British Social Realism in the Arts since 1940

'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