British Spy Fiction and the End of Empire

The spy novel is typically perceived to encompass ideologies of nationhood, national public concern and the prevalence and preference for tradition inherent to post-war British society.Spaces of Security examines the popular spy novel in Britain at this time and suggests that spy fiction represents a far more revealing evocation of developing Cold War anxieties regarding territory and decolonisation than previous critical assessments have acknowledged.

This book compares and contrasts the literary representation of space, identity and power in the work of three British twentieth-century authors: Ian Fleming, Graham Greene, and John le Carre. It analyses these themes through close literary and textual analysis of their novels and by comparing the influence of their styles and motives on the genre as a whole. Spy fiction, it is argued, is an active component of cultural and political history, and not simply a self-contained, and therefore limited, genre.Spaces of Security is an excellent resource for any scholars with an interest in spy fiction and twentieth-century British fiction more generally.

Sam Goodman is Lecturer in English and Communication at Bournemouth University, UK. His primary research interests include twentieth-century fiction, and medical humanities. He is also the editor ofMedicine, Health & the Arts: Approaches to the Medical Humanities (Routledge 2013) with Victoria Bates (Bristol) and Alan Bleakley (Plymouth).