This engaging book sets English literature since 1960 in its political and cultural context. From the end of empire in the sixties, through the attempts in the 1970s to maintain a "common culture" through education, good literature, and state subsidies for the Arts, to the 1980s when there was a shift toward the acknowledgement of a multiplicity of cultures, this was a period of considerable change and development. Waugh looks at the effects of the fragmentation of English culture and examines the new and varied voices that grew up as a result of this proliferation of cultures.