Hogg's overview of nuclear narratives in twentieth-century Britain begins with the entry of nuclear radiation into the public consciousness at the turn of the twentieth century, and traces responses to the nuclear through to the post-Cold War decades. The book builds on a wider growing historical literature on British nuclear cultures, to which Jonathan Hogg is already a leading contributor. It also borrows much conceptually and methodologically from the more developed literature on American nuclear cultures, as well as the continuing work on the nuclear in relation to continental Europe and Asia.

Several frames guide the narrative. First is the notion of an atomic age in which the atomic and nuclear came to play a significant role in society and politics – an age which was emergent in the first decades of the century but which only fully emerged following Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Second, this period was marked by the development of a varied and significant British nuclear culture, ‘characterised by the development of the nuclear state and the complex and varied ways in which people controlled, responded to, resisted or represented the complex influences of nuclear science and technology, the official nuclear state and the threat of nuclear war’ (p. 7). Third, Hogg emphasizes the importance of language in shaping nuclear discourses and the way people think about the nuclear. Fourth, Hogg conceptualizes nuclear culture as being founded on two often opposing sets of narratives: the official and the unofficial. He argues that although historiography has traditionally focused on the official, unofficial narratives were important too – indeed the book is essentially an exploration of the varied, widespread and powerful nature of such narratives. These narratives highlight the importance of nuclear subjectivities – that there were important differing responses and understandings of nuclear events, processes and artefacts. Fifth, central to the book is the notion of nuclear anxiety – a concept developed in American historiography and deployed here in much the same way – which he argues was a widespread ‘psychosocial’ sentiment which exerted a powerful and widespread pressure on social and cultural change (pp. 11–12).

For the pre-1945 period Hogg begins with discoveries in atomic and nuclear science before surveying popular responses, including newspaper articles, radium product advertisements and fictional representations. A brief summary of British wartime bomb research is then followed by British postwar government and public responses to the bomb, including print media and mass-observation diaries. These early responses matured, he argues, in the 1950s, thus setting the pattern for future responses. Government institutions dealing with the atomic solidified in this period; anti-nuclear movements were institutionalized; and representations of ‘powerlessness, uncertainty, anxiety and ambiguity’ increased and deepened (p. 75). The 1959–1975 period saw further radicalization of anti-nuclear narratives, as evidenced by more organized activism, an explosion in nuclear references in media, and more reporting of anti-nuclear stances in the press. For the late 1970s and the 1980s Hogg continues to focus on CND, the press, television and personal recollections, but also brings in books and movies, and argues that scepticism towards nuclear policy became widely normalized in British culture. As the imminent threat of nuclear annihilation receded after the end of the Cold War so nuclear culture also retreated into the background. The representation of the nuclear had reached a ‘depoliticized, sanitized stage’, rendered almost invisible through the iconography and nuclear kitsch within which it remained embedded (p. 172). Movies and computer games loom large as examples in this final section.

This book is strongest where it builds on Hogg's own research into non-official nuclear culture – particularly his work on the press, novels, television, film and diaries. By doing so it makes a strong case for the importance of sources of these types in helping us to understand the atomic and its place in twentieth-century Britain. Many readers would also appreciate the generous space he gives to historiographical discussion. Understandably, much is left uncovered here: for example, the state is largely missing after the 1950s, and there is little engagement with the momentous changes in British society post-1945, nationalist narratives, and scientific research and development in the post-war period. Comparisons with France, Germany and (most crucially) the USA are also largely absent. Nevertheless British Nuclear Culture is an important contribution to the nascent literature on British nuclear history and British twentieth-century history more broadly, and offers an important launching point for further historical reflection and research.