ABSTRACT
During the second half of the twentieth century, the United Kingdom, which in all respects-militarily, economically and politically-emerged a much diminished power from the Second World War, has needed to come to terms with some major challenges. One of these is the unification of Europe. The United Kingdom’s role in this process has given rise to heated debates between isolationist and more integrationist camps. The positions were perhaps most clearly defined in a by now famous (some would say infamous) speech given in October 1989 by the then Prime Minister Mrs Thatcher at the European College in Bruges. Mrs Thatcher vigorously pleaded against a tightly structured future (con?)federate Europe (the Common Market view) and for a rather loose grouping of unequivocally sovereign states (the Bruges Group view). Mutatis mutandis, the same debate can be traced with regard to British postwar literature.
