This article explores British ‘nuclear culture’ by examining how individuals and groups within British government tried to comprehend nuclear weapons after the advent of the hydrogen bomb in 1952. It argues that thinking about nuclear weaponry was not uniform, and there was no monolithic ‘nuclear culture’ in government. Instead, political and social habits interacted with Cold War experience to create views of the nuclear weapon – nuclear cultures – that varied across government to create a diverse, and shifting, set of (...) ideas – nuclear cultures – about what the nuclear weapon meant in British hands, and the role it played in providing military power and political influence. (shrink)

In the extended introduction to this special issue on British nuclear culture, the guest editors outline the main historiographical and conceptual contours of British nuclear scholarship, and explore whether we can begin to define ‘British nuclear culture’ before introducing the contributors to this special issue, whose work we have organized into three broad areas. The first part is devoted to three articles that offer explicit and extended attempts to reconceptualize British nuclear culture, illuminating the complex links between nuclear science, the (...) state and the individual citizen. The second part of this issue is devoted to three articles that concentrate on aspects of the history of nuclear science – focusing particularly on intellectuals, nuclear scientists and enthusiasts – alongside analysis of the popularization of nuclear science as well as the relationship between the state and nuclear science and its practitioners. In the third part, four articles examine the diverse ways in which ‘official’ narratives of the atomic age can be questioned, disrupted or enhanced by analysing the significance of journalistic, anti-nuclear and fictional narratives to the development of nuclear culture in Britain. (shrink)