British Social Realism in the Arts since 1940

This is the first book of its kind to look across disciplines at this vital aspect of British art, literature and culture. It brings the various intertwined histories of social realism into historical perspective, and argues that this sometimes marginalized genre is still an important reference point for creativity in Britain.

'This is an outstanding study of the histories and meanings of social realism in Britain since 1940, which is as attentive to the diversity of its forms and politics, as it is imaginative about its possibilities. The six chapters, written by leading scholars in the study of the arts, offer intellectually stimulating and sophisticated analyses of the significance of social realism in modern and contemporary British culture, from Coronation Street , Saturday Night and Sunday Morning , and Mass Observation , to The Royle Family , Tom Leonard, and Jez Butterworth. Of all the epithets used to characterise the aesthetics of postwar Britain, social realism is the most maligned and least understood. This book opens up the concepts and practices of social realism in film, drama, fiction, poetry, visual art and television to lucid, intelligent and thorough scrutiny. It sets out a brilliant new map of the cultural landscape in Britain, as challenging in its positioning of social realism as a dominant aesthetic as it is masterful in its refigurations of the very terms by which we understand that aesthetic. British Social Realism in the Arts since 1940 is an essential guide to the arts in modern Britain, an inspired and dazzling intervention in the history of our cultural present.' - John Brannigan, University College Dublin, Republic of Ireland

PAUL DAVE Senior Lecturer in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of East London, UK STEPHEN LACEY Professor of Drama, Film and Television, University of Glamorgan, UK ROD MENGHAM Reader in Modern English Literature, University of Cambridge, UK DAVE ROLINSON Lecturer in the Department of Film, Media and Journalism, University of Stirling, UK KESTON SUTHERLAND Reader in Poetics at the University of Sussex, UK GILLIAN WHITELEY Curator and Lecturer in Critical and Historical Studies at Loughborough University School of the Arts, UK