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IX. Literature from the 1940s to the 1990s

The Second World War influenced greatly the ideologi­ cal and economic life of Britain. This could not but affect the development of English literature.

During the war Great Britain suffered heavy financial

losses. The post-war programme of the Labour Party became the only hope for a better future for the British people. It promised to do away with unemployment, to improve living conditions, to level out prices. Great at­ tention in the programme was paid to cooperation with the Soviet Union. So the elections of 1945 brought defeat to the Conservatives and ensured victory to the Labour Party. Very soon, however, the British people saw that the policy of the labour leaders did not differ much from that of their predecessors.

From 1946 Great Britain faced strong resistance on the part of the oppressed people of India and Egypt. Great Britain was losing one colony after another and becoming more dependent on the USA.

The failure of the Labour Government that promised a lot and did nothing, the cold war and the atomic threat, the rapid intensification of the cultural and moral crisis­ these were the factors in the 50s- 60s which influenced

the minds of the British people, particularly the intellec­

tuals, and caused their disillusionment.

Due to the deepening of the capitalist economic crisis the position of the working masses became worse in the

70s.

Prices were rapidly going up. By the end of the decade

inflation had reached more than 25% annually and the number of unemployed amounted to the unprecedented figure of 2.5 min. The workers responded to the govern­ ment's economic policy with numerous strikes and demon­ strations. The continuous arms race and the growing threat of a third world war led to a new wave of the anti­ war movement which developed on a wide scale and in­ volved millions of British people.

AI! this was reflected in the literature of that time.

Special mention should be made of the Marxist writer Jack Lindsay (b. 1900), whose important contribution to English literature is his series of novels under the col­ lective title Novels of the British Way. The first of these, Betrayed Spring, was well known to Soviet readers. In it Lindsay gave a fine picture of the complicated political situation in Britain after World War II.

Besides socialist literature, other literary tendencies appeared one after another: "the angry young men" (1953-1957), "new left" and "teenager's literature" (af­

ter 1958), the "working-class novel" and the "new wave drama"

The novel with a philosophical tende11cy was born and the traditional satirical novel flourished to the full.

The essence of all these literary phenomena was the earnest search of the writers for their place in life, for a better future.

If we compare the litercture of the pre-war period with that of the 19-40-80s, we sh;,l!l definitely see great chan­

ges: the number of progressive writers has grown to a large extent. Realism prevails in the English literature of the post-war period.