After the Bomb

Matthew Grant is quite right to assert that ‘the cold war must be seen as a dominant backdrop to British history after 1945, as dominant as the story of economic decline which traditionally haunts any discussion of contemporary British history’ (p. 3). This book does an excellent job of showing the importance ascribed by several governments to the Cold War and planning for nuclear war. After the Bomb traces the pattern of thought on these questions within governments between 1945 and 1968 illustrating the differing opinions about civil defence within and between a number of ministries. The story begins in the immediate aftermath of the war as planners and government officials tried to wrap their minds around what a nuclear war would mean for Britain. Grant paints a picture of civil defence planners who were caught unawares by the Berlin crisis in 1948 and were largely unable to reconcile their

Civil defense · Cold war · Economic history · Government (linguistics · Nuclear warfare · Nuclear weapon · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Spanish Civil War · World War II · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · Nuclear Issues and Defense · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies · History · Law