Review of Daniel Cordle’s “Protect/Protest: British Nuclear Fiction of the 1980s

摘要

Contained within a special issue of The British Journal for the History of Science on 'British Nuclear Culture', Daniel Cordle's article provides a valuable assessment of the nuclear referent within a selection of British writings during the 1980s. Both Cordle's article and the special issue more broadly outline an emerging area of scholarship which aims to unpick the ways in which nuclear technology and weaponry influenced British cultural life during the Cold War. Cordle's article focuses on a series of socio-political events during the eighties – notably the "hard- lines stances" (655) of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan towards the Soviet Union and increasing reaction to the British government's 1976 civil defence pamphlet Protect and Survive – and evaluates how these wider issues filtered into literary representation