The Autobiography of a Nation: The 1951 Festival of Britain

Abstract

This social and cultural history focuses on the meanings of Britain and Britishness in the immediate post-WWII period. As I argued in Moments of Modernity, the historiography of the post-WWII Britain has been dominated by highly political narratives and cosy assumptions. As consciously constructed cultural and educational events, the Festival shows a society and a government struggling to recast national identity after WW II. Primary research, initially funded by the U.S. Social Science Research Council, utilised documents from the Public Record Office, the Modern Record Office at University of Warwick, the Science Museum, the Thomas Cook Archive, and the Labour Party Archives, amongst others. Original films and BBC radio broadcasts, along with contemporary newspapers and journals, were used. I interviewed the Assistant to the Director of Exhibitions, Charles Plouviez, and Dr Peter Laslett, who made BBC Festival radio programmes. Employing interdisciplinary methods, I show that the official Festival events were more forward-looking and democratic than previously assumed. This monograph covers the Festival’s history and historiography, its purpose, its representations of future and past, the role of London, the regions, and the ‘local’, the Empire and finally its legacy, in the Millennium Dome. The book contributes to modern British history and cultural studies, and also to design, material culture and architectural history. It examines the end of Empire, gender and consumption, and struggles between local, regional and national identities in post-war Britain.

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