Diplomacy in Postwar British Literature and Culture

Caroline Zoe Krzakowski

• Publisher: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press
• Year: 2023
• eBook ISBN: 9781683932918
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: English Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

In Diplomacy in Postwar British Literature and Culture, Krzakowski examines how representations of British envoys—diplomats, officials, and spies— in fiction and non-fiction by Rebecca West, Lawrence Durrell, Olivia Manning, and John le Carré, as well as in the films of Alfred Hitchcock respond to the political instability of the postwar period. This study argues that the rise of international relations in the twentieth century shaped modern British fiction and film, and offers a new way to trace the continuities between geopolitics and British cultural production in the aftermath of the Second World War.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Arbitrating the Aftermath: Rebecca West’s Journalism and The Saga of the Century
• Chapter 2: Alfred Hitchcock’s International Plots
• Chapter 3: Diplomatic Revisions: Lawrence Durrell and the Postwar Novel
• Chapter 4: “Stray Figures after a Tragedy”: The British Council in Olivia Manning’s Balkan and Levant Trilogies
• Chapter 5: Secret Soldiers: John le Carré’s Spies and the Politics of Stability
• Conclusion : Foreign Relations and Postwar British Culture
• References
• About the Author