ABSTRACT
As women's presence in the workplace increased, the comics, films, memoirs, memorials and toys through which the British glorified their 'finest hour' became more gendered. Tourism also began an unprecedented peacetime engagement with the rest of Europe, with a commensurate effect on Britishness that urgently requires further research. British popular music became a fulcrum of national identity in the UK following the 'Beat' explosion of the 1960s, while the same occurred in Germany a generation later with 'Techno'. In the long age of affluence, it became harder for the UK to claim moral or material superiority over other nations or even, given the cultural impact of the US, to distinguish itself from them. Ironically, as a consequence the British way of life resembled that of Germany and Japan far more than it had done before the Second World War. Critics also underestimated the extent to which American culture was naturalized after it crossed the Atlantic or the Pacific.
