Anger And After

There are books that explain a cultural movement, and then there are books that arrive just after the cultural movement has finished smashing the furniture and attempt to work out what on earth happened. Anger and After is very much the latter.

Published in 1963, John Russell Taylor’s study examines the phenomenon of Britain’s so-called "Angry Young Men" – that loose collection of writers, playwrights, and intellectual troublemakers who spent the 1950s pointing out that post-war Britain was perhaps not quite the glorious meritocracy everyone had been promised. They were angry, disillusioned, sarcastic, and often found in bedsits complaining about society, which made them ideal literary heroes and probably exhausting dinner guests.

Taylor charts the rise of figures such as John Osborne, Kingsley Amis, Alan Sillitoe, and their contemporaries, exploring how a generation of writers challenged the cosy assumptions of British culture. The result is part literary criticism, part social history, and part forensic investigation into the national pastime of grumbling.

What makes the book especially enjoyable is that it analyses rebellion from a safe historical distance. The revolutionaries of yesterday are examined with scholarly seriousness, which is one of civilisation’s great ironies. Few things age faster than youthful outrage. The angry young men became middle-aged establishment figures, the establishment became unfashionable, and subsequent generations discovered entirely new things to be angry about.

This Pelican Books edition comes from a golden age when intelligent non-fiction was sold in affordable paperbacks to commuters, students, and people who genuinely thought reading about literary movements was a pleasant way to spend a Saturday afternoon. There is no ISBN because Britain had not yet fully embraced the idea that every object required a unique numerical identity.

Condition is Good. The book remains in pleasingly respectable shape considering that it has spent more than sixty years discussing people who considered respectability deeply suspicious. The pages are sound, the text remains sharp, and its arguments have survived rather better than many of the cultural battles it describes.

For modern readers, Anger and After offers a fascinating reminder that every generation believes it has invented dissatisfaction. Long before social media, comment sections, podcasts, and twenty-four-hour outrage cycles, there were playwrights and novelists loudly declaring that society had lost its way. The technology changes, but the complaints remain comfortingly familiar.

A thoughtful, engaging, and occasionally amusing piece of literary history. Ideal for students, theatre enthusiasts, cultural historians, and anyone who enjoys discovering that the good old days were largely occupied by people complaining about the good old days.

As sold by Crappy Old Books: because yesterday’s rebels eventually become today’s academic subject matter, and someone has to keep the evidence.

Keep browsing: See more Fiction books Other books by John Russell Taylor