C. P. Snow, Corridors of Power

Nicolas Tredell (Independent Scholar - Europe)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.09: English Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary Britain , 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Gina Lyle (University of Glasgow), Graham MacPhee (University of Manchester), Kerry Myler (Birmingham Newman University), Jenni Ramone (The Nottingham Trent University)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1964

Places

England (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

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Corridors of Power

(1964) is an exciting novel which traces the attempt of Roger Quaife, a Conservative Minister of Defence in the late 1950s, to push a Bill through Parliament by which Britain would renounce its nuclear weapons. Nothing like this happened at that time, so the story, for all its characteristic Snovian realism, has a conditional, “what-if?” quality, offering a sort of “alternative history”. It is the ninth novel in Snow’s “Strangers and Brothers” series, covering the years 1955-9. The phrase “corridors of power” first appeared in the seventh novel,

Homecomings

(1956, 591); but Snow remarked that he might have forgotten it if it had not been used as the title of Rayner Heppenstall’s review of

Homecomings

in the

Times Literary Supplement

(7 September…

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2500 words

Citation: Tredell, Nicolas. "Corridors of Power". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 10 May 2007 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=5816, accessed 26 April 2024.]

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