Priestley's England

<p>Priestley's England is the first full-length academic study of J B Priestley - novelist playwright screen-writer journalist and broadcaster political activist public intellectual and popular entertainer one of the makers of twentieth-century Britain and one of its sharpest critics. <br><br>The book explores the cultural literary and political history of twentieth-century Britain through the themes which preoccupied Priestley throughout his life: competing versions of Englishness; tradition modernity and the decline of industrial England; 'Americanisation' mass culture and 'Admass'; cultural values and 'broadbrow' culture; consumerism and the decay of the public sphere; the loss of spirituality and community in 'the nervous excitement the frenzy the underlying despair of our century'. It argues that Priestley has been unjustly neglected for too long: we have a great deal to learn both from this extraordinary multi-faceted man and from the English radical tradition he represented.<br><br>This book will appeal to all those interested in the culture and politics of twentieth-century Britain in the continuing debates over 'Englishness' to which Priestley made such a key contribution and in the life and work of one of the most remarkable and popular writers of the past century.</p>