C.P. Snow and the Struggle of Modernity

Snow is often regarded as a late-Victorian liberal who had little to say about the modernist period in which he lived and wrote. John de la Mothe, however, convincingly challenges this analysis with an insightful reassessment of Snow’s place in twentieth-century thought. He argues that Snow’s life and writings reflect a persistent struggle with the nature of modernity. This is most notable, de la Mothe reveals, in the Strangers and Brothers sequence of novels and the provocative thesis in The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution. These works, along with the body of Snow’s work and the multiplicity of his life, manifest Snow’s belief that science and technology are at the centre of modern life.