ABSTRACT
The political and social contexts in which Caryl Churchill began her professional writing career significantly informed her work. The ideological divide between the communist East and the capitalist West was unforgettably symbolised through the erection of the Berlin Wall in 1961, and the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 exacerbated the so-called Cold War still further. Marxism provided campaign frameworks for New Leftist, anti-capitalist movements that fought for changes in legislative policy across a wide spectrum of issues, ranging from anti-war agendas to civil rights, women's rights, gay rights, child poverty and environmental protection. Churchill's experience of the 1960s was one of childbearing and domestic confinement: a story just as familiar as Carters and Christies narratives of excitement, activism and sexual abandon. Radio is especially suited to the representation of interior worlds and Churchill's fascination with mindscapes and with the collision between cognitive perception and external realities was clearly stimulated in powerful ways at this time.
