and the erosion of the British Empire; the expansion of higher education (particularly in the wake of the Robbins Report of 1963); the radical comprehensivisation of secondary education; the dismantling of railways with a parallel valorisation of car culture; and the neo-colonial excursion of the Falklands War.