This study sets the period of literature between 1960 and 1990 in its political and cultural context. From the end of Empire in the 1960s, through the attempts in the 1970s to maintain a common culture through education, good literature, and state subsidies for the Arts, to the 1980s when there was a shift towards the acknowledgement of a multiplicity of cultures, this was a period of considerable change and development. Patricia Waugh looks at the effects upon English literature of the fragmentation of English culture over this 30-year period, and examines the new and varied voices which grew up as a result of this proliferation of cultures. She makes reference to a wide variety of writers, including Tom Stoppard, Salman Rushdie, Angela Carter, Doris Lessing and David Lodge amongst many others.