Educational Media Reviews Online

This is the second of a three part documentary series covering the transformation of the British novel in the 20th Century from the years 1919 to 1990.

Part 2, The Age of Anxiety, covers the British novel in the time directly after World War II until the start of the social liberation of the 60s: 1945 to 1969. After WWII, England struggled to understand man, his inhumanity, and his moral failings. The novels of J.R.R. Tolkien, William Golding, and Iris Murdoch grapple with these themes. Concurrent with these novels were those trying to digest the social changes and the concerns of the working class. Amis Kinglsey, John Braine, and Alan Sillitoe wrote novels considering those changes. Adding to their concern for social change, were the dispossessed, non-white voices of West Indians and Indians who immigrated to England in the late 50s and 60s. George Lemming and Sam Selvon’s novels document the experience of alienation. Amid racial clashes were also the clashes of generations as reflected in the novels of Colin MacInnes. The espionage thrillers of Ian Fleming and John Le Carre became popular as the cold war heightened in the late 50s. Rising anxiety about the atomic bomb and the rapid advances of technology also saw dystopian science fiction novels such of those as John Windham, Anthony Burgess, and J.G. Ballard became popular. But it was the 60s social and sexual revolution, as seen in the novels of Doris Lessing and Margaret Drabble, that redirects the nation’s anxiety of the future with concerns about the perceived new freedoms of the present.

This documentary is well done and accomplishes its goal. Each novelist tells their own story as seen or heard on archival footage from the British Broadcasting Company (BBC). The effect is that the viewer sees history through the eyes of the authors as well their highlighted novels. Commentary provided by current British novelists and literary scholars adds additional information as well as analysis. The BBC archival footage is of good quality as are the additional photos from representative archives and news clips. It is especially instructive to hear novelists talk about their novels and in many cases see them respond in interview situations. The viewer is given a true sense of the transformation of the novel as its authors used the medium to reflect changes within their culture and the world.

This documentary would be especially instructive for the study of British literature and particularly the study of the British novel. Each author speaks about their work in a separate chapter, making the documentary useful for the classroom where the introduction of an individual novel or author may be desired.

Additional archival material is available on the BBC Archive web site.