Echoes of the Past: The Contemporary Apologism of the Petty Intelligentsia

by James Buckham (October 2015)

“In a year or two, the older generation that still dreamed of empire must surely give way to new politicians…The blimps, still fighting the last war, still nostalgic for its discipline and privations – their time was up.”

In On Chesil Beach, Ian McKewan blends the three stories of two young newly-weds and the post-war 1960s British landscape they inhabit into a tale that is both a romantic tragedy and an astute social commentary. The main characters represent the hope for a new and better society rising from the ruins of post-war Europe; educated, conscientious, socially mobile and pacifistically anti-establishment, they embody, despite their fictitious nature, the swinging of a pendulum of values that took place around the mid-20^th century.  more>>>