British popular newspapers were fascinated by the terrible power of the nuclear bomb, and they devoted countless articles, editorials and cartoons to it. In so doing, they played a significant role in shaping the nuclear culture of the post-war period. Yet scholars have given little sustained attention to this rich seam of material. This article makes a contribution to remedying this major gap by offering an overview of the coverage of nuclear weaponry in the two most popular newspapers in Britain, (...) theDaily Expressand theDaily Mirror, in the period from 1945 to the early 1960s. Although both papers supported British possession of the bomb, claiming that it was essential for the maintenance of great-power status, their reporting was more complex and critical than the existing scholarship has tended to assume. This article argues that sceptical voices in the press often disrupted official narratives and that journalists emphasized the potential dangers involved in the nuclear arms race. Newspapers frequently highlighted, rather than downplayed, the horrors of the bomb: it was repeatedly portrayed as a ‘monster’ threatening the world. (shrink)

In the ever-expanding field of nuclear history, studies of ‘nuclear culture’ are becoming increasingly popular. Often situated within national contexts, they typically explore responses to the nuclear condition in the cultural modes of literature, art, music, theatre, film and other media, as well as nuclear imagery more generally. This paper offers a critique of current conceptions of ‘nuclear culture’, and argues that the term has little analytical coherence. It suggests that historians of ‘nuclear culture’ have tended to essentialize the nuclear (...) to the detriment of historical analysis, and that the wide variety of methodological approaches to ‘nuclear culture’ are simultaneously a strength and a more significant weakness, in that they have little shared sense of the meaning of the term, its theoretical underpinnings or its analytical purchase. The paper then offers a study of Ewan MacColl's 1946 playUranium 235, whose career reveals much about the diversity of cultures of the nuclear in post-war Britain. The study moves us away from a single, homogeneous ‘British nuclear culture’ towards a pluralistic critical history of cultural responses to nuclearization. These responses, I conclude, should be seen as collectively constitutive of the nuclear condition rather than as passive reflections of it. (shrink)

This survey outlines a history of museums written through biographies of objects in their collections. First, the mechanics of the movement of things and the accompanying shifts in status are considered, from manufacture or growth through collecting and exchange to the museum. Objects gathered meanings through associations with people they encountered on their way to the collection, thus linking the history of museums to broader scientific and civic cultures. Next, the essay addresses the use of items once they joined a (...) collection, whether classificatory, analytical, or in display. By thus embedding the study of scientific practice in material culture, this approach contributes to constructivist histories of science. The final section addresses the role of objects in the experience of the visitors, emphasizing how fruitful the history of museum objects can be in the study of the public engagement with science. (shrink)

This article concerns the Atom Train travelling exhibition that the chief body of the British nuclear scientists' movement, the Atomic Scientists' Association , organized in collaboration with government offices and private industry in 1947–1948. It argues that the exhibition marked an important moment within post-war British nuclear culture where nuclear scientists shared aspects of their nuclear knowledge with the British public, while simultaneously clashing with the interests of the emerging British national security state in the early Cold War.

National exhibitions and festivals perform a number of roles at the same time. In the first half of the twentieth century exhibitions were first and foremost trade fairs, occasions on which to promote British goods but at the same time provide an opportunity for cementing imperial relations. Exhibitions are also sites of aesthetic discourse where, for example, particular architectural or design ideologies may be promoted; in addition, they provide platforms for the conspicuous display of scientific and technical achievement; and finally, (...) they provide opportunities for creating and projecting ideas of national identity, however multi-faceted those might be. Furthermore, in order to encourage the widest possible attendance and popularity, most exhibitions from the late nineteenth century onwards included a large number of purely entertaining attractions, which of course provided places for the mingling of social classes, something that appealed to post-1945 notions of a properly democratic society. Exhibitions therefore always perform a number of functions, some of which may indeed conflict with each other, and need to be analysed on a number of levels. (shrink)

The Isotope School was established in 1951 by the British Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Harwell following the model of the American Oak Ridge Institute of Nuclear Studies. Until its dissolution in 1967, it played an important role in the expansion of radioisotope techniques in Britain and Western Europe. This paper traces the origin and activities of the Isotope School, and describes the content of its courses and the composition of its audiences both in Britain and abroad. These illustrate the (...) motivations behind the early diffusion of nuclear technology and the importance of Cold War politics in shaping the flows of materials and expertise. In particular, the ban on attendance of Eastern European students at the courses reveals a persistent tension inside the British nuclear programme: the conflict between the drive for disseminating nucleonics and the restrictions forced by national security concerns. (shrink)