This book explores aspects of the social and cultural history of nuclear Britain in the Cold War era (1945-1991) and contributes to a more multivalent exploration of the consequences of nuclear choices which are too often left unacknowledged by historians of post-war Britain.

In the years after 1945, the British government mobilised money, scientific knowledge, people and military-industrial capacity to create both an independent nuclear deterrent and the generation of electricity through nuclear reactors. This expensive and vast ‘technopolitical’ project, mostly top-secret and run by small sub-committees within government, was central to broader Cold War strategy and policy. Recent attempts to map the resulting social and cultural history of these military-industrial policy decisions suggest that nuclear mobilisation had far-reaching consequences for British life.

The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Contemporary British History.