British Writing, Propaganda and Cultural Diplomacy in the Second World War and Beyond

Beatriz Lopez completed a PhD on Muriel Spark and propaganda at DurhamUniversity, UK.James Smith is Professor of English Studies at Durham University, UK. He is theeditor of The Cambridge Companion to British Literature of the 1930s and theauthor of British Writers and MI5 Surveillance, 1930-1960.Guy Woodward is Research Associate in the Department of English Studies atDurham University, UK. He is the author of Culture, Northern Ireland, and the Second WorldWar.

• Introduction: Literature, Propaganda and the Intellectual – Beatriz Lopez, James Smith and Guy Woodward1. Haw-Hawing Hitler: Radio Comedy as Propaganda – Debra Rae Cohen2. Radio Pages, Morale Reading and the Word War – Damien Keane 3. Dylan Thomas at the Microphone: The BBC’s Book of Verse and Imperial Cultural Propaganda – Daniel Ryan Morse 4. PEN, Refugee Writers and Propaganda – Katherine Cooper 5. Visual Storytelling in the Ministry of Information's Wartime Exhibitions – Harriet Atkinson6. Propaganda as Elegy in the Ministry of Information's Britain in Pictures Series – Megan Faragher 7. Colonial Insurgency, Propaganda and the British ‘soldier-aesthete’: Lawrence Durrell, Maurice Cardiff, Patrick Leigh Fermor and Freya Stark in the Cyprus Revolt – Maria Hadjiathanasiou 8. John Bankole Jones, London Line and the Central Office of Information in the Era of Cultural Propaganda – Scott Anthony 9. The British Council, Writers and their Work and English Literature as Cultural Diplomacy – James Smith 10. Lynette Roberts’s ‘Gods with Stainless Ears’ and the Poetics of Propaganda – Adam Piette 11. ‘Dialectical tight-rope acts of self-deception': Arthur Koestler’s Anti-Communist Propaganda – Annabel Williams 12. Psychological Warfare in Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow – Kirk Robert Graham13. Dramatizing Secrecy and Propaganda: Sir David Hare in Conversation – Guy WoodwardSelect Bibliography

This collection of essays on British propaganda and literature is timely, engaging, and altogether intriguing. All in all, this is an exemplary ensemble of essays that will be much appreciated by scholars working in British studies, Second World War and Cold War studies, and cultural diplomacy.